Oratorio As Snapshots: Images From A Lifetime Framed In Words, Music
NEW YORK – We take for granted our ability to snap, and immediately see, dozens of photos a day. Composer Luna Pearl Woolf and librettist David Van Taylor’s Number Our Days: A Photographic Oratorio recalls a different time.
Conducting Laureate Shows Flair For Mahler With Third Symphony
SEATTLE – In 2016, Kahchun Wong won first prize in the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition with his take on the Third Symphony. That rapport with the composer was evident in a sublime account of the Third with the Seattle Symphony.
Racial Injustice Echoes In Music Before Solace Of Mozart’s Requiem
PORTLAND, Ore. – The first half of the Oregon Symphony program led by David Danzmayr featured pieces by William Grant Still and James B. Wilson that reflected on racism. The mood was softened by a moving account of the Requiem.
Amid An Opera’s Dark Waters, Musicians And A Critic Swim For Shore
DETROIT – Four orchestra players withdrew after learning of scenes of sexual horror and horrible death in Detroit Opera's production of Missy Mazzoli's Breaking the Waves. It's an impressive spectacle, but I felt both complicit and harmed.
Quasi-Robotics Concert, Where AI Perhaps Stood For Almost Involved
SAN FRANCISCO – The 10th season of the San Francisco Symphony's SoundBox series ended with a conceptually fascinating program called “Press Play,” curated by “Carol Reiley and her robots.” But it needed more AI compositions.
Music Director To Be, Mäkelä Turns Chicago Into A Rocking Scene
CHICAGO – Two days after the Chicago Symphony announcement, 28-year-old Klaus Mäkelä got a wild welcome and made an auspicious start, leading a program of high-intensity Shostakovich, the Tenth Symphony and Cello Concerto No. 1.
Chemistry Feels A Little Late (At Curtain Call) In Met Return To ‘Rondine’
NEW YORK – Three singers new to the Met offered accomplished debuts, but soprano Angel Blue and conductor Speranza Scappucci, both gifted artists, seemed outside their comfort zones in Puccini's ostensibly uncomplicated but very tricky work.
Multigifted Timo Andres Morphs From Pianist To Composer For Premiere
LOS ANGELES – A leading composer-pianist of his generation, Andres was at Disney Hall one night playing Philip Glass etudes, then returned as John Adams led the LA Philharmonic in Andres' quasi-concerto Made of Tunes with pianist Aaron Diehl.
Mälkki Meets Mahler And Raises Her Flag As Conductor At Forefront
CHICAGO – While Susanna Mälkki has led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra effectively on several occasions, her account of Mahler's Symphony No. 4 was of another order, affirming her place among today's preeminent conductors.
Concert Retraces Paths Of Chou Wen-chung, Composer As Patriarch
NEW YORK – Among diverse internationally known Chinese composers, Chou is revered as a musical father. A broad perspective on his works was offered at a centennial concert by Continuum Contemporary Music conducted by Joel Sachs.
As Orchestra Searches For Helmsman, Vänskä Proves It’s Not Adrift
SEATTLE – The Seattle Symphony's two-year absence of a singular guide at the helm inevitably leads to concerns that musicianship may suffer, but the forces sounded absolutely on course in the hands of guest conductor Osmo Vänskä.
Five Pianists Parade Their Perspectives On Theater Of Glass Etudes
LOS ANGELES – Lighting design and the rhythm of stage entrances conjured the solemn purpose of a ritual as the pianists rotated through Philip Glass' 20 Etudes, with each playing two pieces at a time and stagehands deftly switching benches.
Youth Orchestra Marks Decade With A Concert Uniting Starry Alumni
NEW YORK – To celebrate the 10th anniversary of NYO-USA, the National Youth Orchestra, Carnegie Hall assembled alumni from the program to create the NYO-USA All-Stars, with conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin and pianist Daniil Trifonov.
Comic Additive Helps Revive Early Bernstein Flop ‘Trouble In Tahiti’
MINNEAPOLIS – As foil to the dark misery of the couple in Tahiti, Minnesota Opera paired it in a double bill with Service Provider, a very funny take on cellphone mania that also deals with the same marital problem of a failure to communicate.
On Outside, Looking In: Music Honors Cultures At Margins Of Society
NEW YORK – Life is a cabaret. For outsiders, it’s also a struggle that has long acted as creative inspiration. The American Composers Orchestra explored that inspiration in a concert at Carnegie Hall called America in Weimar: On the Margins.
Sound Of Nordic Music Echoes Through Festival Touching Diverse Styles
BOSTON – The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Music of the Midnight Sun Festival, with four concerts spanning two weeks, explored music of Scandinavia ranging from Grieg's Peer Gynt to works by Sibelius and Anna Thorvaldsdottir.
Sampling The Century, Music From Japan Goes On Generational Venture
NEW YORK – In its third live festival in New York City since lockdown, the organization celebrated its 49th season with a survey of “Japanese Contemporary Music: Past and Present,”
including five composers spanning more than a century.
From Rear Perspective, Rotterdam Philharmonic Creates A Potent Sound
ORLANDO – Led by principal conductor Lahav Shani, the visiting orchestra proved to be a powerhouse of calibrated precision in Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. It was my first time sitting in the grand-tier chorus section, facing the conductor.
Cage’s Opera Potpourri: Mixed Bundles Of Hits Offered In Playful Vibe
DETROIT – Detroit Opera's Yuval Sharon bravely staged John Cage’s Europeras 3 & , in which singers perform arias of their choice, pianists play opera transcriptions, and record players provide instrumental sections, all determined by chance.
Sounding The Long Fall Of Belle Epoque, From Bruckner To Schoenberg
NEW YORK – In three March concerts at Carnegie Hall, conductor Franz Welser-Möst led the Vienna Philharmonic in programs that outlined a sea-change course from the Bruckner Ninth though the Mahler Ninth to the Second Viennese School.
