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      ‘To Be or Not to Be’: Is It the Question or the Point?

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      At the Metropolitan Opera, Brett Dean and Matthew Jocelyn’s adaptation of “Hamlet” nods to different, surprising versions of Shakespeare’s text.“Hamlet” is our culture’s supreme emblem of a great artist’s freedom to create something radically new. Shakespeare found a way to represent the inner life as it had never been represented before: the pressure of compulsive, involuntary memories; the haunting presence of a dead father; a son’s angst in the wake of his mother’s remarriage; the suicidal thoughts of a young person forced to make impossible choices in a corrupt world. It is here, if anywhere, that Jorge Luis Borges could claim with a straight face that Shakespeare was God.In fact, the creation of “Hamlet,” which was first written and performed in late 1599 or 1600, took place within severe, all-too-human constraints. A part owner of his theater company, Shakespeare was almost certainly urged by his fellow shareholders to write a play about the Danish prince. They would have noted the success of at least one earlier stage version of an old revenge tale that was already well-known (and that continues to be recycled, as in the new film “The Northman”). In addition to writing for a commercial enterprise in a cutthroat mass-entertainment industry, he was working with an all-male cast of 12 that performed in the afternoons on a stage without scenery or lighting; he had to keep a wary eye on the government censors; and he had to please a large audience that ranged from the educated elite to the illiterate.Given these constraints, his achievement is all the more stunning. To see the originality of “Hamlet,” simply consider the astonishing number of words in the script that are used for the first time in print (and, in some instances, never again): fanged, fret, pander, compulsive, unnerved, unpolluted, besmirch, self-slaughter, blastment, chop-fallen, down-gyved, implorator, mobled, pajock, and many, many more. It is as if Shakespeare were driven to invent a whole new idiom to express what he had discovered in a familiar story.And it was not only a matter of unusual words. The play, written in characteristically supple iambic pentameter, has an unforgettable music of its own, a set of rhythmic surprises sprung in the opening spondee — “Who’s there?” — and developed in a thousand different ways. It is a music epitomized, even for those who have no idea that “Hamlet” is composed in verse, by the cadence of the most famous line in its most famous soliloquy: “To be, or not to be: that is the question.”Clayton, right, as Hamlet during a recent rehearsal at the Met.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNow imagine the challenge of trying to write an opera based on this of all plays — as Brett Dean has done with his “Hamlet,” which had its premiere at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2017 and arrives at the Metropolitan Opera on May 13.“Hamlet” is a musical challenge before which even Giuseppe Verdi hesitated. In 1887, in what is for me the greatest of all transformations of Shakespeare into opera, Verdi miraculously captured the music of “Othello.” With the help of the librettist Arrigo Boito, who radically cut the tragedy, the composer found a way to give the three protagonists sublime melodic expressions of their ardent, anxious desire, steadfast love and fathomless hatred.To make this transformation work successfully, of course, many things in Shakespeare’s text had to be jettisoned, and the motivations of the characters had above all to be clarified. In the play, for example, Iago’s rationale for destroying Othello is famously unclear; in the opera, “Otello,” Verdi gives Iago a stupendous, full-throated credo: “I believe in a cruel God who has created me in His image.”Small wonder that Verdi — who also adapted “Macbeth” and fashioned “Falstaff” out of “The Merry Wives of Windsor” and “Henry IV” — contemplated taking on “Hamlet” but ultimately changed his mind. What would he have done with a plot whose every action is plagued by uncertainty, and with characters whose every motivation is ambivalent?A handful of composers, most notably Ambroise Thomas in the mid-19th century, ventured into this territory, but none of them managed to penetrate very far into its forbidding depths. That is, until Dean wrote his adaptation, which captures something of the authentic “Hamlet” music — in all its strangeness, dissonance and haunting beauty.But the word “authentic,” in relation to “Hamlet,” is misleading. The opera’s gifted librettist, Matthew Jocelyn, grasped what Shakespeare scholars have come to understand, that there is no single definitive text of the play. It survives in three early printings that have at least some claim to authority: the brief version (Q1), published in 1603 in the small-format size known as a quarto; the much longer quarto version (Q2), published the following year; and the version included in the celebrated First Folio (F) of 1623.Each text differs from the others in crucial ways, and almost all modern editions of the play adopt elements from more than one of them. (Even editors who dismiss Q1 as hopelessly defective usually follow it in having the ghost appear in the famous closet scene not in armor, but in his nightgown.) Moreover, the texts of Q2 and F are each too long to fit comfortably into what Shakespeare called “the two hours’ traffic of our stage.” From the beginning, the playwright seems to have expected any given production to pick and choose, shaping “Hamlet” for its particular time and occasion. All versions are the result of choices, cuts, alterations.All of this clearly lies behind Jocelyn’s evident sense of freedom in refashioning the text, which in any case would have had to be reduced in length to serve as the libretto. Only about 20 percent of the lines in the full-length play make it into the opera, leaving room for the music, as Dean has said, to be the protagonist.What is striking, given the drastic cuts, is how much of what has obsessed the readers and audiences of “Hamlet” over the past several hundred years powerfully resonates in this operatic reimagining. Hamlet’s voice reaches the edge of desperation then swoops into bitter comedy before veering toward tenderness and back to manic grief. The murderer Claudius has a gift for smoothness and authority that lightly conceals something like false notes. The countertenors, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, thinly flatter and echo both each other and their interlocutors. Ophelia’s descent into madness releases in her an erotic aggression that astonishes and alarms Gertrude. Chords in the orchestra and chorus are extended, drawn out and dispersed, as if they were searching for a resolution that eludes them.John Tomlinson, above, as the Ghost of Old Hamlet, and Clayton in the Glyndebourne production.Glyndebourne Productions Ltd.; Richard Hubert SmithJocelyn also cunningly reweaves the text, an intervention apparent from the opera’s first moments. An offstage chorus sings a funeral chant for the old king made up of words and phrases — “noble dust,” “quintessence of dust,” and the like — that come from very different places in the play. Hamlet enters alone and, half-singing, half-speaking, intones the words “or not to be … or not to be … or not to be.” The fragment from the celebrated Act III soliloquy is followed in this opening aria by fragments taken from his other soliloquies, along with a line — “What ceremony else?” — lifted from a different character, Laertes, who speaks it in Act V, at Ophelia’s grave.From the start, then, it is made clear that we are not to expect that the opera will work its way dutifully through the text or develop individual characters in the way that Shakespeare’s play does, most famously through soliloquies. Rather, we have entered what we might call “The Hamlet Zone.” Here, words do not stay in their place or belong only to the character who speaks them. In his death throes, Polonius sings the lines about the play-within-the-play that both he and the chorus have earlier sung.When Hamlet asks the visiting players to give him a passionate speech from their very best play, they begin to sing “To be or not to be.” And in Ophelia’s madness, she sings not her words alone but words that Hamlet has spoken to her, words that weigh like rocks dragging her down to a muddy death. “The Hamlet Zone” is a place in which words are broken up, transferred and shared, and in which the voice of one character is woven together, in both harmony and dissonance, with that of another.Such, after all, is the special power of opera.Dean does eventually give us one of Hamlet’s soliloquies more or less in its entirety, and it is the soliloquy we have been waiting for since the opening fragment “or not to be.” But there is a surprise in store. Not only does Hamlet drop the opening “To be” — as if he were already too far along toward not being — but the speech also takes an unexpected turn:… or not to be… or not to be… or not to beTo be … ay, there’s the point.Is this faithful to Shakespeare? Yes, in a way. Jocelyn has chosen the version of the soliloquy that appears in Q1. Scholars typically cite this to demonstrate why they call this text of the play the “Bad Quarto.” My students at Harvard usually laugh when I show it onscreen. But it is not the least bit funny here. As Hamlet sings it, the monosyllabic “point” works perfectly, in a way that “question” would not. A play and an opera, however deeply bound up with each other, are not the same. Ay, there’s the point.Stephen Greenblatt is the author, among other books, of “Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare” and “Hamlet in Purgatory.” He is the Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard and the general editor “The Norton Shakespeare.” More

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      Bad Bunny on His Surprise Album, ‘Un Verano Sin Ti’

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      “I’ve made it clear to people that I’m never going to make a record that’s the same as another,” the pop star said. His fourth album was inspired by a spectrum of Caribbean music.Bad Bunny approached his fourth album with a bit of a lighter touch: “It’s a record to play in the summer, on the beach, as a playlist.”Josefina Santos for The New York TimesMost pop stars would move heaven and earth to attend the Met Gala. But for Bad Bunny, one of music’s most idiosyncratic figures, it’s just another Monday night. “Obviously I’m happy that they invited me,” he said, twirling from side to side in a high leather swivel chair at New York’s venerated Electric Lady Studios about 48 hours before the exclusive fashion fête. “I know that day is going to be an exciting thing,” he continued. “But I’m working a lot this week!”Last Monday, he announced his casting as the lead of a live-action Marvel movie, playing a character from the Spider-Man universe named El Muerto. Two days after that, he was filming music videos in Puerto Rico. Throughout it all, he was preparing for the release of his fourth studio album, “Un Verano Sin Ti” (“A Summer Without You”), which dropped on Friday.At the gala on Monday, Bad Bunny — born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio — wore a custom cream boiler suit and skirt with puff sleeves, designed by Riccardo Tisci for Burberry. At Electric Lady, calmly putting the final touches on the album and working on some new material, he sported a quintessentially Benito look: pastel pink swim trunks, a checkered blue cardigan and a wide-brimmed sage fisherman’s hat. His left thigh was covered in tattoos, including the sad-faced cartoon heart that appears on the artwork for his new album, and an outline of his home, Puerto Rico. His right thigh bore only one design: the logo for Pokémon Go.Since his genre-crushing debut in 2018, Bad Bunny, now 28, has been nearly unstoppable, colliding pop punk, synth-pop, bachata, dembow and reggaeton on his way to becoming a global superstar. He released two LPs in 2020, including “El Último Tour Del Mundo,” the first fully Spanish-language album to hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. He’s been the most streamed artist on Spotify two years in a row.The story of Bad Bunny’s mythical ascent from a grocery bagger in the small town of Vega Baja to a torchbearer for a new generation of reggaeton and trap artists has become nearly folklore. In the past few years, he’s also transformed into a fashion renegade, an emerging social critic, a semiprofessional wrestler and a budding actor. In July, he will make his feature film debut in “Bullet Train,” a bloody action movie in which he fistfights Brad Pitt. Bad Bunny said he trained with stuntmen for weeks to prepare.“I always wanted to act and the opportunity came along, but I didn’t know that one of the first ones was going to be with Brad Pitt,” he said incredulously.“At the end of the day, I’m still the same person I’ve always been,” he added. “That’s what’s important, what you have to know. I shouldn’t care how the world sees me, but rather, who I know I am,” he continued. “With that, I’ll be very happy.”Bad Bunny at the Met Gala earlier this week, wearing Riccardo Tisci for Burberry.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesBad Bunny has approached each of his albums with an explicit goal. “Since forever I’ve made it clear to people that I’m never going to make a record that’s the same as another,” he said. But beyond the ambition to warp genres, he’s also refused to genuflect to industry conventions, especially ones for Spanish-speaking artists.“I could have done a track with, who knows, Miley Cyrus or Katy Perry,” he explained, referring to his first 2020 album, “YHLQMDLG.” “But no, I was making ‘Safaera’ with Ñengo Flow and Jowell y Randy. And I was putting the whole world onto underground from Puerto Rico, you know? That makes me feel proud of what I represent.”He approached “Un Verano Sin Ti” with a bit of a lighter touch: “It’s a record to play in the summer, on the beach, as a playlist.” He drew on both recent experiences and nostalgia for dog days of the past. “When I was a little kid, my family would go to the West on vacation,” he said, referring to the coast of Puerto Rico. For “Un Verano Sin Ti,” he decided to explore the eastern side, near Río Grande and Fajardo. The majority of the album was recorded there and in the Dominican Republic.“Un Verano Sin Ti” is a pop album, but not necessarily a straightforward one. Bad Bunny infuses it with electrifying beat switches, raunchy raps and astral synths. The record was inspired by an expansive spectrum of Caribbean music: the deep cuts of the beloved salsa singer Ismael Rivera; Dominican dembow; and groups like Buscabulla, who appear on the song “Andrea.”“The album is very Caribbean, in every sense: with its reggaeton, its mambo, with all those rhythms, and I like it that way,” Bad Bunny said. Though his career often takes him far from home, he’s always kept Puerto Rico close — sometimes, he still pronounces his “Rs” with the guttural, back-of-the-throat intonation so common in the countryside. And he still has that Caribbean sense of humor. When asked about what he hoped to do at the Met Gala, he joked, “I want my hookah,” cackling.“I shouldn’t care how the world sees me, but rather, who I know I am,” Bad Bunny said. “With that, I’ll be very happy.”Josefina Santos for The New York TimesOn the mutant mambo of “Después de la Playa,” Bad Bunny sings on a live mic over the Dominican band Dahian el Apechao, echoing the style of the merengue experimentalist Omega El Fuerte. “Titi Me Preguntó,” a shape-shifting dembow track with a horror-movie synth outro, samples Kiko El Crazy, the pink-haired dembow eccentric.“Un Verano Sin Ti” also contains collaborations with indie artists like the Marías and Bomba Estéreo, and plunges deeper into gauzy dream-pop textures and wistful synth interludes that feel vast and intimate all at once. The aural landscape is reminiscent of indietronica artists like M83, but Bad Bunny and his producers Tainy, MAG and La Paciencia immerse it in Caribbean gloss.Both MAG and Bad Bunny were partially inspired by Buscabulla’s lush synth pop, and Bad Bunny said he listened to the duo’s 2020 album, “Regresa,” on repeat during quarantine.“It was Easter Sunday and we got a call from a bunny,” the duo’s multi-instrumentalist, Luis Alfredo Del Valle, joked in a phone interview. On “Andrea,” Bad Bunny renders a portrait of a Puerto Rican woman hoping to live life on her own terms, and Buscabulla’s vocalist, Raquel Berríos, assumes the character’s voice. “I felt that the chorus had to carry a lot of weight about what it means to be a woman from the Caribbean,” Berríos said. “I had never worked this hard for a song.”Del Valle remarked on Bad Bunny’s “indie bent”: “It’s pretty notable that he has that platform and he’s down to bring in people who are usually not in that realm,” he said. Berríos agreed: “Music should just be like that,” she said. “It should be free.”Bad Bunny has a musical sensibility that exemplifies how the mainstream relies on cues from the underground and it’s one way he likes to make grand industry statements. On other tracks, he engages in more overt social commentary.Much like “Estamos Bien” before it, “El Apagón” is a torch song that captures both the beauty and tragedy of Puerto Rican life. The track references the blackouts that persisted after a private consortium took over the island’s energy distribution last year. But it also incorporates laugh-out-loud citations of old school reggaeton, including a salacious lyric from DJ Joe’s “Fatal Fantassy” mixtape. It even ends with a send-off for the mainland investors who have descended on the island in search of tax breaks, driving up home prices and displacing locals. “Que se vayan ellos,” sings Gabriela Berlingeri, Bad Bunny’s girlfriend. “Esta es mi playa/esta es mi tierra” (“Let them leave. This is my beach/this is my land”).“This is a song from the heart,” Bad Bunny said, explaining that he wrote the lyrics for Berlingeri to sing. “I didn’t want to get a famous artist,” he added. “I wanted someone to sing it out of love, because it’s a sincere message.”Bad Bunny has taken note of musicians outside of Latino culture suddenly embracing Latin music: “But remember that it’s from here,” he said, “and that we know how to do it like it’s supposed to be done.”Josefina Santos for The New York TimesAt one point on “El Apagón,” Bad Bunny declares in Spanish, “Now everyone wants to be Latino,” a reference to a sudden spate of musicians who “don’t have a thing to do with Latino culture” singing in Spanish or playing with reggaeton. “Even though you can feel proud and happy about that, deep down, you’re like,” he paused. “‘Now, cabrones? Why not before?’” For so long, the music industry scorned Latino artists, segregating them into confining sounds and aesthetics, he said. “It was like a huge line, a wall — us over here, and you over there.”“It’s not a critique, like, ‘Don’t do it!’” he added. “But remember that it’s from here, and that we know how to do it like it’s supposed to be done.”Bad Bunny knows he is constantly evolving. Much like the musical luminaries whose LPs line the forest-green hallways of Electric Lady, he understands that his career is defined by authentic reinvention. “I don’t think I’m going to be making reggaeton at 40,” he said. “That I’m sure of.”He’s not certain what awaits him in the next 10 years — maybe a few more albums or more prominent Hollywood roles. He swiveled around in his tall chair, a small grin crawling across his face. Of course a man this busy is plotting his eventual exit from the limelight. “I hope to be chilling, in a house with a farm and a horse — two horses,” he said of his future. “Tranquilito, tranquilito, tranquilito.” At peace. More

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      Fun Things to Do in N.Y.C. This May 2022

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      Looking for something to do in New York? Go see the Asian Comedy Fest at Stand Up NY and Caveat or the British singer Nilüfer Yanya at Webster Hall. Take the kids to Our First Art Fair, as part of NADA New York. Or you can still catch “Hangmen” on Broadway and the Jacques-Louis David blockbuster at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Comedy | Music | Kids | Film | Dance | Theater | ArtComedyJes Tom, above at Union Hall in Brooklyn in February, will be among the performers in this weekend’s Asian Comedy Fest.JT AndersonAsian Comedy FestFriday at 6, 8 and 10 p.m. at Stand Up NY, 236 West 78th Street, Manhattan; standupny.com. Saturday at 6, 8 and 10 p.m. at Caveat, 21A Clinton Street, Manhattan; caveat.nycFor the third straight year, Ed Pokropski, a writer and producer at NBCUniversal, and the producer and comedian Kate Moran have assembled dozens of performers for this festival, and like last year, they’re right on time to celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. The six shows will feature Julia Shiplett, Michael Cruz Kayne, Usama Siddiquee, Karen Chee with the puppeteer Kathleen Kim, the podcasters from “Feeling Asian,” and Yuhua Hamasaki from “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Friday’s 8 p.m. lineup includes perhaps the festival’s buzziest performer: Jes Tom, a nonbinary trans comedian who co-stars in the new Hulu rom-com “Crush.” (Tom will also headline their own show on May 14 at the Bell House.) Tickets start at $25 per show ($65 for an all-night pass) and are available at asiancomedyfest.com. SEAN L. McCARTHYMusicDarius Jones, above at the Winter Jazzfest in 2018, has programmed this year’s MATA Festival, which concludes at National Sawdust this weekend.Jacob Blickenstaff for The New York TimesClassical MusicMATA FestivalFriday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at National Sawdust, 80 North Sixth Street, Brooklyn; live.nationalsawdust.org.This year’s iteration of the annual contemporary music blowout known as the MATA Festival has been programmed by the composer and alto saxophonist Darius Jones. For the festival’s final two nights, Jones has put together a set of works by younger artists on Friday and one of his own on Saturday. Friday’s concert will feature notable artists like Travis Laplante, who is scheduled to play his solo tenor saxophone opus “The Obvious Place.” And Saturday’s performance will offer the world premiere of Jones’s piece “Colored School No. 3,” which references a Brooklyn building once used as a segregated school for Black children into the early 20th century. Tickets for each night are $25. SETH COLTER WALLSNilüfer Yanya will headline at Webster Hall on Saturday.Adama Jalloh for The New York TimesPop & RockNilüfer YanyaSaturday at 7:30 p.m. at Webster Hall, 25 East 11th Street, Manhattan; websterhall.com.Though as a teenager she was tapped to be in a girl group assembled by Louis Tomlinson of One Direction, Nilüfer Yanya chose a self-determined path over the prospect of pop stardom. The British singer’s debut album, from 2019, contained notes of jazz and indie pop but leaned predominantly into alt-rock, showcasing the guitar chops she had honed since picking up the instrument at age 12. Yanya’s sophomore effort, released in March, follows suit but pares her sound down to essential components: wafty melodies, crisp beats, circuitous guitar work reminiscent of Radiohead. Ironically titled “Painless,” the album is spiked with thorns, its lyrics tackling the complicated, damaging side effects of desire. On Saturday, Yanya heads a bill that also features two other singer-guitarists: Ada Lea and Tasha. Tickets start at $25 and are available at axs.com. OLIVIA HORNKidsOur First Art Fair at Pier 36, sponsored by the New Art Dealers Alliance and the Children’s Museum of the Arts, will feature works by children 12 and under. Above, a display from an after-school class at the museum in 2019.Children’s Museum of the ArtsOur First Art FairThursday from 4 to 8 p.m.; Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at NADA New York, Pier 36, 299 South Street, Manhattan; newartdealers.org.Learn More About the Metropolitan Museum of Art$125 Million Donation: The largest capital gift in the Met’s history will help reinvigorate a long-delayed rebuild of the Modern wing.Recent Exhibits: Our critics reviewed exhibits featuring the drawings of the French Revolution’s chief propagandist and new work by the sculptor Charles Ray.Behind the Scenes: A documentary goes inside the Met to chronicle one of the most challenging years of its history.A Guide to the Met: From the must-see galleries to the lesser-known treasures, here’s how to make the most of your visit.While the New Art Dealers Alliance has always catered to the business’s youngest members, it would be hard to find exhibitors younger than some appearing at this year’s NADA New York exposition. They’re the entrepreneurs 12 and under participating in Our First Art Fair, presented by the alliance and the Children’s Museum of the Arts. Here, youngsters display and price their creations, receiving all proceeds. Little artists who missed the April submission deadline can still contribute by completing a required form and delivering it, along their work, to the fair. On Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m., museum educators will also attend, providing art supplies and helping with last-minute entries. What doesn’t sell goes to the museum’s permanent collection — no small distinction. NADA passes start at $40; they’re free for children. LAUREL GRAEBERFilmThuy An Luu and Frédéric Andrei in Jean-Jacques Beineix’s “Diva,” which is screening at Film Forum starting on Friday.Rialto Pictures‘Diva’Ongoing at Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, Manhattan; filmforum.org.You’ve seen Brian De Palma’s “Blow Out”? “Diva” is the other major film of 1981 (released in the United States in 1982) that involves a protagonist with a hot-potato audio recording, or technically two: Jules (Frédéric Andrei), a postman and opera fan, secretly records a star vocalist, Cynthia Hawkins (the real-life soprano Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez), who makes a point of only singing live, at a performance in Paris. Soon after, he unwittingly comes into possession of another tape that could expose an international drug-and-sex-trafficking operation.But the crazy convolutions of the plot are hardly the point. “Diva,” directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix, who died in January, is perhaps the film most identified with a trend in France that became known as the cinéma du look, movies for which visual style and attitude left the prevailing impressions. In a print showing at Film Forum, the shades of blue are dazzling, and an elaborate chase through the Paris Metro is pretty exciting, too. BEN KENIGSBERGDanceValerie Levine of Ice Theater of New York performing “Arctic Memory” by Jody Sperling on Governors Island in February.Josef PinlacIce Theater of New YorkFriday and Saturday at 7 p.m.; Monday at 6:30 p.m. at Sky Rink, 61 Chelsea Piers, Manhattan; chelseapiers.com.After pivoting to pavement during the pandemic, Ice Theater of New York returns to its true milieu, which is also a fitting place to reflect on climate change. As part of its home season, the company will present the premiere of the choreographer Jody Sperling’s “Of Water and Ice,” which draws on her research in the Arctic and is set to music by D.J. Spooky. It will be joined on the program by 10 other works, many of them also new, with soundtracks ranging from Philip Glass to Rachmaninoff to Madonna. Don’t expect a string of Nathan Chen-like acrobatic feats, though; the company, founded in 1984, is rooted in the art of ice dancing, which combines the ethos of concert dance with the speed, momentum and strength of ice skating. Two of the form’s best-known practitioners, the British champions Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, will be honored at Monday’s gala performance. Tickets start at $25 and are available at icetheatre.org. BRIAN SCHAEFERTheaterDavid Threlfall, center, with, from left, Richard Hollis, Ryan Pope, John Horton and Alfie Allen in Martin McDonagh’s dark comedy “Hangmen” at the Golden Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesCritic’s Pick‘Hangmen’Through June 18 at the Golden Theater, Manhattan; hangmenbroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes.In Martin McDonagh’s Olivier Award winner, set in the 1960s, a menacing mod from London (Alfie Allen of “Game of Thrones”) walks into a grim northern English pub run by a former hangman (David Threlfall). Pitch-black comedy ensues. Directed by Matthew Dunster, this production was a prepandemic hit downtown. Read the review.‘Plaza Suite’Through June 26 at the Hudson Theater, Manhattan; plazasuitebroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes.Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker revel in physical comedy as they play two married couples and a pair of long-ago sweethearts in the first Broadway revival of Neil Simon’s trio of one-act farces, a smash at its premiere in 1968. John Benjamin Hickey directs. (Onstage at the Hudson Theater. Limited run ends July 1.) Read the review.Critic’s Pick‘American Buffalo’Through July 10 at Circle in the Square, Manhattan; americanbuffalonyc.com. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.Laurence Fishburne, Sam Rockwell and Darren Criss team up for David Mamet’s verbally explosive tragicomedy, set in a Chicago junk shop where an inept pair of small-time criminals and their hapless young flunky plot the theft of a rare nickel. Neil Pepe directs. Read the review.Hugh Jackman as Harold Hill in the Broadway revival of “The Music Man” at the Winter Garden Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times‘The Music Man’At the Winter Garden Theater, Manhattan; musicmanonbroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes.Hugh Jackman, a.k.a. Wolverine, returns to the stage as the charlatan Harold Hill opposite Sutton Foster as Marian the librarian in Jerry Zaks’s widely anticipated revival of Meredith Willson’s classic musical comedy. It’s a hot ticket, and one of Broadway’s more stratospherically priced shows. (Onstage at the Winter Garden Theater.)Read the review.Art & Museums“The Oath of the Tennis Court” (1791), a presentation drawing in “Jacques-Louis David: Radical Draftsman” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, depicts a foundational event of the French Revolution.RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NYCritic’s PickJacques-Louis David: Radical DraftsmanThrough May 15 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan; 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org.“Radical Draftsman,” a momentous and deadly serious exhibition, assembles more than 80 works on paper by this prime mover of French Neo-Classicism, from his youthful Roman studies to his uncompromising Jacobin years, into jail and then Napoleon’s cabinet, and through to his final exile in Brussels. It’s a scholarly feat, with loans from two dozen institutions, and never-before-seen discoveries from private collections. It will enthrall specialists who want to map how David built his robust canvases out of preparatory sketches and drapery studies. But for the public, this show has a more direct importance. This show forces us — and right on time — to think hard about the real power of pictures (and picture makers), and the price of political and cultural certainty. What is beautiful, and what is virtuous? And when virtue embraces terror, what is beauty really for? Read the review.Critic’s PickJonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always RunningThrough June 5 at the Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan; 212-423-3200, thejewishmuseum.org.A Lithuanian refugee who landed in New York City in 1949, Jonas Mekas became a founder of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, Film Culture magazine and Anthology Film Archives. He also made scores of collagelike “diary” films. “The Camera Was Always Running” is Mekas’s first U.S. museum survey, and its curator, Kelly Taxter, approached the daunting task by mounting a high-speed retrospective projected on a dozen free-standing screens.Most of the films in the exhibition are broken up into simultaneously projected pieces, so that the full program of 11 takes just three hours. Many are diary films — abstract kaleidoscopic records of Mekas, his brother Adolfas, also a filmmaker, and the SoHo bohemians and Lithuanian transplants of their circle. Since the point of all this, even more than documenting the variety of Mekas’s life in particular, is to capture the magical incongruity of life in general, Taxter’s inspired staging may even make the works more effective. Read the review.Painted fabric hangings behind the sculpture “The Wake and Resurrection of the Bicentennial Negro,” 1976. This entire installation originated as part of a performance piece.Faith Ringgold/ARS, NY, DACS, London and ACA Galleries; Simbarashe Cha for The New York TimesCritic’s PickFaith Ringgold: American PeopleThrough June 5 at the New Museum, 235 Bowery, Manhattan; 212-219-1222, newmuseum.org.Ringgold’s first local retrospective in almost 40 years features the Harlem-born artist’s figures, craft techniques and storytelling in inventive combinations. And it makes clear that what consigned Ringgold to an outlier track half a century ago puts her front and center now. The show begins with a group of brooding, broadly stroked figure paintings from the 1960s called “American People Series.” All the pictures are about hierarchies of power; women are barely even present. Ringgold referred to this early, wary work as “super realist.”In the ’80s, an elaboration on the painted quilt form, called “story quilts,” brought Ringgold attention both inside and outside the art world. It is the vehicle for Ringgold’s most formally complex and buoyant painting project, “The French Connection.” Overall, it feels, in tone, like a far cry from the “American People” pictures, but there’s politics at work in the French paintings, too. Read the review. More

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      ‘We’ Review: Arcade Fire’s Enduring Anxiety

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      The band’s sixth album, “We,” shares many of its predecessor’s thematic fixations on dangerous digital rabbit holes. The music sometimes can’t find its way out, either.Arcade Fire has always sounded at once representative of and defiantly out of step with its own time. It’s easy to slot the group into the aesthetic of the so-called New Sincerity, a post-9/11 ideology that rejected the previous micro-generation’s embrace of hip cynicism and postmodern irony. Arcade Fire, by definition, cared. Numbness and ennui were its boogeymen. Throughout the first decade of its run, the Canadian band released a series of loose concept albums that targeted time-tested opiates of the masses — organized religion on “Neon Bible” in 2007, conformist living on “The Suburbs” in 2010.Still, there was something backward-glancing about the group — not necessarily a bad thing. Arcade Fire was at its sharpest when it was trying to puncture the inherited mythology of the midcentury past. But it was never quite as successful when it shifted its gaze toward the present and began raging against the machines, first on its ambitious 2013 album, “Reflektor,” and again on its less inspired 2017 follow-up, “Everything Now.”Which is why it’s unfortunate that the band doubles down on this approach throughout much of its sixth album, “We,” an LP that wishes to be seen as a course correction but still shares many of its predecessor’s thematic fixations. We are living through an age of anxiety and the end of an empire, we are reminded on songs with grand, explanatory titles like, well, “Age of Anxiety I” and “End of the Empire I-IV.” The first is a searching, forlorn opener with rhythmic backing vocals that huff and puff shallowly, as though they can never quite catch their breath. The nine-minute, multipart suite “End of the Empire” has a few delightful twists, but is ultimately airy and vague, seeking to channel the sort of modernized vision of impending apocalypse that artists like Phoebe Bridgers (“I Know the End”) and Lana Del Rey (“The Greatest”) have recently pulled off more succinctly and sharply.“Age of Anxiety II (Rabbit Hole)” has some dazzling musical moments, like when a brooding synth line suddenly explodes into the evil twin of New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle.” Win Butler and Régine Chassagne co-produced “We” with Nigel Godrich, known for his work with Radiohead, and their collaboration makes the more up-tempo material pop.There are a few instances, though, when head-scratching lyrics take the listener out of what should be an ecstatic moment. The catchiest and most upbeat number on “We” is “Unconditional II (Race and Religion),” a neo-80s pop gem sung by Chassagne with backing vocals from Peter Gabriel. The beat and melodic line are hypnotic, yet the song is built around the hook “I’ll be your race and religion” — a weighty, loaded (or maybe just awkward) statement that is never unpacked enough to make the listener want to sing along.Aside from the galvanizing lead single, “The Lightning I, II,” which many heralded as a return to form, the band sounds most comfortable on the “We” songs that speak in a folk-rock idiom, like the understated closing title track. The sweet, rollicking “Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)” addresses Butler and Chassagne’s 9-year-old son, imparting to him their own hard-won life lessons while reflecting on the limitations of parental guidance. Call it attentive-dad rock. “There are things that you could do that no one else on earth could ever do,” Butler sings warmly, “But I can’t teach you.”The antidote for the age of anxiety that this record proposes is relatively straightforward: to opt out of the flat and depersonalizing world of the digital rabbit hole and reinvest in IRL personal connection. “I wanna get wild, I wanna get free,” Butler sings on the subdued final track, accompanied by a pastoral-sounding 12-string guitar. “Would you wanna get off this ride with me?” The stakes feel a bit low, though, because I’m not entirely convinced he was ever on the ride to begin with.Most of the most potent recent art about the agony and ever-diminishing ecstasy of being too online — Patricia Lockwood’s brilliant novel “No One Is Talking About This,” the last few albums by the British pop group the 1975 — has spoken the language of the internet vividly, with a specificity that suggests its authors are not entirely apart from the culture they’re critiquing, and that is precisely what makes their eventual protestations palatable. Arcade Fire’s depictions of our techno-dystopia, instead, feel more distant and diffuse.“I unsubscribe,” Butler sings repeatedly throughout “End of the Empire,” and Chassagne underlines it with her backing vocals until the line’s fleeting cleverness wears thin. But what, exactly, are they relinquishing? Despite its occasional moments of brilliance, “We” too often finds Arcade Fire stuck in a digital maze of its own design, ignoring the fact that it’s always sounded more at home off the grid.Arcade Fire“We”(Columbia) More

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      Review: A Cellist Accompanied by His Sister. Or Vice Versa?

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      Isata and Sheku Kanneh-Mason were true musical partners in concert at Zankel Hall.If someone asked you what kind of concert you went to at Zankel Hall on Wednesday evening, you’d probably call it a cello recital. That’s the shorthand for performances by prominent young string soloists; the usual thought is they are the main event. We would traditionally say that they were simply “accompanied” by a pianist.But on Wednesday that pianist was Isata Kanneh-Mason. She played beautifully: her touch patrician in a Beethoven sonata; dreamy in one by Shostakovich; suave in one by Frank Bridge; and alert without being anxious in one by Britten. Calmly commanding throughout, she was also unfailingly subtle. You could even say she was accompanied by her younger brother, the cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason.I’m joking, of course, but that the Kanneh-Masons are siblings makes it easier to see them as equal partners, and to see the lie in the common notion that the keyboardist is the bit player in someone else’s show. The sonata repertoire is often difficult enough on the piano that the accompanist label seems inadequate. This truly felt like a concert of duets.Both of these musicians have been rising in recent years: first Sheku, 23, following his internationally televised appearance at the royal wedding in 2018; and more recently Isata, 25, with a pair of excellent, quietly innovative albums. They appeared together in 2019 at Carnegie Hall’s smallest space, and returned on Wednesday to Zankel, the middle-size hall, whose 600 seats were sold out. (Is the biggest, Stern Auditorium, to come?)The program was nicely constructed. Bridge was Britten’s teacher; and Britten and Shostakovich are linked, as the Kanneh-Masons said in a recent interview with The New York Times, through the advocacy of the great cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.Rostropovich also played Karen Khachaturian’s lively sonata, which the Kanneh-Masons are doing at some stops on their present tour. I wish they had presented it at Zankel instead of Beethoven’s Cello Sonata No. 4 in C, an intrusion — however pleasant — from the early 19th century in what otherwise would have been four pieces written over just 50 years in the 20th. As an opening here, it was restrained to the point of weightlessness.In some ways, the first half of the concert felt like a preparation for the second, with the Shostakovich, after the Beethoven, also floating by with lots of smoothly threadlike, wispy cello playing — though in the Largo, Sheku’s even keel paid off in some arresting harshness, and Isata was icily lucid in the second movement.After intermission, in the rarely performed, richly wistful Bridge sonata, these musicians didn’t lose their restraint but gained tension as more extravagant emotion kept spilling past the reserve. The second movement climaxed in the piano’s softly conclusive, consoling line, setting off a spiral of light calligraphy in the cello — a passage of superbly unified playing.And Britten’s sonata was a match for the Kanneh-Masons’ self-possession, in the gnomic interplay of the first movement — nearly silent undulating in the cello as the pianist seems to wander, searching for him — and the caroming yet controlled pizzicato of the second. A sense of togetherness, of shared sensibility, permeated the whole piece, as it did the whole concert, down to the understated yet feeling encore, their arrangement, inspired by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s, of the spiritual “Deep River.”Isata and Sheku Kanneh-MasonPerformed on Wednesday at Zankel Hall, Manhattan. More

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      Judy Henske, a Distinctive Voice on the Folk Scene, Dies at 85

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      Her versatile vocals were a trademark, as was her comic stage patter. The character Annie Hall owed her a debt.Judy Henske, who made a splash on the folk scene of the early 1960s with a versatile voice that could conjure Billie Holiday or foreshadow Janis Joplin, and performances full of offbeat stage patter, died on April 27 in hospice care in Los Angeles. She was 85.The death was announced by her husband, the keyboardist Craig Doerge.Ms. Henske played in clubs and coffee houses on the West Coast in the late 1950s and early ’60s — she opened for Lenny Bruce at the Los Angeles club the Unicorn — before heading east to be part of the vibrant Greenwich Village scene. By 1963, when Robert Shelton of The New York Times sampled the up-and-coming talent in those clubs, she had made a strong impression.“Standing head and shoulders above the new contenders,” Mr. Shelton wrote, “is Judy Henske, a six-foot hollyhock who is blooming with talent.”“She is praiseworthy for her singing of blues, folk ballads and popular songs,” he added, “as well as for her freely improvised patter, which has been called ‘cafe of the absurd.’”That same year, her debut album, called simply “Judy Henske,” was released, and she appeared in a feature film, “Hootenanny Hoot,” playing herself, alongside Johnny Cash, the Brothers Four and other musical acts.“I was the only folk singer who looked good in a swimsuit,” she told The Santa Cruz Sentinel of California in 2000, explaining her presence in that forgotten movie.In 1964 her second album, “High Flying Bird,” was released. Its title track, written by Billy Edd Wheeler, was among her better-known songs, and the record also included a bluesy version of the standard “Until the Real Thing Comes Along” and a mournful cover of “God Bless the Child.”“The Death-Defying Judy Henske,” recorded live in front of an audience in a studio in 1966, captured some of her trademark banter. One of that album’s tracks, “Betty and Dupree,” is almost 11 minutes long and begins with Ms. Henske telling an improbable yarn about two octogenarians looking for love that goes on for four minutes before she starts singing. But the record also included plenty of folk, soul and blues.“Henske’s ability to mark her territory in all of these genres, define it, and then burn it down is decidedly spellbinding,” Matthew Greenwald wrote on the website Analog Planet when the album was rereleased some 40 years later.Ms. Henske performing with Paul Butterfield at the Cafe au Go Go in Greenwich Village in 1968. Don Paulsen/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesIn 1969 Ms. Henske and her husband at the time, the musician and arranger Jerry Yester, released the album “Farewell Aldebaran,” which took her into even more uncharted territory with its use of synthesizers and psychedelic flourishes. In the early 1970s she recorded with a quintet called Rosebud, but then — after her first marriage ended in divorce and she married Mr. Doerge, a fellow member of Rosebud, in 1973 — came a long absence from recording.In the late 1990s, though, people began to rediscover her, thanks to an internet fan site and to her mentions in the crime novels of Andrew Vachss, whose main character, a private detective named Burke, was a Henske fan.In 1999 she released her first album in decades, “Loose in the World.” The next year found her back onstage in Manhattan, playing the Bottom Line with Dave Van Ronk. Another album, “She Sang California,” came out in 2004. Old fans were surprised, in a good way.“They say, ‘Oh, you’re doing so well. We wondered what happened to you,’” she told The Marin Independent Journal of California in 2005. “It’s like I’m some kind of relative that they liked, or some kind of acquaintance they only had a good time with. And now here’s that person again. And they’re so glad to see me.”Judith Anne Henske was born on Dec. 20, 1936, in Chippewa Falls, Wis. Her father, William, was a doctor, and her mother, Dorothy (Thornton) Henske, studied nursing and worked for a time at the local woolen mill.While growing up, Judy sang at local events, including weddings — but only if her mother was in attendance.“I went to more weddings of people I didn’t even know,” Dorothy Henske told The Chippewa Herald-Telegram in 1962.Judy also sang in her church choir.“She told me once she had such a powerful voice because one of the nuns in Chippewa Falls stood on her chest on a book to help her develop vocal power,” Mr. Doerge said by email. “Hard to know if that’s true, but no one questions the power of her voice.”Ms. Henske studied at Rosary College in Illinois and the University of Wisconsin in Madison. By 1959 she was in San Diego, performing at coffee houses; soon she made her way to Los Angeles.Ms. Henske with Jerry Yester at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles in 2016, almost 50 years after they released “Farewell Aldebaran,” an album that took her into uncharted territory with use of synthesizers and psychedelic flourishes. Rebecca Sapp/WireImage for The Recording AcademyIn 1962 she was playing a club in Oklahoma City when Dave Guard, who had recently left the Kingston Trio, asked her to join a new group, the Whiskeyhill Singers. The group made two albums and increased Ms. Henske’s visibility, but it didn’t last long. After it broke up, she became a fixture in New York.Judy Collins, in her book “Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music” (2011), wrote that Albert Grossman, the manager who had been instrumental in forming the group Peter, Paul and Mary, suggested that she, Ms. Henske and Jo Mapes form a trio, which he proposed to call the Brown-Eyed Girls. “You can get some brown contact lenses,” he told Ms. Collins.That idea fizzled, but Ms. Henske was doing fine on her own. Mr. Doerge said that he first met her when, home from college on Christmas break in 1964, he was asked to fill in as her backing pianist for a show she was doing at La Cave, a club in Cleveland.“Judy was already famous then,” he said, “and I was in awe.”That same year, Ms. Henske toured with a young comedian named Woody Allen, with whom she had sometimes shared the bill at the Village Gate and other New York clubs. In later years she was often said to have inspired Mr. Allen’s character Annie Hall (who like Ms. Henske was from Chippewa Falls), something she was asked about so often that, she said in the 2000 interview with the Santa Cruz newspaper, it irked her a bit.“Woody used a lot of people as models for his people in his movies,” she said. “Annie Hall was an amalgam of maybe three different people. I think it was Louise Lasser, me and what’s-her-name, the movie actress.”Diane Keaton? the interviewer prompted.“Yeah, Diane Keaton.”“So,” she added, “let’s move on from Woody.”In addition to her husband, Ms. Henske, who lived in Los Angeles, is survived by a daughter from her first marriage, Kate DeLaPointe, and a granddaughter.Though Ms. Henske was best known as a performer, she also wrote or co-wrote numerous songs, many with Mr. Doerge. Their “Yellow Beach Umbrella” was covered by, among others, Bette Midler and Perry Como.Her witty shows, though, were something to savor — even when there were glitches. Mr. Doerge recalled a show they did in 2001 at Freight & Salvage, a performance spot in Berkeley, Calif.“At the last step up from the dressing room to the stage Judy tripped on her hem and fell flat on her face onto the floor while holding her banjo,” he said. The audience went silent.“She gets up and goes to the mic, pauses, and says, ‘Perfection is so lifeless,’” he recalled. “The crowd loved it, relaxed, and she had more or less won them over before we played one song.“Live, she was peerless.” More

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      Dolly Parton Voted Into Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

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      The country singer had objected to being included, but will join a class that includes Carly Simon, Duran Duran and others from across genres.Despite a last-minute plea to “respectfully bow out” of consideration for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the country singer Dolly Parton made it in anyway, joining a musically diverse array of inductees for 2022 that also includes Eminem, Lionel Richie, Carly Simon, Eurythmics, Duran Duran and Pat Benatar.The honorees — voted on by more than 1,000 artists, historians and music industry professionals — “each had a profound impact on the sound of youth culture and helped change the course of rock ’n’ roll,” said John Sykes, the chairman of the Rock Hall, in a statement.Parton, 76, had said in March that she was “extremely flattered and grateful to be nominated” but didn’t feel that she had “earned that right” to be recognized as a rock artist at the expense of others. Ballots, however, had already been sent to voters, and the hall said they would remain unchanged, noting that the organization was “not defined by any one genre” and had deep roots in country and rhythm and blues.In an interview with NPR last week, Parton said she would accept her induction after all, should it come to pass. “It was always my belief that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was for the people in rock music, and I have found out lately that it’s not necessarily that,” she said.But she added, “if they can’t go there to be recognized, where do they go? So I just felt like I would be taking away from someone that maybe deserved it, certainly more than me, because I never considered myself a rock artist.”Following years of criticism regarding diversity — less than 8 percent of inductees were women as of 2019 — the Rock Hall has made a point in recent years to expand its purview. Artists like Jay-Z, Whitney Houston and Janet Jackson have been welcomed in from the worlds of rap, R&B and pop, alongside prominent women across genres like the Go-Go’s, Carole King and Tina Turner.This year, Eminem becomes just the 10th hip-hop act to be inducted, making the cut on his first ballot. (Artists become eligible for induction 25 years after the release of their first commercial recording.)Parton, Richie, Simon and Duran Duran were also selected on their first go-round, while fresh nominees like Beck and A Tribe Called Quest, who had been eligible for more than a decade, were passed over. Simon, known for her folk-inflected pop hits like “You’re So Vain,” was a first-time nominee more than 25 years after she qualified. Benatar and Eurythmics, long eligible, had each been considered once before.Those passed over this year also included Kate Bush, Devo, Fela Kuti, MC5, New York Dolls, Rage Against the Machine and Dionne Warwick.Judas Priest was on the ballot, but will instead be inducted in the non-performer category for musical excellence, alongside the songwriting and production duo Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis. Harry Belafonte and Elizabeth Cotten will be recognized with the Early Influence Award, while the executives Allen Grubman, Jimmy Iovine and Sylvia Robinson are set to receive the Ahmet Ertegun Award, named for the longtime Atlantic Records honcho and one of the founders of the Rock Hall.The 37th annual induction ceremony will be held on Nov. 5, at Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, and will air at a later date on HBO and SiriusXM. More

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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love the Horn

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      Listen to music that shows off the golden, mellow sunshine of “the cello of the brass section.”In the past we’ve chosen the five minutes or so we would play to make our friends fall in love with classical music, piano, opera, cello, Mozart, 21st-century composers, violin, Baroque music, sopranos, Beethoven, flute, string quartets, tenors, Brahms, choral music, percussion, symphonies, Stravinsky, trumpet, Maria Callas, Bach, the organ, mezzo-sopranos, music for dance, Wagner and Renaissance music.Now we want to convince those curious friends to love the golden, mellow sunshine of the horn. We hope you find lots here to discover and enjoy; leave your favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Sarah Willis, Berlin Philharmonic hornistThe French horn is so versatile. Heroic, romantic, scary, mysterious — you name it, the horn can play that part. And it’s a sociable instrument: We love to play together. In the third movement of Richard Strauss’s Horn Concerto No. 2, the horn is a virtuosic and passionate hero, which the horns in the orchestra join at the end of the movement for a final fanfare. These last moments always lift my heart and make me proud to be a horn player.Strauss’s Horn Concerto No. 2Norbert Hauptmann, horn; Berlin Philharmonic; Herbert von Karajan, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)◆ ◆ ◆Akshaya Avril Tucker, composerGive me a long, quiet note on the horn and I feel like I’ve entered a place of timelessness. It’s an incredibly soothing, supportive sound — the best sonic cuddle buddy. In orchestration classes, I’ve heard the horn referred to as “glue”; it cushions and supports its neighbors in the orchestra like no other instrument. Jonathan Dove’s “Susanna in the Rain,” from his “Figures in the Garden,” is utter comfort. A small ensemble of woodwinds provides a gentle pitter-patter of rain, while the horn — first one, then two — soars above. When I listen on the drought-stricken West Coast to these yearning melodies, they sound like a nourishing downpour.Dove’s “Susanna in the Rain”Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; Antony Pay, conductor (Warner)◆ ◆ ◆Paquito D’Rivera, saxophonist and composerThe French horn — a rather exotic instrument in the history of jazz — has among its most creative practitioners Willie Ruff, John Graas, David Amram, Gunther Schuller, John Clark and Chris Komer; I just composed a piece for Komer and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. But we always have to mention Julius Watkins, considered by many the father of the modern jazz French horn, and a good example of his masterful work — transcribed by the Brazilian hornist-composer Victor Prado — is this interesting improvised solo on “Phantom’s Blues,” recorded with the Quincy Jones Orchestra in 1960.“Phantom’s Blues”Julius Watkins, horn; Quincy Jones Orchestra◆ ◆ ◆Franz Welser-Möst, Cleveland Orchestra conductorThe horn has this beautiful, warm, singing sound, which resembles the middle register of the human voice; that is why it is so easy to connect to. The horn is sort of the cello of the brass section. The violins, trumpet and flute are in a high register, and not many people can sing that high, while the register in which the horn plays is accessible to anybody.I chose the opening of the third movement of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, simply because people usually think of the horn as a hunting instrument. The horn here represents the crying out of the human soul, sort of lost in the ocean of an overwhelming world. In this section, the horn is an individual human voice surrounded by a crazy, dancing universe of other instruments. Mahler was a contemporary of Sigmund Freud, so his music is always about the psyche — of an individual and of humanity.Mahler’s Fifth SymphonyVienna Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)◆ ◆ ◆Zachary Woolfe, Times classical music criticBrahms’s mother died early in 1865; later that year, he wrote a trio for violin, piano and horn, an instrument he had learned as a child. The result — for which he specified the affably rustic, if difficult to control, valveless horn, rather than the newer valved variety — is by turns serene, agitated, mournful and joyful, with the horn throughout evoking walks in nature and an ineffable nostalgia.Brahms’s Horn TrioMyron Bloom, horn; Rudolf Serkin, piano; Michael Tree, violin (Sony)◆ ◆ ◆Seth Colter Walls, Times writerThe horn, with its mellow colors, doesn’t always conjure pure relaxation; it can be regal even in passages of tranquillity. The composer William Bolcom uses this simultaneously lyrical and potent quality during stretches of his Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano, created in response to Brahms’s famous trio. But in the final movement — which he has described as a “resolute march of resistance,” written in the wake of the 2016 election — Bolcom lets the instrument strut, with some raucous pressurized notes, drawing it closer to its more jazz-associated cousins in the brass section.Bolcom’s Horn TrioSteven Gross, horn; Philip Ficsor; violin; Constantine Finehouse, piano (Naxos)◆ ◆ ◆Kevin Newton, Imani Winds hornist“Ecos oníricos de la Basílica de San Marcos” was written for me by the Argentine composer José Manuel Serrano. The piece, for a soloist and prerecorded horns, transforms the sound of the horn into ghostly echoes in a cathedral, requiring the player to access a wide range of textures and microtones.For me, the horn has always been an extension of the voice. My childhood was filled with many a long car ride in which my mother would teach me to sing harmony, as well as choir rehearsals and weekend mornings at the piano working out hymns or whatever else of her songbooks I could get my hands on. When I first heard the horn, I wished that my voice could produce those sounds, and a love for the instrument was born. Its flexibility has freed me from the limitations of my own voice, and this piece is a wonderful space to explore that freedom.Serrano’s “Ecos oníricos de la Basílica de San Marcos”Kevin Newton◆ ◆ ◆Mei-Ann Chen, Chicago Sinfonietta conductorI knew Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s granddaughter, Katy Korngold Hubbard, before I knew his music. Once, driving in the rain, I had to pull over to the side of the road because I was so incredibly moved by the sublime music on the radio. I didn’t know the composer. The last movement of the mystery work — it turned out to be Korngold’s “Much Ado About Nothing” Suite — was so joyful and witty, featuring the horns prominently, that I was transported to a different world. I became a huge Korngold fan. This rarely performed work should be better known.Korngold’s “Much Ado About Nothing” SuiteOrchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg; Marc Albrecht, conductor (Pentatone)◆ ◆ ◆Bernard Labadie, Orchestra of St. Luke’s conductorDeep in the German psyche, the horn is closely associated with the forest — not only in relation to hunting but also to the romantic idea of night, moonlight and starry skies. No piece of music epitomizes this connection like Schubert’s “Nachtgesang im Walde” (“Nighttime Song in the Forest”), written for a four-part men’s choir and four horns. This highly unusual formation explains why this little masterpiece is a rare guest on concert stages. And yet what fabulous music this is, with Schubert’s unmistakable mixture of harmonic magic and deep connection with text. Never has the sound of the horn felt so simultaneously grounded and ethereal.Schubert’s “Nachtgesang im Walde”Monteverdi Choir; John Eliot Gardiner, conductor (Philips)◆ ◆ ◆Mark Almond, San Francisco Symphony hornistConductors and fellow musicians never seem to mind how loudly you can blow the horn, but they really, really care about how softly you can play; in fact, your career depends on it. As the natural harmonics of the instrument are very close together in the high register, playing pianissimo in that range requires laser focus and surgical precision. Next time you’re at the symphony, imagine the hornists as darts players, having to throw bull’s-eyes every 20 seconds for 45 minutes. Then imagine the conductor standing next to the dart board, silently urging the player to throw each dart as gently as possible, but still demanding that the bull’s-eye be hit every time.The flip side: It’s incredibly liberating to play pieces in which you can just let it rip and go for it, as loudly as (tastefully) possible, like in this exciting recording of Haydn’s “Hornsignal” Symphony, performed by the natural horn players — no valves! — of the Concentus Musicus Wien.Haydn’s “Hornsignal” SymphonyConcentus Musicus Wien; Nikolaus Harnoncourt, conductor (Warner)◆ ◆ ◆David Allen, Times writerDeep into Strauss’s last opera, “Capriccio,” comes one of the most magical moments that ever flowed from his pen. A countess has to choose between the love of a poet and a composer — between the primacy of words and music. She never quite makes a selection, but before the final scene, in which she wrestles with her fate, Strauss makes his own feelings clear. As evening falls and the moon lights the scene, a horn glows in the dusk.It’s a profoundly moving interlude, and this is a profoundly moving account, a tribute from one horn player of distinction, Alan Civil, to a colleague who was arguably the greatest of them all: Dennis Brain, the principal horn of the Philharmonia Orchestra, who was killed in a car crash in 1957, two days before the sessions for this first recording of the work.Strauss’s “Capriccio”Philharmonia Orchestra; Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor (Warner)◆ ◆ ◆ More