Carnegie Hall

Subterms

    More stories

    • 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

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Review: Nico Muhly’s Moody Concerto for Two Pianos

      by

      In its American debut with the New York Philharmonic, “In Certain Circles,” featuring Katia and Marielle Labèque, had a freedom born from confidence.Jaap van Zweden, the New York Philharmonic’s music director, designed an atmospheric program around the American premiere of Nico Muhly’s “In Certain Circles” at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday night.A concerto for two pianos and orchestra, “In Certain Circles” was written for the sisters Katia and Marielle Labèque, who performed the world premiere in Paris last year and returned to the work on Wednesday, in a program that also featured erotically charged works by Debussy and Wagner. “In Certain Circles” is an exciting new piece — focused, phantomlike, unafraid of sentiment — from a composer who has been in the public eye, and the cross hairs of critics, since shortly after earning his master’s degree from the Juilliard School in 2004.Muhly became classical music’s darling. He worked with Philip Glass and Björk. There were profiles in the media and plenty of commissions, including the film score for “The Reader,” and a full-scale opera, all by the time he was 30 years old.That opera, “Two Boys,” had its premiere at the English National Opera in 2011, and when it arrived at the Metropolitan Opera two years later, it sounded unripe. It was moody for sure — a detective story whose unease came from efficient musical motifs and natural, if plain spoken, recitative. Still, it felt like the soundtrack to a film that wasn’t there. “Marnie,” which came to the Met in 2018, was something less — a strained sophomore effort in search of maturity.“In Certain Circles” is something more. It’s moody too, but there’s a freedom born from confidence that makes it satisfying. Here, Muhly develops musical ideas without being constrained by elements like plotting and vocal setting, as in the operas. It’s not that he’s suddenly employing the rigorous architecture of, say, a Beethoven symphony. Instead, like Debussy, he seems motivated by the sounds of the instruments themselves. They tell him where to go.The tone of “In Certain Circles” is consistent — wispy and vaguely ominous — but Muhly is able to tell a three-part story with it. The orchestration is weblike yet spare, and somehow the two pianos are muffled within it. It’s a neat sleight of hand: Muhly scores the instruments in roughly the same range and gives the orchestra strong, independent lines, creating the sense of an encroaching threat.In the first movement, “L’Enharmonique” — the name comes from Rameau — the orchestra takes an antagonistic stance toward the pianos. The brasses bray at them. The piccolos hector them like circling crows. All the while, the two pianists run and run, playing long, highly patterned stretches of 16th notes, unable to catch their breath. Then they repeat a series of rising chords that end on unstable tone clusters — a stairway to nowhere.At the end of the movement, as the orchestra finally falls away, a musical fragment from Rameau emerges from the mist in a sweetly sad, delicate moment.The Labèque sisters favor rhythmic precision and quick, sharp action — a solid way to achieve clarity in the double piano repertory — and they use dynamics rather than color to define phrases. On Wednesday, Katia Labèque, playing the Piano I part, finished phrases with a flourish of the hand and hopped up from her stool to use the force of her shoulders. Marielle, more collected, connected her notes fluidly.In the second movement, “Sarabande & Gigue,” the orchestra suddenly sympathizes with the soloists by supporting the piano parts. The flutes echo the melodic line, like an act of kindness, and the strings provide harmonic reinforcement.Named for two Baroque dances, the title is a bit of a feint: Muhly has both embraced and refused the forms. Yes, he wrote a saraband in its traditional three-quarter time, but it’s suspended, its feet hovering above the ground with a patient, forlorn, undanceable tune, played by Katia with sensitivity. The gigue, in compound time, whirls chaotically.In the last movement, “Details Emerge,” the pianos assert themselves with rumblings in the bass and contrasting flights in the keyboard’s upper reaches. The orchestra reacts: The piccolos go wild, and the percussionists clash their cymbals and clap their whips. The Rameau fragment returns in the piano, but as an imperfect recollection. The orchestra, emboldened, winds up for the kill, but the piece ends abruptly, as if the lights went out before any victor in the concerto’s battle could be determined.The evening’s other pieces — Debussy’s “Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune” and “La Mer,” and Wagner’s “Prelude and “Liebestod” from “Tristan und Isolde” — beautifully contextualized Muhly’s concerto, even if their sensuality eluded van Zweden at the podium.Both preludes were delivered by the Philharmonic players with generically sweeping strings and overly strict tempos. These pieces are about as explicit as classical music gets without a graphic-content warning. But at Carnegie Hall, they didn’t give off much steam.New York PhilharmonicPerformed Wednesday at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan. More

    • 75 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      Carnegie Hall Announces Its 2022-23 Season

      by

      The presenter is planning a return to full-scale programming for its 2022-23 season. Our critics and writers chose 15 highlights.After scaling back its current season as it grappled with disruptions brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, Carnegie Hall announced on Tuesday that it would return to full programming next season with a slate of more than 150 concerts.The 2022-23 season, which is scheduled to run from September to June, will feature the presenter’s typical variety of soloists and ensembles, but with an earnest focus on female musicians and composers.“We wanted to show that in every area of music, whether it’s jazz, classical or world music, there are truly extraordinary women who are recognized as such on the world platform,” Clive Gillinson, Carnegie’s executive and artistic director, said in an interview.The season’s lineup includes the eminent pianist Mitsuko Uchida and the singer-songwriter Rhiannon Giddens, who each will organize a series of Perspectives concerts; the flutist Claire Chase, as artist in residence; and appearances by conductors including Marin Alsop, who will lead the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra in its Carnegie debut, and Susanna Mälkki, who will lead the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, which is traveling to Carnegie for the first time in more than a half-century.The enterprising flute player Claire Chase will perform as Carnegie’s artist in residence.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesProgramming has also been inspired by the war in Ukraine. In February, the hall will host the Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine, whose performance will include Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, featuring the Ukrainian American pianist Stanislav Khristenko.“This is a turning point in history,” Gillinson said. “It’s really, really important that a dictator does not win. We felt we needed to very overtly support Ukraine.”Carnegie had originally planned to open the season with a three-concert engagement by the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra, Gillinson said. But the hall abandoned those plans after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, when Gergiev, a longtime friend and supporter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, became the target of widespread condemnation.Instead, the Philadelphia Orchestra and its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, will take the stage on opening night, Sept. 29, performing Ravel’s “La Valse”; Gabriela Lena Frank’s “Chasqui” from “Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout”; Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8; and Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1, featuring the Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov. (The Philadelphians rescheduled their own opening night to accommodate Carnegie, in one of multiple appearances at the hall next season; it’s not the first time during the war in Ukraine that Nézet-Séguin has come to the hall’s rescue.)Gillinson said that he was optimistic about audiences turning out. Attendance since the hall reopened in October has been relatively strong, around 88 percent, compared with 91 percent before the pandemic, though there have been fewer concerts over all.Among the offerings, here are 15 highlights chosen by New York Times critics and writers.The pianist Maurizio Pollini at Carnegie in 2019.Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesMaurizio Pollini, Oct. 16Pollini turned 80 this year, so take what opportunity you can to hear this most stimulating of pianists, especially in the repertoire that he has made distinctive across the six decades of his career. He plays Schumann’s “Arabeske” and the Fantasy in C, before a second half of Chopin, including the Ballade No. 4 and the Scherzo No. 1. DAVID ALLENCity of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Oct. 22While this ensemble’s outgoing music director, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, doesn’t plan to take up the podium of another orchestra any time soon, she is at least taking up the baton for this tour stop that features Elgar’s Cello Concerto, with the charismatic Sheku Kanneh-Mason; Debussy’s “La Mer”; and, most notably, the New York premiere of Thomas Adès’s “The Exterminating Angel” Symphony. JOSHUA BARONELos Angeles Philharmonic, Oct. 25-26Absent from Carnegie for more than three decades, the Philharmonic has instead been more likely to perform at Lincoln Center. Now, the orchestra will give the New York premieres of Gabriela Ortiz’s “Kauyumari” and Violin Concerto, with María Dueñas as soloist, as well as Arturo Márquez’s “Fandango for Violin and Orchestra,” featuring Anne Akiko Meyers. JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZJean Rondeau, Oct. 27This harpsichordist’s recent recording of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations is meditative, sensuous even when sprightly, and, at an hour and 45 minutes, long. The variations become worlds to lose oneself in, less taut dramas than engulfing studies in texture and sound, an effect that may well be amplified when he plays the work in the intimate Weill Recital Hall. ZACHARY WOOLFEBeatrice Rana, Oct. 28Praise be to Beatrice Rana, a sensitive, perceptive pianist who is starting to do the hard work of challenging the biases of the inherited repertoire. She will play Clara Schumann’s youthful Piano Concerto with Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Rana returns for a comparatively traditional recital of Bach, Debussy and Beethoven on April 20. ALLENThe bass-baritone Davóne Tines at Carnegie last year.Jennifer TaylorDavóne Tines, Nov. 3His voice and presence both serene yet simmering, this bass-baritone, a creative programmer as well as a gifted singer, has been touring with his reinvention of the traditional Mass, which incorporates music past and present, including works by Caroline Shaw, Bach, Margaret Bonds and Julius Eastman, and spirituals reimagined by Moses Hogan and Tyshawn Sorey. WOOLFEBerlin Philharmonic, Nov. 10-12When this eminent orchestra last appeared at Carnegie, in 2016, it played Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. Performing there for the first time under its current chief conductor, Kirill Petrenko, it brings back the Seventh, then does it again two nights later. In between is a program of Andrew Norman, Mozart and Korngold — the grand Symphony in F sharp, which Petrenko has lately championed. WOOLFECleveland Orchestra, Jan. 18America’s finest orchestra makes just a single appearance next season, but with a program that draws fascinating parallels between the two favorite composers of its music director, Franz Welser-Möst. Berg’s “Lyric Suite” weaves its way around Schubert’s darkly unfinished Symphony No. 8, before a rare performance of Schubert’s late, reflective Mass in E flat. ALLENThird Coast Percussion, Jan. 20In a collaboration with the dance organization Movement Art Is, this reliably innovative percussion quartet will continue to refresh its repertory. Already adept at works by John Cage, Steve Reich and Dev Hynes, at Carnegie the group will perform Tyondai Braxton’s “Sunny X,” Jlin’s “Perspective” and its own arrangements of selections from Philip Glass’s “Aguas da Amazonia.” SETH COLTER WALLSPhiladelphia Orchestra, Jan. 28One Rachmaninoff piano concerto is daunting. But all four of them in a single evening, and his “Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini”? That herculean task has never been attempted at Carnegie, but Yuja Wang will take it up the keyboard, with Nézet-Séguin conducting, in a program to celebrate the composer’s 150th birthday. HERNÁNDEZYannick Nézet-Séguin leading the Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie earlier this year.Chris LeeLviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine, Feb. 15Since the Russian invasion, many members of the Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine have been separated — some staying in the country, others fleeing as refugees. At Carnegie, they will be united to play Brahms’s “Tragic Overture,” the Tchaikovsky concerto with Khristenko and Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony, as part of a tour led by the Ukrainian American conductor Theodore Kuchar. HERNÁNDEZMitsuko Uchida, Feb. 24The most recent Carnegie appearances by Uchida, one of our reigning and most sensitive pianists, have been in works by Schubert and Mozart, two composers on which she built her reputation. More underrated, but no less accomplished, are her Beethoven interpretations, a sampling of which comes in a program of his cosmic final piano sonatas. BARONEEnsemble Intercontemporain, March 25This group’s music director, Matthias Pintscher, will lead Schoenberg’s Five Pieces, Op. 16, and Pintscher’s “Sonic Eclipse.” But the real succulent on offer is “Derive 2,” a grand (and long-revised) work by Pierre Boulez, the avant-gardist who founded Ensemble Intercontemporain. WALLSPhiladelphia Orchestra, March 31As in recent months, Nézet-Séguin and this ensemble — one of the three he leads, including the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, another Carnegie fixture — are virtually in residency next season. Their most intriguing program is this contrast between John Luther Adams’s climate meditation “The Vespers of the Blessed Earth,” featuring the choral group the Crossing, and Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.” WALLSClaire Chase, May 25Chase’s “Density 2036” — a multi-decade initiative to commission a new flute repertory leading to the centennial of Varèse’s “Density 21.5” — has thus far not been fare for the Carnegie crowd. But the project is moving uptown from the Kitchen, with Parts I and II on May 18, followed a week later by Part X: a world premiere by Anna Thorvaldsdottir. BARONE More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Review: Joyce DiDonat’s ‘Eden’ Comes to Carnegie Hall

      by

      The star mezzo-soprano’s new concert program seeks to restore humanity’s connection to the natural world.It’s hard to imagine what New Yorkers are supposed to do with the seeds of an eastern red cedar tree, given how narrow our window sills are, but they were slipped into the program books of Joyce DiDonato’s concert at Carnegie Hall anyway.That performance, on Saturday night, was a stop on a global tour to accompany her new album, “Eden,” which seeks to restore our connection with, in her words, “the awe-inducing majesty” of the natural world.“I’m a problem solver, a dreamer, and — yes — I am a belligerent optimist,” DiDonato, a star mezzo-soprano, writes in the album’s liner notes (which were reprinted in the program), implicitly acknowledging the project’s potential naïveté.DiDonato isn’t the only singer preoccupied with climate change. In October, the soprano Renée Fleming released “Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene,” an album with a geologically minded title but a beautifully focused program. Contrasting Romantic-era songs that exalt nature and contemporary works that feel alienated from it, she charted an unfortunate decline in humanity’s relationship with the environment through music.In “Eden,” DiDonato picks up that strain, with an attempt to return listeners to the weakened but still-welcoming arms of Mother Earth. The album’s track list, echoed in the lineup at Carnegie, teleports listeners among different eras — touching on Ives, Mahler, Handel, Cavalli and Gluck — but never really recovers its pace after a detour to a pre-Romantic age.DiDonato’s vibrato, which oscillates so quickly it seems to effervesce, is built for highly ornamented Baroque melodies. But her lively interpretations and imaginative use of straight tone broaden her palette of vocal colors and allow her to inhabit other eras. Whether her varied programming can tell a focused story is another question.On tour, DiDonato has turned “Eden” into a semi-theatrical production — directed by Marie Lambert-Le Bihan and with lighting design by John Torres — that goes some way toward unifying the material. Many of the selections were strung together without pauses, which, without opportunities for applause, made for a grippingly immediate, fitfully inspiring evening.The program began with Ives’s cosmic and mysterious “The Unanswered Question.” As smoke filled the darkened hall, the conductor Maxim Emelyanychev, bathed in light, coaxed a shivering sound from the strings of Il Pomo d’Oro. (Emelyanychev leads the group on the album as well.) DiDonato walked the perimeter of the audience, singing the trumpet’s part as a wordless incantation.Rachel Portman’s “The First Morning of the World,” a song commissioned for “Eden,” used flowing woodwinds to conjure bird song in a gorgeous evocation of humanity’s origins. As the lights went up, the delicate pleasures of Mahler’s “Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft” followed. A 17th-century sinfonia, played with quicksilver energy by the ensemble, created a bridge to the past. That’s when things got weird.DiDonato assumed the role of a terrifying angel of justice singing from Josef Myslivecek’s oratorio “Adamo ed Eva.”Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesDiDonato launched with gusto into a slight, strophic song by the Italian Baroque composer Biagio Marini. Its stepwise melody and fervent strumming was accompanied by the instrumentalists stomping their feet to the beat. Emelyanychev leaped from his seat at the harpsichord and broke out a recorder for a solo.Then DiDonato assumed the role of a terrifying angel of justice with an aria from Josef Myslivecek’s “Adamo ed Eva,” an oratorio about the biblical expulsion from Eden. As the orchestra lent Baroque jauntiness to Myslivecek’s proto-Mozartean style, DiDonato channeled the text’s threats of plagues, fire and bloodshed. Blinding red light flooded the auditorium.The concert began to lose its plot, but as that happened, DiDonato became freer to entertain. For Gluck’s “Ah! non son io che parlo,” an aria barely related to the evening’s themes, she tapped into an impressive chest voice and negotiated the aria’s leaps with full-throated relish. Teetering tantalizingly close to extremes of color, speed and volume, she drew raucous applause.After that barnburner, she lost steam. DiDonato’s voice was patchy in the long lines of Handel’s “As with rosy steps the morn,” from “Theodora.” The orchestra, seemingly overwhelmed by the stylistic pastiche, clumsily negotiated the dynamics of Mahler’s soul-cracking “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen.”During encores, DiDonato introduced young people from the educational program Salute to Music and the All-City High School Chorus for an original song, performed with passionate directness and pieced together by a music teacher in Britain from the melodies and lyrics of his students. (DiDonato’s tour has entailed working with youth choirs at each stop.) “Look how powerful it is when we make something together,” said DiDonato, who sang Handel’s enchanting “Ombra mai fù” with the children huddled around her.DiDonato has referred to “Eden” as a “wild garden.” And at Carnegie Hall it was: colorful, fecund and perhaps in need of pruning.Joyce DiDonatoPerformed at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Joyce DiDonato Wants Music to ‘Build a Paradise for Today’

      by

      The star mezzo-soprano’s album and concert program “Eden” addresses climate change by planting seeds both real and metaphorical.What are the duties of an artist toward society? As Russia invades Ukraine, as racism persists in the United States, this age-old question remains very much of the moment. And the list of issues to take a political stand on, whether by choice or suggestion, grows ever longer.The one taken up by the mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato in her latest project, an album and concert program called “Eden,” is climate change.Employing a broader repertoire than DiDonato’s typical focus on the Baroque — Wagner, Mahler and a new commission from Rachel Portman in counterpoint with Cavalli, Gluck and Handel — the program reflects on what this star singer sees as humanity’s disconnect from nature. If the result is more mystical than activist, DiDonato’s aim remains, as her liner notes say, a prompt for her listeners “to build a paradise for today.”Touring since early March and arriving at Carnegie Hall on Saturday with the period-instrument ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro under the conductor Maxim Emelyanychev, the concerts are staged by Marie Lambert-Le Bihan. At performances, plant seeds are handed out to audience members, and, as part of an educational initiative, local children’s choirs — some ongoing, others formed for the occasion — sing “Seeds of Hope,” a song collated by the teacher Mike Roberts from lyrics and melodies written last year by 11- to 13-year-old students at a school near London.In an interview, DiDonato spoke about her project and the issues it raises, picking a favorite page from Portman’s “The First Morning of the World,” which features text by Gene Scheer. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.What were the origins of this project?It emerged about five years ago from the last big project I did with Il Pomo d’Oro, “In War and Peace.” I struggled for about two years to try to reconcile how to put climate change onto the stage in a way that made people want to come and experience it. I’m essentially an optimistic person, and I think my biggest strength is to prompt people to relief and hope, which is hard to do when you’re looking at a pretty dire situation.In a naïve way, it falls under that category of a disconnect, from me to you and me to the world that I’m living in: When I look at music and the natural world; I see harmony; I see balance; I see all kinds of forces working together to create an ecosystem, to create a symphony, to create an environment where everything has the chance to thrive. So, I’ve married those two, and I’m putting it out under the invitation to say, in a really simplistic way: What seeds are you planting with your words, with your actions, with your tweets, on your balcony?You start the program by singing the trumpet part to Ives’s “The Unanswered Question.” How did you select the repertoire?We knew that it had to start in a mystical and magical way. The Ives is infinite, but you have this insistent question that keeps coming back, and you have a progressively complicated and chaotic non-answer. I just don’t know of anything that summarizes the 21st century more accurately than that.That piece was on Gene’s mind in writing the poetry for “The First Morning of the World.” His line “there is a language without question marks” is a bridge from the Ives. We’re hoping to demonstrate what it is to be fully connected to nature, which happens in Mahler’s “Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft,” certainly in Handel’s “Ombra mai fu,” but also to demonstrate that ripping apart, that complete disconnect from nature that the Myslivecek warns about. We feel deeply in the “Piante ombrose” of Cavalli a sense of desolation and despair. The answer finally comes in the Mahler and the Wagner — and the Handel.What do you admire in the music of Rachel Portman, which has predominantly been for film?She wasn’t necessarily on my radar as a composer, but her name came up from several different sources. I listened to her “Leaves and Trees,” and it was clear that she had a very personal connection to the natural world.What she gave us I wouldn’t classify as cinematic at all, but it feels perfect for trying to create the nurturing and tranquil side of nature. There’s an unease because the singer hasn’t yet learned to speak this language of nature that is in the text, but the language is present from the beginning in the flute.Rachel Portman’s ‘The First Morning of the World’EratoThere’s something comforting about that first bird sound that you hear in the morning. You’ve gone to bed reading all the headlines, and right before you pick up your phone to see the horror of the day, you hear the bird. There’s something primal in us that goes, “Well, here comes another day.”The Portman song ends with “Teach me to sing notes that bloom like a canopy of leaves,/Meant to do nothing but feel the sun.” That would seem to imply that music can’t do much in the world, but you write that the album is a “call to action.” What can your audience really do in the face of climate change?I think they can do extraordinary things, personally, but the extraordinary things are at a local level. I get completely overwhelmed if I’m trying to solve world peace or climate change. But when I do little things, and again I know this sounds so naïve, I’ve come to believe that it’s really the only way forward.Literally, the call to action in this is planting seeds. We are giving seeds to every concertgoer who comes, and if everybody takes a pot of dirt, puts them in, gives them a little bit of water, we will have planted thousands and thousands of plants across the course of this tour.The other huge part of this project is planting seeds of music in kids. I don’t know of very many more effective ways to grab kids and to empower them than choral music. That is one practical way in which this project is calling people to action.So what do you think the role of an artist should be in politics?I think some artists embrace more humanitarian aspects, and some are just called to get through the day and do the best they can — and I think all of it is OK. You can’t put one stamp on an artist and say, “Because you call yourself an artist, you’re required to do X, Y and Z now.” But you also can’t pretend that art and politics are not intertwined.I don’t think we can make a blanket statement about what artists should and shouldn’t do, but if they want to talk about politics, and they want to use their music as it has been done for centuries, then they are allowed to do that.You want to get your message out to as many people as possible, understandably, but you are touring this program on five continents. Has this project led you to question the priorities of your own industry?For sure, what has been heavy on my mind is that I want people to take care of the environment and I’m getting on a plane to travel around the world. But I don’t think it’s enough to just do a 90-minute drive-by concert for people who can afford the tickets and move on to the next. That’s why we are leaving behind a green souvenir in the hands of everybody who comes to the concert. I think even more profoundly of the effect that it’s going to have on these kids, to join a world-class artist on the stage.Of course, we’re finding more ways to travel on the ground if we can, and finding ways to do carbon offsetting. I know it’s not a perfect solution. The biggest thing is, the impact that we leave behind has to be lasting. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      She Wrote for the Piano’s Extremes: Bronfman on Ustvolskaya

      by

      Yefim Bronfman discusses Galina Ustvolskaya’s Fourth Sonata, which he will play at Carnegie Hall on Monday.Galina Ustvolskaya, a reclusive composer who lived in St. Petersburg, Russia, from her birth in 1919 to her death in 2006, has acquired a reputation for works of unearthly spiritual strength and formidable technical demands. “Your fingers literally bleed,” the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja has said of playing them.But if Ustvolskaya’s few, grim compositions are works of violent extremes, the brutally loud cluster chords that often smash their way dissonantly through them are tempered with moments of quiet, rapt tranquillity.It’s that prayerful side of a composer who wrote for God as much as for mortals that appeals to the pianist Yefim Bronfman, who performs her Sonata No. 4 (1957) alongside sonatas by Beethoven and Chopin at Carnegie Hall on Monday.Ustvolskaya insisted that her music was not susceptible to ordinary analysis, and she vowed that no influences could be traced in it; even without her efforts, it would still sound unique. After all, as the historian Simon Morrison has written, Ustvolskaya “challenged the conventions not just of art, but of our understanding of art” — writing not “for workers in obeisance to official aesthetics,” but turning “music into work.”Still, no music exists entirely outside history. Asked in an interview to choose a favorite page from the Fourth Sonata, an 11-minute piece in four brief, continuous movements, Bronfman discussed how Ustvolskaya’s work extends traditional forms, as well as its political context. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.An excerpt from the final movement of Ustvolskaya’s Fourth Sonata.SikorskiUstvolskaya’s music has only really become prominent outside Russia since around the end of the Cold War. How did you come across it?I never really knew her until seven or eight years ago, when a conductor asked me to perform her “Composition No. 2” for piano, percussion and eight double basses. Somehow the performance never happened, but having studied the score, there was something very special about it. I started looking into her other music, of which there is not very much. I spoke to Markus Hinterhäuser, who recorded all the sonatas. It’s been a fantastic experience, I have to say, very different from anything else I have ever played in my life.I didn’t find any connection to anybody, except Beethoven maybe. Everybody leads toward Beethoven in a direct way or an abstract way. Hers is an extremely abstract way. As Beethoven grew older, his sonata form got shorter and shorter. Hers relate to that. No matter how short a movement, there is always a sonata form in it. Sometimes the development section is only a few notes, but then there’s a clear indication of the recapitulation in each movement.Music usually has a life span. The music starts and ends, and then life begins anew. But a piece by Ustvolskaya — you play it, and it lingers for a long time. It’s almost like a meditation. It gives you a very peaceful feeling playing it.Do you see it as religious or at least spiritual music in that sense?Not religious, but very spiritual. She grew up in Soviet times, and religion was prohibited. A lot of people who leaned toward religion experienced it in a spiritual way, not in a biblical way. That’s how I feel about Ustvolskaya.So you hear her personal introversion in her music as well?Definitely, I hear total loneliness. She’s talking to the universe and she doesn’t want to be involved with anything else. I don’t feel there is any gravity to the music; most music has an epicenter, but hers is in slow motion, out there. That is not to say there are no explosions; there are very violent explosions. But they are usually followed by very serene and soft sounds.I have to say that she’s also a very Russian composer in the sense that one always hears bells. Bells and choruses, human voices, like in the second movement of this sonata, it begins with bells, and there is a chorale. The third movement is all bells.The third movementMarkus Hinterhäuser, piano (Col Legno)Some of it sounds quite close to chant.Right. She’s maybe more connected to medieval music, but with a very modern voice. You know, it’s very hard to talk about this music because one needs to hear it and experience it.She herself said that she didn’t want us to analyze her music, that it should just be felt.Correct, and she didn’t want to appear influenced by anybody. Even Shostakovich, her teacher, she rejected. She felt a regret for how much he tried to influence her, and she tried to throw it all out. I don’t think there is even one inch of his music in hers. She is completely unrelated to anything before her or after her, which is quite fascinating.So much of Shostakovich’s work was shaped by his political context. Do you hear similar struggles in her later work?Shostakovich suffered a lot from being persecuted by the authorities. He wrote a lot of Soviet music to please the authorities, and so did she. But music like the sonatas has nothing to do with politics; it’s totally apolitical music.It’s interesting that she was able to create that space, given the traditional Western clichés about composers working in Soviet society.I’m sure she experienced the same as other composers who wanted their voice to be heard, and were not allowed. A lot of composers at this time were much more creative writing between the notes than in the notes. The message was always hidden. A little bit like Schumann, in a different time and for different reasons.Ustvolskaya wrote six piano sonatas over four decades. Why perform this one?I picked it because it’s not so violent. Especially the last movement, it has those cluster chords but most of it is very peaceful and has a very beautiful, meditative quality that I think is needed for this program, after the intensity of Beethoven’s “Appassionata.”Is there a page of the score that you particularly enjoy or that is revealing of her?I like the middle section of the second movement, where it’s “pppp”: It’s almost like human voices coming from another world or from space, in the middle of this violent piece. I also love the murmurs of the trills in the last movement; you have those long notes against them — for me that’s very special.The opening of the fourth movementMarkus Hinterhäuser, piano (Col Legno)Those trills, to my ears, suggest the first movement of Schubert’s last sonata.It definitely has an echo of that. They go through the whole movement, those trills, then the cluster chords with sforzandos, then you have a pianissimo progression. It has a fascinating sonority and imagination.Ustvolskaya was fastidious about how people performed her music. She reacted strongly against people being particularly expressive with it. And she’s asking an enormous amount of you. How possible is it to distinguish between a “ppp” and a “pppp,” a “fff” and a “ffff”?Dynamics are relative, in all music. “Piano” means “piano” only in context with what comes before and follows after. The same thing with her. If it’s “ppp” it’s one sound, but if it’s “pppp” it has to be softer; there’s no magic to it. You find an instrument on which you can really differentiate between dynamics, that’s all we can do.Every composer I have worked with is different. Stravinsky said just play the notes, play what’s written and don’t exaggerate. I imagine she belonged to the same school; she wanted you to execute exactly what is on the page. The music speaks for itself. You don’t need to work hard to make it sound the way it should.Will you play her other sonatas in concert?I really want to. Why not? She’s a good composer, I think a great composer. She has a strong message, however abstract it is, and rare, but there’s something there that has a magnetism to it. More