Carnegie Hall

Subterms

    More stories

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Two Gems of June: Premieres at Carnegie Hall and Harlem School of the Arts

      by

      The festival circuit may be getting underway but the city offers fine fare with programs of work by Sarah Kirkland Snider and Adegoke Steve Colson.This month, you might feel the momentum in classical music swinging to the domestic festival circuit, with splashy premieres and revivals coming courtesy of Spoleto, Ojai and the Opera Theater of St. Louis. But New York isn’t finished yet, either.Two premieres here over the weekend — one loudly trumpeted and one that enjoyed comparatively little fanfare — were newsworthy and enjoyable on their own terms, while also serving as reminders not to neglect the city’s June calendar.Along with the New York Philharmonic’s presentations Friday of Barber’s Violin Concerto — featuring the star violinist Hilary Hahn — and Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, the audience at Carnegie Hall heard the premiere of Sarah Kirkland Snider’s 14-minute “Forward Into Light.”The composer Sarah Kirkland Snider, center, with the conductor Jaap van Zweden and the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall on Friday, for the premiere of her work “Forward Into Light.”Chris LeeCommissioned by the orchestra as part of its “Project 19” focus on female composers, “Forward Into Light” was inspired by the suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. With music that was by turns fragile and ferocious — and that also boasted touches of mordant wit — “Light” ably communicated its story about new ideas struggling for space (and for longevity). Spare, ascending motives in the harp anchored some early sections. When the orchestra responded and added in new, consonant melody in turn, there was a sense of material developing through collaboration. Elsewhere, a brief song for clarinet spurred material for other winds. Subsequent interplay, with Minimalist pulses in the violins offset by glissandi in the cellos and basses, recalled the swooning call-and-response arrangements of past Snider works, like “Circe and the Hanged Man,” from her 2010 song cycle “Penelope.”The typically hard-charging Philharmonic music director Jaap van Zweden allowed these moments to breathe. Yet he also relished hairpin turns during which the music throttled into tutti writing. Late in the piece, he managed Snider’s quick dynamic shifts with a Hollywood sound-mixer’s feel for drama.Overall, “Forward” was packed but not overstuffed with historical references, both abstract and concrete. Sometimes Snider’s Sturm und Drang suggested early feminist boldness, or corresponding public sphere controversy. However, a prerecorded sample of Dame Ethel Smyth’s “March of the Women,” late in the piece, didn’t register as strongly as the rest of the music. But even in the densest moments, you could discern Snider’s feel for wry commentary. A few walloping brass passages seemed to offer knowing nods and the subtlest of eye-rolls — as though the characters who inspired this music were aware that the unshakable strengths of the suffrage movement could outlast early, noisy objections.The violinist Hilary Hahn performing Barber’s Violin Concerto on Friday, with van Zweden conducting.Chris LeeAnd so, just as in her ecologically oriented “Mass for the Endangered,” the composer’s intellectual concerns dovetailed smoothly with the lush, inviting score. (The Death of Classical concert series presents Snider’s Mass, Monday through Thursday this week at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.)It was the beginning of a fine night for the Philharmonic. In partnership with Hahn, the orchestra gave Barber’s violin concerto some thrillingly rough-hewed edges, cutting against its public reputation as lighter fare. And though van Zweden’s over-articulated grimness in the middle sections of Mahler’s symphony came at the expense of the composer’s more colorful twists, the conductor’s handling of the outer movements delivered undeniable galvanic thrills.While the Carnegie crowd received Hahn’s appearance with an ovation befitting her global-star status — and responded to the culmination of the Mahler with fever-pitch satisfaction — they also greeted the new piece with enthusiasm. It all made for a richly satisfying close to the orchestra’s challenging year outside its own auditorium.The next time we hear them indoors, it will be at the newly refurbished, redesigned Geffen Hall, inside Lincoln Center. What they’ll play there, over the next few years, is beginning to come into focus. And as the Philharmonic’s administrators continue to deepen their engagement with music by Black composers, they might have looked uptown on Saturday for a few more ideas.Adegoke Steve Colson’s “Suite Harlem,” a six-movement work, was dedicated to the Harlem School of the Arts and its founder, the soprano Dorothy Maynor.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesKendall McDowell and Jenelle Henry, performed a dance accompaniment in the third movement of Adegoke Steve Colson’s work.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesThe bassist Luke Stewart was part of the octet performing “Suite Harlem.” Each soloist had a chance to shine throughout the piece.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesOn the closing night of the second annual A Train Festival at the Harlem School of the Arts, the pianist and composer Adegoke Steve Colson — a veteran of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (or A.A.C.M.) — presented a 75-minute premiere of a six-movement work. Titled “Suite Harlem,” it was dedicated to the school, and presented in its 120-seat black box theater. Like Snider’s “Forward,” this work was also dedicated to a female pathbreaker: the soprano Dorothy Maynor, who founded this school in the 1960s.Scored for an octet of piano, vocalist, trumpet, bass clarinet, violin, vibraphone, bass and drums, Colson’s music occasionally felt like a thrilling update of the soul jazz tradition — particularly when the composer’s piano took a subtly swinging yet harmonically unpredictable background role. At other points the work had all the high-energy markers of the 1970s avant-garde. And thanks to some stirring playing from the violinist Marlene Rice, the music also proposed a lineage with some of Ellington’s chamber-adjacent music with Ray Nance on violin (as in “Dance No. 3” from the Liberian Suite).During “Searching Harlem,” the first movement of this premiere, the composer’s wife and longtime collaborator and vocalist Iqua Colson gave affecting voice to Maynor’s intentions in founding this institution. She brought crisp intonation to some mournful melodic lines that described the historical dearth of spaces for the neighborhood’s children “to sing or dance or act a part.” And later in the suite, during the explosive, uptempo penultimate movement, “Resilience,” she channeled the fiery sense of artistic expression made possible by the school, with an inventive solo of scat singing. It wasn’t supper-club-style scat, either — but an ingeniously shaped solo, concluding with some darting phrases that earned one of the night’s biggest rounds of applause. It brought to mind the couple’s long and fruitful collaboration, going back to 1980s releases like “Triumph!” and “No Reservation.”The interdisciplinary nature of the school — and of the A.A.C.M. itself — was brought into enjoyable focus thanks to contributions by students, during the third movement (“Our Beautiful Children”). Two dancers, Kendall McDowell and Jenelle Henry, provided fluid accompaniment to funk-inflected rhythms of the percussionist Pheeroan akLaff and the bassist Luke Stewart.Adegoke Steve Colson shined especially bright in the suite’s final half.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesEvery soloist had a chance to shine, throughout the piece. But Adegoke Steve Colson’s piano playing in the suite’s final half was a cut above this generally high standard: densely avant-garde and joyously singing in equal measure. This solo aspect of his art has been only rarely heard on recordings — like “Tones for” (2015) — so it was a treat to hear him in this manner, in the suite.The music of the Montclair, N.J.-based Colson, who is now 72, is not as well known as that of his A.A.C.M. contemporaries like Henry Threadgill. But there’s still time to give him more airings in New York. “Suite Harlem” was the climactic result of his time as an artist in residence at the school in Harlem. Given his pedagogical bent, perhaps Carnegie could commission a chamber work from him, for its young professional group Ensemble Connect. And a revival of his large-scale opus dedicated to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “ … as in a Cultural Reminiscence …” might also fit in Carnegie’s Zankel Hall space.For now, this weekend’s performances were reminder enough of the veteran’s long contribution to music, and of Snider’s emergent career. The back-to-back relationship of their premieres on the calendar was a reminder, too, of the city’s aggregate cultural riches. Even if relatively few concert halls are flexible enough to combine these complementary artistic communities under a single roof, sagacious concertgoers can still plot their own course through New York’s venues, in any season. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Carnegie Hall Musters Stars for a Benefit Concert for Ukraine

      by

      Headliners from the fields of classical music, jazz and Broadway joined forces to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine and show solidarity with its victims.It was not a typical chorus on the stage of Carnegie Hall: the acclaimed pianist Evgeny Kissin reading from a sheet of paper as he sang Leonard Bernstein’s “Somewhere” with a gathering that included the actor Richard Gere, the mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard and the Broadway star Adrienne Warren.But there they were — four members of the full company that took part in Monday night’s benefit concert in support of Ukraine, an array of star power singing onstage as members of the Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York joined from the aisles.“Hold my hand and I’ll take you there,” they sang. “Somehow. Someday. Somewhere.”It was that kind of night at Carnegie Hall, as artists from many disciplines and the institution itself came together to speak out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine and show solidarity with its victims.The stars sang Leonard Bernstein’s “Somewhere” for the finale.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesThe Ukrainian Chorus Dumka, an amateur ensemble that specializes in secular and sacred music from Ukraine, opened the concert with the Ukrainian national anthem. Diplomats foreign and domestic offered thanks and spoke about the power of the arts in times of crisis. In between songs, the mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves paused and choked up briefly while speaking about her husband, a doctor, who was in attendance just a day after returning from Ukraine, where he had been helping provide medical care.And there was a message from Ukraine’s first lady.“Music heals and inspires, music boosts hope and confidence,” the first lady, Olena Zelenska, said in a prerecorded video message that played early in the program. “Today’s event is a reminder that Ukraine is an integral part of world culture.”“Music on this stage is a separate important victory,” she added. “It is a sign of unity of our cultures against the chaos and grief of war. And all of you who are in this hall today are our effective and true allies in this cultural struggle.”The hall displayed the blue and yellow colors of Ukraine’s flag.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesThe evening included more than a dozen artists and ensembles. There were performances by the jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, the violinist Midori, the singer Michael Feinstein, the soprano Angel Blue and the Broadway singer Jessica Vosk. Mr. Kissin appeared toward the end of the program — first with the violinist Itzhak Perlman to play John Williams’s Theme from “Schindler’s List,” and then to play Chopin’s Scherzo No. 2 alone.In an interview with The New York Times before the concert, Mr. Kissin said that playing in the benefit felt “so natural for me that I can’t even call it a decision.”“Unfortunately, I am too old and not qualified to take a gun and go to fight in the Ukraine, so I’m doing everything I can: sending money and taking part in concerts for the Ukraine,” he said. “As a Jew who was born and grew up in Russia, I, having belonged to the greatest victims of the Russian xenophobia, I have always felt solidarity with all its other victims, including the Ukrainians.”How the Ukraine War Is Affecting the Cultural WorldCard 1 of 6Gavriel Heine. More

    • 100 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Review: Handel’s ‘Serse,’ With Yuks and Exquisite Playing

      by

      The English Concert’s performance at Carnegie Hall showed off the ensemble’s elastic responsiveness.If you eat up Baroque shtick, as I do, the English Concert’s presentation of Handel’s “Serse” at Carnegie Hall on Sunday was probably right up your alley. Those with more rarefied taste were likely satisfied too, as the conductor Harry Bicket and his ensemble of early-music players offered up a surfeit of exquisite music-making.The English Concert’s annual Handel series — this performance was the first since a shining “Semele” in 2019 — gives New Yorkers the chance to hear Baroque opera and oratorios performed by period instrumentalists of a high caliber. A certain magic occurs when Bicket gives the down beat: The players unleash gleaming rays of sound from the Carnegie stage.The primary differences between the English Concert and a modern ensemble like the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, which Bicket has also conducted, are its transparent texture and alert responsiveness. The English Concert can slow the tempo or shave a few decibels off the volume from one bar to the next. There’s elasticity in the way the ensemble’s sound expands and contracts, reacting to fluctuations in the intensity of the characters’ feelings and enlivening music built predominantly from strings and continuo.Short ariettas and ariosos keep “Serse,” a comic love story, moving along. It’s peopled by serious historical characters — apocrypha be damned — and draws its humor from their unlikely humanization. Serse, the king, leverages his position to come between his brother, Arsamene, and Romilda — much to the delight of Romilda’s sister, Atalanta, who has designs on her beloved. In the process, Serse forsakes his betrothed, Amastre, who spends much of the opera fulminating while dressed as a man.At Carnegie, the jokes started early. Lucy Crowe’s Romilda made a surprise entrance by popping up from a seat in the viola section. Daniela Mack’s Amastre proudly brandished a disguise that consisted chiefly of wearing sunglasses. Mary Bevan’s Atalanta, an incorrigible flirt, made a pass at Bicket and then at someone in the front row. Twice. And there were more conductor shenanigans, a genre mainstay of recent vintage: Bicket interrupted a tense moment in the drama to deliver a most unwelcome letter. The audience loved it.The show’s star was undoubtedly Crowe, who tuned the color of her soprano to the music at hand. She summoned lovely, pastel tone and lambent high notes for “Nè men con l’ombre” and turned the brief but crucial duet “L’amerete?” into a fully realized scene. Clean attacks, silky legato and enchanting trills are at her disposal. If her refreshing impetuousness introduced a little roughness into her sound, it hardly mattered: She is a Handel singer to be heard.The expressive opportunities Handel gives singers constrained rather than liberated some of the other performers. The mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, who released a stirring album of contemporary songs, “enargeia,” last year, was largely humorless as Serse, a self-involved autocrat who nevertheless must plunge into romantic fancies and explosions of temper. When the music aligned with D’Angelo’s stern portrayal, as in the fiery “Se bramate d’amar, chi vi sdegna,” it gave off sparks. Her voice sharpened into focus as she propelled the aria with biting sound and fleet runs.As Amastre, Mack’s dark, ruddy mezzo-soprano shone best against spare orchestrations. Paula Murrihy sang with polish but had difficulty finding the gravitas for Arsamene’s largely unadorned music. Mary Bevan relied on cute bits instead of phrasing to convey Atalanta’s coquettishness but connected in the character’s wounded moments. William Dazeley’s Elviro, a study in buffoonery, sneaked genuinely impressive high notes into his comic-relief responsibilities. As Ariodate, Neal Davies showed off a trim bass-baritone with some pep in it.With three hours of glorious music, the English Concert nearly banished memories of the three years it took for the ensemble to return. Next up: Handel’s “Solomon” — in only 10 months’ time.The English ConcertPerformed on Sunday at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Review: ‘Falling Out of Time’ Gives Song to a Father’s Grief

      by

      Osvaldo Golijov’s evening-length work, based on the book by David Grossman about his son, had its New York premiere at Zankel Hall.I didn’t know whether I was the right person to review the New York premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s song cycle “Falling Out of Time” at Zankel Hall on Friday.The work is based on the Israeli writer David Grossman’s book of the same name — part novel, play and epic poem — which expresses the grief after his son, Uri, died as a soldier in his country’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon, my parents’ homeland, which has been rocked for half a century by violent factionalism, including a civil war that took two of my father’s sisters.At Zankel, members of the Silkroad Ensemble gave voice to a father’s cry across a dozen or so songs in 80 minutes. The use of folk idioms — Sephardic, Middle Eastern and something like the blues — made the performance eerily intimate and age-old, like a community’s spirit had been cracked open. The piece provides a wide embrace, one that wrapped around me, too.Grossman’s book does not name a village or a country, nor does it assign heroes and villains in a geopolitical conflict. What it does do is describe people united in mourning. Golijov dedicated his “tone poem in voices” to the Parents’ Circle-Families Forum, an organization that brings together bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families.It makes sense, then, that Golijov built the sound world of “Falling” out of the Silkroad Ensemble’s melting pot of instruments. There’s a classical string quartet; a jazz bass; a kamancheh, a Persian bowed instrument; a pipa, a Chinese lute, which takes the place a zither might otherwise occupy in such music; a modular synthesizer; a drum kit; a one-man brass section; and three folk vocalists who approximate Near Eastern modes without actually using microtones.In the book, the Walking Man departs his home and leaves behind his wife to go to “there,” a place where he might reunite with his son. He walks ever-widening circles, first around his yard, then his house and finally his village. It’s an allegory of grief: You can trace it in different ways, but never escape it.The song cycle’s storytelling is far more opaque: Golijov set the most searing lines with little context. At Zankel, Mary Frank’s projections, like Chagall murals drained of color, guided the audience in concrete, moving ways.Golijov’s score unfolds deliberately, making a bane of patience: Grief will give you as much time as you need, and then it will give you some more. The strings played with broad tone. During “In Procession,” the percussionist Shane Shanahan drummed with unrushed rhythms, as the townspeople trailed up a hillside behind the Walking Man, who had become their Pied Piper of sorrow. In “Walking,” the bassist Shawn Conley plucked out a walking bass line with a dragging gait, and Dan Brantigan’s trumpet moaned like someone who was pushing through exhaustion. The synthesizer, played by Jeremy Flower, whistled an alien-sounding descant high above the other instruments — a portal to another dimension.“Falling” is so closely tied to the strengths of the Silkroad, which commissioned the piece, that it’s hard to imagine the trumpet part without Brantigan’s intense feeling and astonishing control. Or the kamancheh without Kayhan Kalhor’s liquid bowing. Or the pipa without Wu Man’s delicacy.Unfortunately, the same is true of the Walking Man, originally written for the Chinese vocalist Wu Tong’s raw expressivity and range, with notes so high they could make an operatic tenor’s eyes water. Yoni Rechter, a singer and musician with a long career in Israel, took the part at Zankel. He had a comforting, paternal presence, not unlike Tony Bennett, but vocally, he was tentative, imprecise and sometimes inaudible, even after taking melodies down an octave. Biella Da Costa, as the Woman, sang with deep, earth-rattling feeling. Nora Fischer narrated the show knowingly as the half-man, half-desk Centaur.“Falling” unraveled toward the end of the night, with improvisatory blues that stood out awkwardly from the piece’s musical fabric. Fischer’s choice to speak the haunting lullaby that closes the cycle so memorably on its 2020 premiere recording diminished its impact.In Jessica Cohen’s translation of the original Hebrew, Grossman makes a parent’s incomprehensible anguish legible: “It breaks my heart, my son, to think … that I have found the words.” At Zankel, Golijov and the Silkroad found the music — speaking for all of us who have had enough of sorrow.Falling Out of TimePerformed on Friday at Zankel Hall, Manhattan. More

    • 113 Shares109 Views

      in Music

      Review: Igor Levit Arrives at the New York Philharmonic

      by

      Levit, one of the world’s eminent pianists, appeared with the orchestra at Carnegie Hall eight years after making his New York debut.Eight years ago, a young pianist made his New York debut with a brazen program of Beethoven’s final sonatas.Baby-faced and wearing a bow tie, Igor Levit, then 27, took the stage at the Park Avenue Armory’s intimate Board of Officers Room and proved that age is no impediment in interpreting some of the wisest and most challenging music in the keyboard repertory. “A major new pianist has arrived,” the critic Anthony Tommasini wrote of that night.Since then, each return engagement has had the air of an important event: Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations with the artist Marina Abramovic at the Armory’s drill hall, recitals with premieres at Carnegie Hall that started in its chamber-size Zankel space before moving to its main auditorium.Levit, who lives in Berlin, hasn’t brought his most madcap programming to the city — his essential, standard-setting take on Ronald Stevenson’s “Passacaglia on DSCH” or his turn in Ferruccio Busoni’s extravagant Piano Concerto — but he has graduated from newcomer to New York fixture.One important debut remained, and it came on Friday: his first appearance with the New York Philharmonic.Now 35, more scruffy than smooth and trading his bow tie for a casual black shirt, he joined the orchestra at Carnegie in Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1. It was one of those evenings — agonizingly, just one performance — that left you wondering whether the Philharmonic had found an artist to keep on speed dial for future seasons.Holding his own against the orchestra’s characteristic muscularity, Levit offered counterpoint in an expressive touch, an instinctual sense of shape and a gift for navigating the nuances of a piece that keeps one foot in the Classical era and the other in the Romanticism of its time.Like Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20, also in D minor, the Brahms begins with a long orchestral introduction before the soloist’s softly singing entrance — passion turning into a plea. The Philharmonic, led by Jaap van Zweden, its music director, sounded more aggressive than ardent, and crisp where another ensemble might have been grand.Van Zweden’s reading didn’t necessarily register as problematic until it was brought into relief by Levit’s arrival, which achieved more tension with less force. His solos were similar to sonatas in their intimacy and breadth of expression (a sensibility that reached its height with his encore, a sonorous yet serene “Nun Komm’ der Heiden Heiland,” transcribed by Busoni from Bach). At the keyboard he was capable of conjuring not only thunder, particularly in the climax of the first movement, but also the troubling calm that can precede it and, as in the Adagio, something like the gentle parting of clouds that follows.Where soloist and orchestra most aligned was in the Rondo finale; Levit stated the first theme briskly, precisely, and the Philharmonic responded in kind. More here than elsewhere, van Zweden allowed the score to speak for itself, to build naturally toward its joyous D major coda. The piano part wraps up several measures before the end, but Levit’s skill and stage presence had been well established by then — and the audience reacted, the moment he moved to bow, with a swift standing ovation.The Philharmonic would have its moment, too, after intermission, in Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra. And if this work activates instruments like lights on a switchboard, then there was not a dull bulb on Friday. With brasses clear and heroic; winds eloquent and full of personality; and strings speaking as a single unit, this was an ensemble in excellent form. In the fourth movement “Intermezzo interrotto,” especially, the players found a sensitivity absent in the Brahms: lush in its folk-like melody, animated in the nightmarishly parodic interruption and, in the return of the folk tune, movingly soft, with Dvorakian wistfulness.As he did in Brahms’s Rondo, van Zweden led the Bartok Finale with a restraint that, after simply getting through the virtuosity of the breakneck pace and fugal writing, made way for an organic accumulation toward a lingeringly resonant final chord. It was a glimpse of an approach he doesn’t take often — but that would be welcome, like any appearance by Levit, with the Philharmonic going forward.New York PhilharmonicPerformed on Friday at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Music

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

      by

      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

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      A Sister and Brother Choose Repertoire by Feeling and Listening

      by

      The young British phenoms Isata and Sheku Kanneh-Mason are performing a duo recital of cello sonatas, including by Shostakovich and Frank Bridge, at Carnegie Hall.Are Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason those rarest of things: young superstars who might actually live up to their hype?It certainly appears that way. The pair are two of seven British brothers and sisters, all musicians, who shot to fame when Sheku, a cellist, won the BBC Young Musician Award in 2016. Sheku’s exposure, in particular, has been extravagant since his star turn in the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in 2018. But listen to more than the breathless reporting of their streaming numbers and you find musicians who, while still in the early stages of their careers, already have serious, distinctive things to say.Sheku, 23, made his New York Philharmonic debut in November, playing Dvorak’s Cello Concerto, a performance that revealed him to be a “charismatic protagonist and a generous collaborator,” as Joshua Barone put it in The New York Times. Isata, 25 and a pianist, has recorded two outstanding solo albums, one filled with works by Clara Schumann, the other cleverly moving between composers including Samuel Barber, Amy Beach, George Gershwin and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.After an acclaimed appearance together at Weill Recital Hall in December 2019, they are returning for a duo recital at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday, part of a long, busy tour that continues in Boston and Atlanta before a European leg.Speaking from Kansas City, Mo., they talked about their program of cello sonatas by Frank Bridge, Britten, Shostakovich and either Khachaturian or Beethoven, depending on the stop. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.You each have your own concerns as artists, so how do you go about compiling a program when you play together on a tour like this?SHEKU The main criteria is music that we’ve heard or want to discover, that we enjoy and maybe have something to say with, and we want to spend time working on and perform many, many times. Also it’s always interesting to pick repertoire that perhaps is new to some of the audiences we perform for. The Bridge Sonata is an example: It’s music that I really love and think is special, and has been new to a lot of audiences.ISATA Sometimes when we present pieces that aren’t so well known, you have to go through the difficulty of getting presenters to accept them and trust that the audiences will like them. We’ve found on this tour that the audiences like these pieces; they really respond to the music. That just shows that all good music can be communicated, whether it’s something popular or not.Sheku, what appeals to you about Frank Bridge’s sonata, which is a rarity compared even to the Britten and Shostakovich?SHEKU It’s an incredibly beautiful and at times heartbreaking piece of music. The sonata was split in terms of when it was composed, the first movement from before World War I and the second from toward the end of the war. Bridge was certainly affected by what happened, you can hear that. The first movement ends quite peacefully, and then the second starts in a completely different world. It’s like a lament, with some dark, harsh moments as well. It ends with the first movement’s theme, and when it does it’s quite like the Elgar Cello Concerto, it’s nostalgic, almost desperate. Although it ends on a nice major chord, it doesn’t feel resolved. It’s a really fascinating piece.Did you intend the works to speak to each other, to draw connections?SHEKU The program that we constructed with Khachaturian and Shostakovich, the Bridge and Britten, there are very clear connections between the pieces: Britten and Bridge having the student-teacher relationship, Britten and Shostakovich …ISATA Through Rostropovich.SHEKU Exactly. Those connections are very strong. When I discovered the Khachaturian Sonata, it was because I was listening to an album that has Rostropovich performing the Shostakovich with Shostakovich, and the second half of the album is Rostropovich playing the Khachaturian with Khachaturian.And the Beethoven is there because some presenters think he is easier to promote than Khachaturian?SHEKU It’s great music as well, I get it.ISATA It is great music, and we were playing it before anyway. But yeah, it was originally because it’s more accessible than the Khachaturian.Are these works that you have lived with for a long time?ISATA The Bridge and the Britten we first played about a year ago. The Shostakovich we played a couple of movements of during childhood — actually we played the whole thing when we were about 18. We put it away for a few years and then came back to it.The Shostakovich was written in 1934, after the premiere of “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” but before his political denunciation in 1936. How would you describe the sonata?SHEKU He wrote it during a period of separation from his wife, but I don’t think the piece is about that necessarily. It has quite Classical elements in terms of the form of the whole sonata, the style of each movement, how the phrases are constructed, but harmonically, rhythmically and the colors he chooses to use are very distinctive of Shostakovich. The third movement is where he pours all of his heart and sorrow and soul. The outer movements are quite playful and quirky. He had a good sense of humor.This is Isata Kanneh-Mason’s favorite page in the Shostakovich Cello Sonata, from the final movement.SikorskiDo you have a favorite page in the score?ISATA I actually could pick one! It would be in the fourth movement, about six pages before the end. The music dies down, there’s this moment of silence — and then the piano explodes with these semiquavers, with an E flat minor chord in the left hand. It’s just so Shostakovich to have such a dramatic mood change. When I was younger this passage always terrified me, because I was like, Oh, I’m going to mess up the semiquavers, but now, after many years of practicing, I’m usually just excited to shock the audience with this outburst.A favorite passage from Shostakovich’s Cello SonataMstislav Rostropovich, cello; Dmitri Shostakovich, piano (Warner)You’ve both shown an interest in expanding the diversity of the music your audiences hear, whether Clara Schumann or music rooted in spirituals, but that’s not been the case with your Carnegie dates together. Is there scope for doing more of that in your chamber music programs, or is it harder in some areas than in others?ISATA There is great repertoire in the chamber music world of female composers, of Black composers, but that will come to us naturally, the way any piece of music does — through listening and through feeling compelled to play them, rather than ticking boxes.SHEKU What is potentially a shame is that a lot of the pressure to perform repertoire by female composers is placed on women, and a lot of the pressure to perform music by Black composers is placed on Black musicians. You don’t often see a white performer performing music by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, for example. So us just being Black performers is, I don’t know, enough of a difference. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Carnegie Hall Will Host Concert in Support of Ukraine

      by

      Carnegie Hall said on Tuesday that it would host a concert in support of Ukraine later this month, to show solidarity with the Ukrainian people, express opposition to the Russian invasion and raise relief funds.The benefit, “Concert for Ukraine,” is to take place on May 23 at 8 p.m., and will feature more than a dozen artists and ensembles, including the Russian-born pianist Evgeny Kissin, the violinist Itzhak Perlman, the jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant and the singer Michael Feinstein.The Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York, an amateur ensemble that specializes in secular and sacred music from Ukraine, will also perform.“Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it has been heartbreaking to witness the devastation that has been wrought there over the last two months,” Clive Gillinson, Carnegie’s executive and artistic director, said in a statement. “In this time of crisis, it is important to remember that there are active ways that we can all play a part in helping those who are suffering and under attack.”Several benefits have been held by New York arts groups in support of Ukraine since the start of the invasion. In March, the Metropolitan Opera staged a concert featuring Ukraine’s national anthem and a piece by the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov, among others.Carnegie’s leaders have used the hall’s platform to defend Ukraine. Last week, in announcing its 2022-23 season, the hall said it would host the Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine in February. The ensemble will play Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, featuring the Ukrainian American pianist Stanislav Khristenko, Brahms’s “Tragic Overture” and Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony, as part of a tour led by the Ukrainian American conductor Theodore Kuchar.“This is a turning point in history,” Gillinson said in announcing the season. “It’s really, really important that a dictator does not win. We felt we needed to very overtly support Ukraine.”Carnegie was among the first cultural institutions to fire artists with ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia after his order to invade Ukraine. In February, the hall canceled appearances by the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, a longtime supporter of Putin, and the Russian pianist Denis Matsuev, who also has ties to Putin.At the same time, Gillinson has warned that arts groups should not discriminate against Russian performers on the basis of nationality and should be careful to avoid penalizing performers who are reluctant to publicize their views on the war.The benefit will feature a number of opera stars, including the soprano Angel Blue and the mezzo-sopranos Denyce Graves and Isabel Leonard; the violinist Midori; the mandolinist Chris Thile; the Broadway singers Jessica Vosk and Adrienne Warren; and musicians from Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, a group of young artists.Carnegie said proceeds would go to Direct Relief, a humanitarian aid group that supports relief efforts in Ukraine. More