Music

A renowned Malian musician said when he came back to Paris on Monday from a concert tour in the United States, he opened the case to his kora and found the instrument in pieces.The musician, Ballake Sissoko, 53, blamed the Transportation Security Administration, prompting outrage among his fans on Facebook and international headlines. But the T.S.A. said on Thursday that the agency hadn’t opened the case holding the kora, a delicate long-necked harp lute.“It is most unfortunate that Mr. Sissoko’s instrument was damaged in transport,” the agency said in a statement. “However, after a thorough review of the claim, it was determined that T.S.A. did not open the instrument case, because it did not trigger an alarm when it was screened for possible explosives.”Mr. Sissoko flew from Kennedy International Airport in New York to Paris on an Air France flight on Sunday evening, after he wrapped up the two-week tour, according to his manager, Corinne Serres.When he opened the case to his kora, which had been custom made for him, Ms. Serres said, he found it destroyed.The instrument was in pieces, a photo provided by Ms. Serres shows — the neck ripped from the body, the strings yanked and the bridge taken off the leather soundboard.Inside the case, Ms. Serres said, was what appeared to be a T.S.A. advisory, written in Spanish, telling Mr. Sissoko that his case had been picked for a physical inspection to search for “prohibited items.” (Mr. Sissoko speaks French.) The notice also appeared to have tape around it. Ms. Serres said by email on Thursday that Mr. Sissoko was “heartbroken” when he saw the damaged kora.“His instrument is part of him,” Ms. Serres said. “That’s why it’s so precious.”Ms. Serres said she was “very shocked” that the T.S.A. denied damaging the kora.“It is totally ridiculous to say that the kora can have been dissembled by transport,” she said. “This kora travels worldwide and recently went to India, China, Japan, Finland.”Ms. Serres said that it was possible the kora could have been damaged in flight, but that it was highly unlikely that it could have been taken apart “without the help of some bad people touching it.”She had earlier released a statement about the incident that called the destruction “an unprovoked and sad act of aggression, a reflection of the kind of cultural ignorance and racism that is taking over in so many parts of the world and that endangers the best of musicians from Africa and elsewhere.”The statement said that “in Mali, the jihadists threaten to destroy musical instruments, cut the tongues out of singers, and to silence Mali’s great musical heritage.”But it was a United States agency that “in their own way managed to do this,” the statement said. “Would they have dared do such a thing to a white musician playing a classical instrument?”But the T.S.A. said on Thursday that officials had examined the bag tag that was affixed to the case and crosschecked it with its checked baggage screening records. They then learned that the instrument case had been screened through a scanner but had not triggered an alarm, the T.S.A. said.That “means that T.S.A. did not open the case,” according to the T.S.A. A decal was placed on the case to show it had been screened and cleared, the T.S.A. said. The case was then moved to a conveyor belt and sent to the airline baggage room so it could be loaded on the plane, according to the T.S.A. On its website, the T.S.A. explains that it screens 1.4 million checked bags daily for explosives and other dangerous items. Most bags are not physically searched by an agent, but if a bag is opened, the T.S.A. will place a notification inside saying that the bag was opened and checked. Once the screening process is finished, the airline brings the checked bags on to the flight.Mr. Sissoko had been performing with his band 3MA, a trio of musicians that also includes Driss El Maloumi, an oud player from Morocco, and Rajery, a valiha player from Madagascar, according to the statement released by Ms. Serres and Mr. Sissoko’s website.Following the process Mr. Sissoko normally takes when flying, the musician and his tour manager on Sunday night dropped off the kora at the oversized luggage desk at Kennedy Airport, where the case was scanned, Ms. Serres said by email.Nobody at the counter expressed any concerns, she said.On its site, the T.S.A. states that “musical instruments must undergo screening when transported as carry-on or in checked bags.” If an instrument requires any special instructions or handling, passengers should tell a T.S.A. agent, the agency says.Ms. Serres said the kora’s case “is tagged with fragile tags so it is obvious that the instrument should not be manipulated.” A spokesman at Air France, Arturo Diaz, said on Thursday that the airline at Kennedy Airport “confirmed that all checked luggage is given to the T.S.A. for screening immediately after it is checked in.” “After screening,” he said, “luggage is given back to to our airport team to load onto the plane.”“As a matter of policy our staff do not open checked luggage,” Mr. Diaz added. “If we have any concerns about the contents, we address them at check-in by having the customer open their luggage in front of our staff. By all indications, the damage to the instrument does seem to have occurred during the T.S.A. screening given the presence of the note.”Mr. Sissoko arrived in Paris on Monday morning and went to bed, Ms. Serres said.When he woke up, he opened his case and found the broken instrument, she said, adding that he immediately called her and sent her pictures of the destroyed kora. Ms. Serres said that despite the agency’s denials, Mr. Sissoko would press on with a formal complaint with the T.S.A.“We will go on fighting,” Ms. Serres said.Mr. Sissoko has been touring all over the world for 30 years and has never had a problem traveling with the kora, Ms. Serres said.The T.S.A. notice, in a photo provided by Ms. Serres, appeared to be a standard advisory that says locks on luggage picked for inspection may have to be forced open to screen for prohibited items.“T.S.A. sincerely regrets having to do this, however T.S.A. is not liable for damage to your locks resulting from this necessary security precaution,” the notice says. It does not say anything about what the agency’s responsibility might be toward other personal property that could be damaged during a search.On its website, the T.S.A. instructs passengers who believe their property was damaged during a screening to fill out a claim. Investigations into claims can take up to six months.“All claims are investigated thoroughly and the final decision to approve a claim rests with T.S.A.,” the agency says on its site.Millions of inspection notices have been placed in bags since the agency was established 18 years ago, the T.S.A said on Thursday.“It is very easy for someone to get ahold of one of these inspection notices,” the agency said. “Anyone could have placed the notice inside the instrument case.”The T.S.A. also added that the condition of the notice in the photo appeared to be “poor.”“T.S.A. does not affix tape to its inspection notices,” the agency said.Ms. Serres said it would cost 5,000 euros, about $5,500, to replace the kora, which was made to provide the exact sound and feel Mr. Sissoko wanted.To replace it, Mr. Sissoko will also have to travel to Mali to get a calabash, a bottle-shaped gourd that provides the body of the kora, she said. According to the statement released by Ms. Serres, even if all the parts of the kora that were dissembled remained intact, it would still take weeks to bring the instrument back to its previous state.“These kinds of custom-made koras are simply impossible to replace,” the statement said. “They are certainly not available in shops.”In a brief statement, Mr. Sissoko said that, as an African artist, he often experiences racism when he travels.“Many people don’t treat you normally and can be very arrogant,” he said in the statement. “I always try to keep calm to avoid problems.”But, he added, for those who do not experience the treatment directly, “you cannot understand how it is.” More

Our guide to the city’s best classical music and opera happening this weekend and in the week ahead.DANISH STRING QUARTET at Alice Tully Hall (Feb. 7, 7:30 p.m.; Feb. 9, 5 p.m.; Feb. 11, 7:30 p.m.; through Feb. 18). “No quartet playing today has the Danish’s way with late Beethoven,” I wrote when naming this quartet’s most recent release as one of the best recordings of 2019. These concerts will more than likely bear that assessment out not just in terms of late Beethoven, but of his early work, too. Starting a complete survey of the Beethoven quartets that spans six concerts in the space of two weeks, these three young Danes and their Norwegian cellist play the first three Op. 18 quartets on Friday, the second three on Sunday and the “Razumovsky” quartets on Tuesday.212-875-5788, chambermusicsociety.org[embedded content]SIMONE DINNERSTEIN at Miller Theater (Feb. 13, 8 p.m.). In this second concert of a three-part all-Bach series that Dinnerstein has curated, she is at the piano for the Keyboard Concerto No. 1, the Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 and an arrangement of “Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott.” She performs all that with the Baroklyn ensemble, which also plays the Orchestral Suite No. 2. 212-854-7799, millertheatre.comNEW YORK PHILHARMONIC at the Appel Room (Feb. 10, 7:30 p.m.) and David Geffen Hall (Feb. 13, 7:30 p.m.; through Feb. 18). The Philharmonic’s valuable Project 19, which has commissioned 19 women composers in celebration of the centenary of the 19th Amendment, gets fully into its stride with premieres of pieces by Nicole Lizée, Joan La Barbara and Paola Prestini appearing in a Sound ON concert on Monday, and Tania Léon’s “Stride” accompanying the Brahms Violin Concerto and the suite from Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier” in subscription concerts starting later in the coming week. Jaap van Zweden conducts those, with Janine Jansen as the soloist.212-875-5656, nyphil.org[Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead.]ORPHEUS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA at the 92nd Street Y (Feb. 9, 3 p.m.). Never mind Mendelssohn’s Octet, this concert deserves attention for its revival of the Nonet of Louise Farrenc, dating to 1849, a piece that shows the best of its remarkably fine composer, who taught at the Paris Conservatory and whose music is due for a revival. Also at the Y, Alexi Kenney performs a clever program of solo violin works by Bach and composers as diverse as Reich, Kurtag and Saariaho (Friday, 9 p.m.), and Sasha Cooke sings Schumann’s “Kerner Lieder” and “Frauenliebe und -leben” (Feb. 13, 7:30 p.m.).212-415-5500, 92y.orgSTILE ANTICO at Corpus Christi Church (Feb. 9, 4 p.m.). Appearing as part of the Music Before 1800 series, this extraordinarily thoughtful and accomplished British vocal ensemble sings music “by and for Renaissance women,” including compositions by Raffaella Aleotti, Leonora d’Este and Maddalena Casulana and works commissioned by female sovereigns such as Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth I from Tallis, Sheppard, Byrd and others.212-666-9266, mb1800.org More

Nello Santi, a conductor who was one of the most authoritative interpreters of Italian opera, especially the works of Giuseppe Verdi, and a podium favorite of singers and orchestra players, died on Thursday at his home in Zurich. He was 88. His death was confirmed by his manager, Robert Lombardo, who said Mr. Santi had been treated for a blood infection.In the podium Mr. Santi upheld a traditionalist approach that called for close adherence to the score and a gentle but firm insistence that singers avoid exaggerated flights of coloratura and prolonged showstopping high notes.At his best, he achieved great clarity from his musicians, conducting scores with insight and a deep understanding of voices. Orchestras under his direction rarely drowned out singers, even those with lighter voices.Cutting a portly figure and wielding a vigorous baton, Mr. Santi was a favorite of audiences at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where he led close to 400 performances from 1962 to 2000, overwhelmingly of operas by Puccini and Verdi. Musicians and singers referred to him affectionately as “Papa Santi” and complained that New York critics underrated him.While the critics rarely disparaged Mr. Santi outright, they could damn his performances with faint praise, using words and phrases like “traditional and serviceable,” “capable” or “always in control.” The critic Will Crutchfield of The New York Times once recalled being asked by the famed baritone Sherrill Milnes, “Are you the one who finally gave Nello Santi a good review?”Reviews of Mr. Santi improved markedly in his later appearances at the Met, as appreciation grew for his loyalty to the old ways. “Only recently,” Mr. Crutchfield wrote in 1988, “now that capable, secure and idiomatic conducting of the standard Italian repertory is no longer to be taken for granted, have some observers begun to be curious about what goes into it.”Nello Santi was born on Sept. 22, 1931, in Adria, a small town south of Venice, to Giovanni and Alfonsina (Fonso) Santi. His father was a grocer, and his mother was an elementary-school teacher with a passion for classical music. When Nello was 3, she took him to a performance of Verdi’s “Rigoletto.” Thunderstruck, he had his parents replay a recording of the opera many times on their phonograph while he waved his arms about, as if conducting the orchestra.As a child, Nello took piano lessons and learned to play the violin, viola and several wind instruments as well. He studied composition at the conservatory in Padua, and in 1951 he made his debut as conductor at Padua’s Teatro Verdi.“Naturally, it was with ‘Rigoletto,’” Mr. Santi told the Milan daily newspaper Corriere della Sera a half-century later.As a young man at the Teatro Verdi, he followed the usual apprenticeship in provincial Italy of that era.“At the beginning I did everything,” he told The Times in 1988. “I was a prompter, chorus master. I accompanied singers’ concerts. I even played the anvil onstage in “Il Trovatore” dressed as a Gypsy.”Mr. Santi married Gabrielle Faeh in Zurich in 1959. She survives him, along with their twin sons, Gian Aldo and Gian Carlo; their daughter, Rosita Santi, a soprano; a sister, Rosanna Mori; and four grandchildren.From Padua, Mr. Santi went on to conduct in West Germany, Austria, Britain, the United States and Switzerland, where he was music director of the Zurich Opera House from 1958 to 1969. He continued to conduct there for another four decades.Mr. Santi did not limit himself to Italian composers. He once claimed that Richard Wagner was one of “the cults of my life.” But he reserved his greatest affection for Verdi. He could recall the most minute details of Verdi operas, citing phrases and chords that the composer often repeated with slight variations in his many works.“I love all of Verdi,” Mr. Santi said. “But when he composed ‘Rigoletto,’ ‘Il Trovatore’ and ‘La Traviata,’ he was in a profound state of grace.”As a traditionalist, Mr. Santi identified with Arturo Toscanini’s style of conducting Italian operas, especially his approach to bel canto. Like Toscanini, he tried to strike a balance with singers, allowing them to shape phrases without taking excessive liberties. Thus, a duet from “La Traviata” conducted by Toscanini could last a minute less than the same duet in a performance led by later conductors who gave the soprano and tenor freer rein. Mr. Santi embraced the older, more restrained and less popular approach.He frequently bemoaned what he considered Italy’s diminished role in the opera world, citing a decline in music schools, especially in the provinces, and a sharp reduction in the broadcast of classical music and opera. Because Italian conductors no longer served long apprenticeships covering every aspect of opera performances, he asserted, they had become too focused on the orchestra.“Conductors today do not love song and they do not understand theater,” he said.Singers responded enthusiastically to Mr. Santi’s direction. Plácido Domingo, who recorded often with Mr. Santi and made frequent stage appearances under his direction, repeatedly praised him in interviews.Musicians hailed his virtuosity. “Nello Santi could sing any Italian opera vocal role from memory while conducting,” Les Dreyer, a retired violinist with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, wrote in a letter to The Times in 2008. “And he would astound the orchestra at rehearsals by singing any instrumental passage, from memory, with a robust tenor voice.”In Mr. Santi’s later years, critics were finally won over by his commitment to the Italian operatic tradition. Reviewing a performance of “Rigoletto” at the Met in 1984, Mr. Crutchfield hailed Mr. Santi’s feeling for the pulse and pacing of the opera, writing: “His is one of the last of that older generation of Italians who seem instinctively able to make an opera like this work. Grazie, maestro.”While Mr. Santi’s career flourished outside of Italy, one of the truest homes of Italian opera, La Scala in Milan, long shunned him, apart from a brief engagement in 1971. But even La Scala came around. He was invited back for the 2017 season to lead “La Traviata,” with Anna Netrebko in the lead role. He continued that season, and the next, with performances of Verdi’s “Nabucco,” with Leo Nucci in the title role.Mr. Santi announced several times that he would retire to his home in Riehen, a small town near Basel, Switzerland. But he would then make himself available to conduct the Basel Radio Orchestra or other ensembles.“I am retired,” he said in a 1999 interview with Corriere del Ticino. “But I work more than before.”Michael Cooper contributed reporting. More

The New York Philharmonic is essentially taking a pass on the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. Instead, the orchestra is celebrating another, more relevant anniversary in 2020: the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which brought women the right to vote. What better way to do so than to celebrate women composers?Project 19, a multiyear initiative to commission new pieces from 19 women, was inaugurated on Wednesday when Jaap van Zweden led the premiere of the Nina C. Young’s “Tread softly.”Ms. Young, 35, describes herself as a composer and sound artist. She began her life in music as a violinist, but then became an engineer before taking up composition. She reconciled the two by becoming an “engineer of sound,” as she put it from the stage before the performance. “Problem solved.”Her 14-minute piece takes its title from a line of Yeats: “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” This thought seemed appropriate to Project 19, she said in her remarks, since women often have dreams that come true only to be smothered. In “Tread softly,” she added, sounds emerge from the ether only to get “shut down.”The work begins gently, with seemingly stray plucked pitches, hushed sustained tones and fluttering figures. Steady rhythmic pulses creep in almost unnoticed at first, but take hold as waves of sounds grow in density and darkness. Fragments of phrases attempt to coalesce into melodic lines but dissipate. Eventually, this initial whirl of music does give way — less, to my ears, because it is “shut down” than because it segues into another wondrous sound world.There are intense episodes with instruments breaking into skittish bursts and pitches piling up into tart, raw harmonies. Though there is plenty of content, the manipulation of sonorities drives the music. At one point, the piece kicks into a dance episode, like a party at a rustic wedding. A curious cadenza for solo violin leads into the most tumultuous stretch, though that mood dissolves as instruments drift off, and the piece ends quizzically.“Tread softly” was a good start to the Philharmonic’s ambitious and timely project. But placing it at the opening of a program dominated by Haydn and Mozart works isolated the new piece. Surely Mr. van Zweden could have come up with other scores that similarly explore unusual sonorities.Still, the performances of the staples were very fine. Carter Brey, the Philharmonic’s principal cellist, was an excellent soloist in Haydn’s ebullient and inventive Cello Concerto No. 1 in C, playing with burnished sound, elegant phrasing and deft technique during the rippling finale.Mozart never completed his Mass in C minor, for reasons that have eluded historians. As it stands, the score lasts nearly an hour, and Mr. van Zweden drew a stirring, clear-textured performance from the Philharmonic; the impressive Concert Chorale of New York, directed by James Bagwell; and four appealing soloists: the soprano Miah Persson, the soprano Susanna Phillips (taking the place of Amanda Majeski, who was ill), the tenor Nicholas Phan and the bass-baritone Andrew Foster-Williams.Project 19 is something to celebrate. But just dropping a new piece into a standard-fare program dulled the party a bit.New York PhilharmonicThis program continues through Tuesday at David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center; 212-875-5656, nyphil.org. More

In opera, the drumbeat of time is written on — and in — the body. Vocal cords grow brittle; high notes start to quaver; low tones hollow out. Singers have to retire the roles of their youth, and eventually retire altogether.But not yet: Nine years ago, the American mezzo-soprano Susan Graham told me she hoped she had 10 more years of singing in her. Heard on Tuesday at Alice Tully Hall, and turning 60 in July, she sounds like she could easily go another decade.As it happens, the following evening Marianne Crebassa, a lively 33-year-old French mezzo, made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera, just across the street from Tully, as Cherubino in Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro.”Cherubino, a horny pageboy sung by a woman in adolescent male drag, was one of Ms. Graham’s calling cards in the 1990s. To hear a superb rising artist in the role, 24 hours after hearing Ms. Graham limn the stages of a woman’s life, was a poignant juxtaposition, but also a lovely one. The kids are all right, these performances made clear, and so are the parents.As Ms. Graham explained from the stage with the easygoing charm that also marks her singing, her program, organized by and performed with the sensitive pianist Malcolm Martineau, took Schumann and beefed him up. The eight songs of his “Frauenliebe und -leben,” describing the course of a romance and marriage, were each accompanied by thematically relevant additions from other composers, languages and periods. Little sets of songs about falling in love, about weddings, about mourning: You get the gist.The eight-chapter result was something like the stereotypical young-artist recital — which places a premium on stylistic and linguistic versatility — on steroids: Ms. Graham performed 29 songs in eight languages by 17 composers. (It should be noted, given the subject matter, that all were men.) She cast in a uniformly honeyed glow all the quick transitions from English to French, French to Spanish, German to Danish to French.Ms. Graham, as ever, walked a delicate line between worldliness and earnestness. Even the evocations of a new crush were rendered with the gently open eyes of maturity; expressions of joy and loss alike emerged from the balanced perspective of a healthy, happy middle age. Ms. Graham exuded a sense of experience, even as her sound remains fresh — its soft, silky texture still airy and smooth.She seemed comfortable in all eight languages, and crystal-clear in English, but she always brings to French the subtlest relish, so songs by Fauré, Duparc and Debussy were highlights — sensual but never heavy, serene but never dull.While Ms. Graham’s most recent runs at the Met found her voice’s quality undimmed, its power had faded a bit in the theater’s vastness. But Ms. Crebassa’s silvery shimmer projected clearly and cleanly on Wednesday.Gamine and nimble, her Cherubino was spirited without being overplayed, in a genial revival of Richard Eyre’s production that runs through Feb. 22 under the bright, vivid baton of Cornelius Meister. (Listen to the third-act wedding march, its aristocratic polish undergirded by rustic zest in the low strings: the opera’s clashing-classes plot in miniature.)The cast seemed like a well-practiced ensemble, at ease with the piece and one another. Hanna-Elisabeth Müller was a coolly sweet Susanna; Etienne Dupuis, a sturdy if often oddly benign Count Almaviva; Adam Plachetka, a blustery Count at the Met in the fall, now better cast as a vigorous Figaro. Only Anita Hartig faltered, struggling with the long lines of the Countess’s classic arias.It was a group whose youthful energy brought to mind Ms. Graham’s encore the night before: a graceful rendition of “Hello, Young Lovers” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The King and I.” In what Ms. Graham called the “ninth chapter” of her “Frauenliebe und -leben” story, the singer moved from protagonist to observer, watching a new generation experience what she did, many years before.I imagined the tune wafting across 65th Street, a song of welcome to Ms. Crebassa.Susan GrahamPerformed on Tuesday at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center.Le Nozze di FigaroThrough Feb. 22 at the Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center; 212-362-6000, metopera.org. More