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      Review: Leif Ove Andsnes Adds to Carnegie Hall History

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      The pianist Leif Ove Andsnes brought Dvorak’s sprawling 1889 rarity to New York with committed playing and interpretive wisdom.“Probably few pianists will have sufficient courage to play them all in succession,” Antonin Dvorak predicted about the 13 sections of his sprawling, nearly hourlong “Poetic Tone Pictures.” But, he added, “only in this way can the listener obtain a proper notion of what I intended, for this time I am not just an absolute composer but also a poet.”He was correct; since it was written in 1889, “Poetic Tone Pictures” has been taken up by so few pianists, it didn’t arrive at Carnegie Hall until Tuesday evening, as the dreamily kaleidoscopic second half of a recital by Leif Ove Andsnes.It has been a week of firsts at Carnegie. On Saturday, Yuja Wang accomplished the sensationally unheard-of — at the hall, if not in the world — by muscling through Rachmaninoff’s four piano concertos and his “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” in a marathon with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Tuesday’s recital was another impressive milestone, but, in Andsnes fashion, a more modest one.His performance of the Dvorak — measured in appearance but interpretively varied, played with thorough commitment and characteristic wisdom — had the qualities of a standard-setting account. Even if “Poetic Tone Pictures” doesn’t return to Carnegie any time soon, Andsnes made a compelling argument for why it should: how, despite its unpianistic moments and longueurs, it is, in its entirety, a touching display of awe at life itself, told with a folk tune or a naïve melody, a solemn march or a sentimental dance.The work’s expansiveness was a contrast to the recital’s first half, which was thematically focused, with a trajectory from reticence to unambiguous passion in a clear but gentle gesture toward the war in Ukraine. Andsnes fashioned something like a suite from four pieces played straight through, beginning with Alexander Vustin’s “Lamento,” from 1974, and drawing from over 200 years of classical music history.Vustin, a Russian composer who is thought to have died of complications from Covid-19 early in the pandemic, straddled tonality and the avant-garde fashions of post-World War II music. In “Lamento,” for example, Andsnes’s left hand faintly beat chords of shifting harmonies, while his right one, more angular and unpredictable, entered with a trill before letting out atonal flourishes and chirping interjections — but never for long, like fervent ideas held back from full expression.By the end, all that remains are the chords, at a whisper, which on Tuesday led naturally into the quiet, pained opening of Janacek’s sonata “1.X.1905, ‘From the Street,’” written in memory of a 20-year-old Czech worker who was killed — pointlessly, Janacek believed — by a German soldier during a political demonstration. Here, it was as if the sentiment of “Lamento” had surfaced in mournful lyricism and waves of rage.Janacek destroyed the sonata’s third movement, tearing it out of the score and throwing it into a stove the day it premiered in 1906, but Andsnes programmed a fitting coda in a 2005 bagatelle by Valentin Silvestrov, Ukraine’s pre-eminent composer. Like many Silvestrov pieces, this one was a touch too pretty, even in Andsnes’s unforced reading, but after the Janacek, its insistent serenity came off as a plea for beauty, if not for peace.That could have sufficed for the recital’s first half. If there was a misstep on Tuesday, it was in following the bagatelle with Beethoven’s “Pathétique” Sonata, which might have provided an impassioned climax had it not been performed with such a level head. Instead, it prolonged a point that had already been made.If anything, the slowly accumulating final chord of the bagatelle could have set up the softly arpeggiated one at the start of “Twilight Way,” the first of the “Poetic Tone Pictures.” (Hardly representational, Dvorak’s character pieces would be better served by a more literal translation from their Czech title, “Poetic Moods.”) From there, Andsnes was a masterly shepherd of this score, never losing sight of its sometimes obscured line and maintaining control of its agonizingly tricky articulations to bring out the reverent dignity of “In the Old Castle”; the sweet, I-could-have-danced-all-night shadow of a melody in “Furiant”; and the shards of light cutting through a chorale in “On the Holy Mountain.”At Carnegie, you could understand, even appreciate, Dvorak’s pride in what he had created with these humble observations of Czech life. “It is an ominous number,” he wrote to a friend of the 13 movements, “but there were just as many Moravian duets and they, after all, managed to wander quite a way through the world! Perhaps they will do so again.” Over 130 years later, they have.Leif Ove AndsnesPerformed on Tuesday at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan. More

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      Review: Kronos Quartet Offers a Creative Snapshot of a Global Pandemic

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      A diverse group of composers presented nine new and recent works at Carnegie Hall on Friday, ranging from exuberant joyfulness to existential questioning.No one is ever going to say that Kronos Quartet is satisfied with the string quartet status quo. This group, founded nearly 50 years ago by violinist David Harrington, has, in its malleable virtuosity, become a wellspring for hundreds of new music commissions. Some of those have become iconic pieces of repertoire; others have provided real-time snapshots of creative collaborations. True to form, this Kronos program at Zankel Hall featured nine new and recent works, nearly all written during the past three years. It offered a wide palette of sonic ideas and creative visions, though some were more fully formed than others.Many of the works on the Zankel program were brief but transporting. The Benin-born composer and singer Angélique Kidjo’s “YanYanKliYan Senamido #2,” arranged by Jacob Garchik, provided an easefully exuberant start to the evening, with interlocked melodies and rhythms playing call-and-response. The Iranian composer Aftab Darvishi’s “Daughters of Sol” was a profoundly meditative study on shade and color, with each layer unfolding slowly into another. The Armenian-American composer Mary Kouyoumdjian’s “I Haven’t the Words” was a restless, questioning susurration precipitated by the tumults of 2020, including the pandemic lockdowns and George Floyd’s murder.Many of the works on the Zankel program were brief but transporting. Jennifer TaylorThe movement-based interdisciplinary artist Eiko Otake entered Zankel for the world premiere of her “eyes closed” with the regality of a one-woman procession, carrying a clutch of large plastic sheets. She distributed them to Harrington, violinist John Sherba and violist Hank Dutt. They became her fellow dancers, twisting and fluttering the sheets into three-dimensional shapes. The conceit was spectacularly imaginative: the sheets had enough form to become both dynamic sculptures and, in their murmured crinkling, significant percussive accompaniment for occasional wails from Sunny Yang’s cello. (The elegiac visual effect was not unlike the plastic bag scene from the film “American Beauty.”)Some works didn’t cohere quite as completely. Mazz Swift’s “She Is a Story, Herself” included several exciting moments, such as flitting small melodic ideas that subsided into a graceful chorale, but the piece overall did not feel fully conceptualized. Canadian composer Nicole Lizée’s “Zonelyhearts,” a lengthy homage to “The Twilight Zone,” tacked wildly between willful wackiness — including using Pop Rocks (yes, the classic 1970s candy) as a form of percussion, amplified with the performers’ open mouths nestled up to microphones — and existential musings on censorship and surveillance.While the stage setup provided a real sense of intimacy and communal gathering, it was also, at times, hard to see what was going on.Jennifer TaylorThe quartet played in Zankel Hall’s temporarily reconfigured, in-the-round seating arrangement. While this setup provided a real sense of intimacy and communal gathering, it also meant that it was hard for a large portion of the audience, myself included, to see three composer/guest musicians who performed their own works alongside Kronos. Instead, we saw only their backs. I overheard nearby concertgoers lamenting that they couldn’t really view such instruments as Soo Yeon Lyuh’s haegeum, a hoarsely voiced, two-stringed and bowed Korean instrument used in her sweetly nostalgic piece “Yessori (Sound from the Past),” or the one-stringed dan bau, the Vietnamese zither played by the virtuoso Van-Anh Vo in her pandemic-era piece “Adrift,” in which the musicians circle around each other melodically, grounded by a walking bass line plucked out by the cello. Nor could we fully appreciate the facial expressions and hand gestures of Peni Candra Rini, the composer and singer from the East Java province of Indonesia who appeared with the quartet in her wistful piece “Maduswara,” also arranged by Garchik.With zero fanfare, this Kronos program included music by eight female composers and one who is nonbinary; many are people of color. (In 2023, such a program would still be lamentably rare at many venues. Carnegie Hall had pledged to give a particular limelight to female performers and composers this season.) What Harrington did note proudly from the stage is that Kidjo, Candra Rini, Darvishi and Lyuh’s pieces were works created for Kronos’s engaging and inspired 50 for the Future commissioning project, which has put 50 recent compositions in the hands of young and emerging ensembles without cost online.This concert also marked the final New York City Kronos Quartet appearance for the cellist Sunny Yang, who has been part of the ensemble for the past decade. (Next month, the group will welcome Paul Wiancko in that chair.) As an encore, the group played Laurie Anderson’s “Flow”; in this context, her short, tender work felt like a benediction.Kronos QuartetPerformed on Friday at Zankel Hall, Manhattan. More

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      Review: Yuja Wang Sweeps Through a Rachmaninoff Marathon

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      It was a momentous occasion as Wang played all five of Rachmaninoff’s works for piano and orchestra at Carnegie Hall for one show only.Yes, Yuja Wang did an encore.After playing, with electric mastery, all four of Rachmaninoff’s dizzyingly difficult piano concertos and his “Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini” on Saturday — the kind of feat for which the phrase “once in a lifetime” was invented — she would have been forgiven for accepting a sold-out Carnegie Hall’s standing ovation, letting those two and a half hours of music speak for themselves, and heading home for a bubble bath.But this is a superstar artist as famous for what comes after her written programs as during them. At Carnegie in 2018, she responded to waves of applause with seven encores. Appearing with the New York Philharmonic a few weeks ago, she returned to the keyboard no fewer than three times.So on Saturday, the audience hushed as Wang, after all she’d already done with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, sat back down at the piano and played the “Dance of the Blessed Spirits” from Gluck’s “Orfeo ed Euridice.” It had the same freshness and tender lucidity that, in her hands, had lay beneath even Rachmaninoff’s densest, most ferocious fireworks.She didn’t seem to have broken a sweat — neither on her face nor in her music-making, which had been calmly dazzling all the way through the final flourish of the Third Concerto at the program’s end.To these scores’ vast demands she brought both clarity and poetry. She played with heft but not bombast, sentiment but not schmaltz. Her touch can certainly be firm, but not a single note was harsh or overly heavy; her prevailing style is sprightly, which is why the concert didn’t feel like eating five slices of chocolate cake in a row. In the 18th variation of the “Rhapsody,” the work’s aching climax, she began demurely and dreamily before adding muscle. But when the orchestra joined in, a point at which many pianists begin to pound, she refused to hammer.She didn’t give the sense that she was pacing herself, either, over this very long stretch. With five breaks — two pauses, two full intermissions and one long, impromptu stop spurred by a medical emergency in the audience that interrupted the Second Concerto, the opener, just after the final movement had begun — the concert lasted about four and a half hours.Wang took on her marathon with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra.Chris LeeThe program was flanked by the Second and Third concertos, touchstones of the repertory for the past century, and also included the youthful First; the changeable, big-band-inflected Fourth; and the playfully kaleidoscopic “Rhapsody.” The composition and revision of these five pieces extended almost from the beginning to the end of Rachmaninoff’s career, from the early 1890s to the early 1940s. (He was born 150 years ago this April.) But all of them share his unmistakable stamp: the sumptuous soulfulness, the soaring expansions, the restless rhythmic shifts and, of course, the alternation of fierce energy and intimate reflection in the piano.Wang is nimble at that alternation, with power and accuracy in fast fingerwork and fortissimo chords — and, just as important, patience and elegance in cooler moments. Her pillowy chords at the close of the Second Concerto’s middle movement floated quietly into place, and she was shadowy but luminous before that piece’s ending romp.Before the final plunge near the end of the Third Concerto, the piano takes one last, brief inward look. Wang shaped this passage with exquisite detail: the first two chords gentle, the next suddenly louder and surprisingly tough — tougher than she’d sounded in solo moments like this during the whole concert — before the rest of the phrase ebbed into mist. This handful of measures painted a whole situation and personality: vulnerable, strong, searching but not lost. It was as memorable as the blazing runs and octaves that followed.The program’s first block, the Second and First concertos, might have involved shaking out some jitters over the momentousness of the occasion. Whatever the reason, there was a sense of audibly finding the right gear among Nézet-Séguin and this orchestra — which has a historical claim to Rachmaninoff, having premiered the Fourth Concerto and the “Rhapsody” before eventually recording all five of these pieces with him as the soloist.The Second Concerto’s opening movement was unsettled on Saturday, and the balances seemed off: The strings, less rich than turgid, swamped the winds and often Wang. Rubato stretched the line, but everyone wasn’t always stretching in the same direction. Wind solos felt excessively manicured, to the point of preciousness.But things gradually settled in. Apocalyptic storm clouds moodily gathered underneath the piano line in the first movement of the Fourth Concerto. And by the “Rhapsody,” which followed the Fourth, the ensemble had taken on the ideal Rachmaninoff sound: glittering and grand.The Philadelphians were practically feline in the iridescent orchestration of the grim Dies Irae’s appearance in the “Rhapsody.” A shivering hush in the first movement of the Third Concerto was like a snow in which Wang made soft footsteps with the palest chords. In the second movement, the winds at the start sounded as flexible and natural as they had all day, and the orchestra now seemed to sweep Wang’s lines upward rather than smothering her in the race to the final measures.That culminating dash had the easy sparkle of Wang’s best work. The concert also showed off, perhaps better than ever before, another defining feature of her performances: flamboyant clothes.A lot of them. She wore, along with her typical very high heels, a different dress for each of the five pieces, with skintight fits and shimmering fabric in red, ivory, green and silver — and, most immortal, a magenta minidress for the “Rhapsody” paired with sparkling periwinkle leg warmers. (Alas, there was no costume change for the encore. Next time!)With the controversy that greeted Wang’s attire choices 10 or 15 years ago now thankfully muted, we can concentrate on the joyfulness of those choices, which on Saturday were apt partners for these fundamentally joyful works. Virtuosity on this level, in material this ravishing, is elevating to witness — which is why, even after so many hours, I was left at the end feeling an exhilarated lightness. Like many others I saw, I drifted up the aisle and onto the street unable to stop smiling.Yuja Wang and the Philadelphia OrchestraPerformed on Saturday at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan. More

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      ‘The Great Czech Piano Cycle’ Arrives at Carnegie Hall

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      The pianist Leif Ove Andsnes is appearing at Carnegie with Dvorak’s “Poetic Tone Pictures,” a rarity being performed there for the first time.Carnegie Hall might have hosted the premiere of Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony in 1893, but it’s not every day, 130 years later, that a major work by that Czech composer is heard there for the first time.Still less, a solo piano cycle that lasts almost an hour. That’s what the unerringly sophisticated Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes will offer on Tuesday, in a recital anchored by Dvorak’s “Poetic Tone Pictures,” thirteen character pieces, written in 1889, that Andsnes recently recorded for Sony.Andsnes has known the work since he was a boy; his father had one of its few recordings in his collection. But he came to study it properly only in the time afforded by the pandemic.“Most of my colleagues won’t even know that Dvorak wrote this wonderful cycle for piano,” Andsnes, 52, said in an interview. “There is such a strange reputation around his music because he wasn’t a pianist, and people think that he didn’t write very well for the instrument.”But, Andsnes added: “He uses the piano in a very colorful way, in a very versatile way, every piece has new textures, new techniques. For me, this cycle really stands as the great Czech piano cycle.”In Dvorak’s piano writing, Andsnes said, “the imagination, the richness of melodic and harmonic invention and characterization is so wonderful, and so unique.”Aubrey Trinnaman for The New York TimesTuesday’s concert will be Andsnes’s first solo recital at Carnegie Hall since 2015. Clive Gillinson, the hall’s executive and artistic director, said that the lapse was a matter of bad luck — injury, the pandemic — but also, more tellingly, that it spoke to the breadth of interests that makes Andsnes special.“We’ll say we’d love to have you back, and he’ll come back with an idea of collaborating with others, rather than just doing a piano recital,” Gillinson said. When Andsnes has appeared at the hall, it’s been in Brahms’s Piano Quartets, the Grieg concerto with the Boston Symphony and a “Rite of Spring” as a duo with Marc-André Hamelin.Andsnes’s latest solo recital is a case study in sensitive programming. Czech nationality connects Dvorak to Janacek, whose early 20th-century sonata, “1.X.1905,” commemorates a murdered political protester. That work’s relevance to demonstrations today, particularly over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, prompted Andsnes to surround it with a “Lamento” by Alexander Vustin, a Russian who was little known outside his country and died early in the pandemic, and a bagatelle by Valentin Silvestrov, whose music has come to represent Ukrainian resistance. Beethoven rounds out the program, because, as Andsnes put it, “Beethoven always seems to have a message.”In the interview, Andsnes discussed the “Poetic Tone Pictures” and more of Tuesday’s program. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.The standard view of Dvorak’s piano music, and especially his concerto, is that it is poorly written because he wasn’t a virtuoso himself. Could we say instead that he wrote pretty well for someone who didn’t play to a high standard?Absolutely. Sometimes when you’re not playing the instrument you might come up with solutions that are new, and unheard-of. I remember Christian Tetzlaff said a few years ago that, you know, who were the composers who wrote the groundbreaking new violin concertos? They were all pianists: Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Bartok. Nobody could imagine these shifts and sounds on the violin, and they didn’t know its limitations.I think Dvorak wrote wonderfully for the piano, most of the time. It’s not as comfortably written as Chopin or Schumann or Debussy, but there’s a lot of music like that. The imagination, the richness of melodic and harmonic invention and characterization is so wonderful, and so unique.Dvorak’s “Poetic Tone Pictures” will have its first Carnegie performance at Andsnes’s recital.Aubrey Trinnaman for The New York TimesDid Dvorak intend the pieces to be played as a cycle?I found this quote from him. He wrote to a friend after finishing these pieces that he’s tried to be a poet, à la Schumann, but that it doesn’t sound like Schumann. And then he says, I hope that someone will have the courage to play all the pieces continuously, because only by doing that could one really understand his intentions.That was extremely interesting, because we’re talking about an hour of music here. If he thought about it as a cycle, that’s a very ambitious undertaking, and a much bigger cycle than any that were known at the time. Clara Schumann would always select pieces from her husband’s music, rarely playing “Kreisleriana” as one, or “Carnaval” as one. Sure enough, one gets into a state of mind and it seems to work out well — the contrasts between the pieces, and this wonderful farewell, “On the Holy Mountain,” which is such a benediction. It’s a real journey.Listening to your recording, I wondered whether the music’s fate has not just been about preconceptions about the writing, but the fact that an hourlong cycle is tricky to program.Even the single pieces are not known. I played these pieces in Prague in November, and I met the daughter of Rudolf Firkusny, the great Czech pianist. She said, “Maybe I can remember that my father played the third piece a couple of times as an encore,” but she didn’t know the music. Can you imagine? Firkusny played so much Czech music, and was famous for playing the Piano Concerto.Does the cycle have a narrative to it, or is it more a series of tableaux along the lines of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”?More like that, maybe a picture of Czech life. What I love about the cycle is, you have very spiritual pieces, the mystery of “The Old Castle” and “Twilight Way,” and on the other hand you have a piece called “Toying.” Another piece is called “Tittle-Tattle.” It’s everyday life, which you also have in “Pictures at an Exhibition,” or even in late Beethoven.Do you have a favorite piece among the 13?I love them all in very different ways, but there is one piece, the ninth, called “Serenade.” It’s such a great example of Dvorak’s real strengths. It begins as such a trivial piece, it has this very simple melody, serenading a loved one, with a guitar accompaniment. There’s almost no harmony in the beginning, and you wonder, is this really it?It isn’t, of course, because he suddenly changes the harmonies and it becomes so much richer. It gets to a middle section which is a sort of slow siciliano, which has a feeling of prayer, or a really beautiful love song, the most tender one can imagine. You just wonder how he went there, with the same melodic material. For me, he has such an ability to develop a very simple idea into a real jewel.Dvorak always suffers a bit in comparison with Brahms, because they were contemporaries and admired each other. Brahms has this obvious counterpoint and resistance in the music, we always feel that every voice is so rich. Dvorak doesn’t have that, and one can feel that the music is a little bit too easy to swallow. It depends on the performer to bring out all these subtleties.Has it become more important for you to reflect the world in your playing?It became quite special with this program. If one can find a relevant conversation with the music that we do and what is going on with the world, it’s wonderful, but I wouldn’t want to always look for something. It can be fabricated.The Janacek was speaking to me about now. Like so many, I felt affected by what’s going on, also being in this part of the world. As Norwegians we are a neighboring country to Russia, it really has affected so many of us everywhere; of course in the United States, too, but maybe even more in this part of the world.And in grim times, we often turn to Beethoven.Yes, so often there is a feeling of going through struggle, or fight in Beethoven’s music, trying to find solutions, or answers, or victory — somehow.If the “Poetic Tone Pictures” are a cycle, Andsnes said, “that’s a very ambitious undertaking, and a much bigger cycle than any that were known at the time.”Aubrey Trinnaman for The New York Times More

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      Yuja Wang, Daredevil Pianist, Takes on a Musical Everest

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      Known for dazzling virtuosity, Wang faces a new challenge in a three-and-a-half-hour Rachmaninoff marathon at Carnegie Hall.PHILADELPHIA — The star pianist Yuja Wang, fresh out of rehearsal on Tuesday with the Philadelphia Orchestra, threw her arms into the air and let out a nervous laugh.“We survived,” she said inside a dressing room stocked with dark chocolate, granola bars, a bear-shaped bottle of honey and a bag of lemons.Wang, 35, was a few days from one of the most herculean concerts of her career: a three-and-a-half-hour marathon of Rachmaninoff’s four piano concertos and “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” at Carnegie Hall on Saturday, a virtually unheard-of undertaking. She was excited but also a bit anxious as she imagined what was coming — the rushed rehearsals, the mammoth program and playing before an audience that will include some of her closest friends and mentors.“I have no idea what the hell I’m doing,” she said. “I’m also having the same feeling as everyone else: Let’s see where this kamikaze run is going to go. I can’t even control it, so I’m just going to go with the flow.”Wang has made a career out of dazzling displays of virtuosity, including in the works she will perform this weekend. But taking on these Rachmaninoff pieces together — more than 400 pages of music, including some of the most vexing piano passages in the repertory — poses a new test.To prepare, Wang has reined in aspects of her famously flamboyant lifestyle, cutting back on drinking and partying so she can get eight hours of sleep a night. She has largely avoided intense solo practice in recent days, spending an hour or two a day on lighter fare like Johann Strauss waltzes. And she has tried to inhabit Rachmaninoff’s world, setting aside time to reflect on the love, loneliness and hope in his art.“All of it is imbued in his language,” she said. “You just play his music, and it just comes out.”Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s music director, who is leading the Carnegie concert, likened the effort to climbing Mount Everest. (Olympic-style medals, emblazoned with grand pianos, will be handed out to Wang, Nézet-Séguin and the players at the conclusion of Saturday’s marathon.)“It’s insane for everyone,” he said. “It’s possible only when people know each other so well. And that’s the case between Yuja and me and this orchestra.”“I have no idea what the hell I’m doing,” Wang said of her Rachmaninoff marathon. “I’m also having the same feeling as everyone else: Let’s see where this kamikaze run is going to go.”Jingyu Lin for The New York TimesNézet-Séguin recalled thinking, “OK, that’s exactly the person made for that music” when Wang performed Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto with the orchestra in 2013, one of their early collaborations. He described her as the “ideal Rachmaninoff pianist,” saying she had honed a powerful yet airy style.“With her there is never, never, ever a hint of a harsh or hard sound,” he said. “It’s always beautiful, it’s always phrased, it’s always very free.” (Nézet-Séguin will also conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra in a series of Rachmaninoff performances with Wang at the ensemble’s home to celebrate the composer’s 150th birthday.)Wang, who was born in China, has long felt a connection to Rachmaninoff’s music. As a child, she was drawn to the lyricism of his preludes for piano, even as she followed a strict conservatory regimen of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.It was not until she enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, at 15, that she began intensely studying Rachmaninoff’s works, including his piano concertos and the “Rhapsody.” She was drawn to the “noble and pure” sound of the composer’s own recordings, she said, and to the vulnerability of his music.“It’s like reading Russian literature,” she said. “It’s really enjoyable, even though it’s long, because it’s very loquacious.”The pianist and educator Gary Graffman, who taught Wang at Curtis, said it was quickly apparent that she intuitively understood the composer’s style. Her technical mastery of the pieces, which demand breakneck finger work and stunts like keyboard-sweeping glissandos, was exceptional, he said. But it was the sensitivity of her interpretations that awed him.“She ate it up,” he said. “She’s undaunted by everything.”After her graduation from Curtis, in 2008, she quickly became one of classical music’s most in-demand stars. She earned praise from critics for her fiery interpretations of works by Russians like Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev. And she was celebrated by audiences for her virtuoso takes on well-known pieces, including the Rondo alla Turca from Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 11.She also attracted attention for her vivid sartorial choices, performing war horses in skintight dresses and Jimmy Choo heels. And her love of encores captivated the public; at a recital in London last year, she performed 10. (A video of one favorite, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee,” has garnered more than 8.3 million views on YouTube.)During the early days of the pandemic, Wang took a break from piano, spending time watching Netflix, taking walks in Central Park and learning to master household tasks that she, as a prodigy, had long neglected, like cooking and laundry.But she returned to the stage in May 2021 with Rachmaninoff, performing his Piano Concerto No. 2 in London with the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, a longtime friend and mentor.“Imagine,” she said of the experience, “that was like, ‘Oh, OK, I see the power of music!’”As cultural life sprang back, Wang began thinking about new challenges. She was eager to create an experience that would test the attention span of audiences in the TikTok era. She recalled listening to Wagner’s “Ring” as a student at Curtis for hours on end and walking away with new admiration for “a past human being’s work and their effort and what they’re trying to express.”Saturday’s concert, she said, is “going to be a stamina test for the audience as well.”The Rachmaninoff marathon also had a virtuosic appeal for Wang, an inveterate thrill-seeker who has learned to Jet Ski and dabbled in cryotherapy. She said that performing the works in one go gave her “lots of ego”: “It’s like, Yes, I can play them!” She added that she would like to perform the program again, perhaps in Los Angeles or China. (She recently spread out the concertos over multiple programs with the Orlando Philharmonic, and will do the same, adding the “Rhapsody,” with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in February.)Thomas said that Wang sometimes asked composer friends to revise piano works written for her — including ones by him — so that they were more demanding. He likened her to a racehorse.“She wants to run; she wants to show everything she can do,” he said. “And at the same time, she’s a very, very respectful and curious musical intelligence.”No artist has ever played all five of these Rachmaninoff works in a single concert at Carnegie, which is marketing the performance as a “once-in-a-lifetime” experience. Rachmaninoff, who long admired the Philadelphia Orchestra, performed the first three of his piano concertos with the ensemble under Eugene Ormandy there in 1939. Vladimir Ashkenazy played all four concertos on four consecutive nights with the London Symphony Orchestra and the conductor Daniel Barenboim at the hall in 1968.Clive Gillinson, Carnegie’s executive and artistic director, said few artists had the stamina, focus, intensity and emotional engagement to pull off such a feat.“There have been occasions when artists do marathons and you feel it’s about showing off,” he said. “This 100 percent is not. That is not who Yuja is.”During rehearsals this week in Philadelphia, Wang seemed confident even as she fretted about the difficulty of sounding fresh in pieces that are well known. She said that at the height of her mastery of a piece, the music emerges so naturally that she feels as if she had composed it.And she reminisced about the energy she had in her 20s, when she said she could stay out late drinking and still perform at 11 the next morning. But now, she added, she feels a more profound connection with the music, especially since last year, when she began dating the conductor Klaus Mäkelä. (She recently took him to meet Graffman, her teacher, who offered his approval.)“When the love part is going well,” she said, “this music has a deeper meaning than just a release of emotions.”As Nézet-Séguin worked to lighten the sound of the orchestra in the “Rhapsody” to match Wang’s tone, she flipped through the score on an iPad and ran her fingers silently over the keys, practicing thorny passages.At the end of the rehearsal, he stopped to speak with her.“You’re my hero,” Nézet-Séguin said, embracing her. Wang smiled and laughed, and then turned back to the score. More

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      Review: A Young Pianist Finds His Way to Carnegie Hall

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      Mao Fujita’s playing had a prettiness all its own, but he didn’t connect profoundly with all the composers on his largely safe program.The 24-year-old pianist Mao Fujita made his Carnegie Hall debut on Wednesday, shuffling onto the stage of Stern Auditorium, his demeanor unassuming and his back slightly hunched. When his fingers touched the keys, though, waves of airy filigree, beautifully formed and finished, emerged in almost uninterrupted streams for his two-hour solo recital.Having released a recording of Mozart’s complete piano sonatas in the fall, Fujita began his recital with two pieces by that composer. Fujita’s genteel statement of the theme in the Nine Variations on a Minuet by J.P. Duport gave over quickly to rippling runs that would have felt too fast if not for his pearly tone. That exuberance carried over into Mozart’s Sonata in D Major, K. 311, and even at such speed, the music had buoyancy, like a kite held aloft in a breeze.Fujita’s playing, gossamer without sacrificing the sturdy consonance of Mozart’s style, has a prettiness all its own. He plays through the ends of phrases, bringing them to a fine point with exquisitely shaped diminuendos, and maintains a clear yet shimmery tone.Comparing the sonata with Fujita’s recorded version, I missed the cleanly delineated treatment of Mozart’s contrapuntal writing, which Fujita approached on the album with Bach-like clarity and independence of line. At Carnegie, Fujita’s left-hand parts sometimes sounded smeared — perhaps because their subtlety didn’t read in the hall — and there was a presentational quality to his playing, as though he were offering it to the public for judgment.At times, Fujita didn’t connect profoundly with the composers on this largely safe program. Even in the most stylistically attuned hands, Liszt’s Ballade No. 2 in B Minor risks coming across as overwrought, and Fujita’s traversals of the keyboard sounded superficial rather than splashy. In Brahms’s Theme and Variations in D Minor, dedicated to Clara Schumann, for whom he pined, Fujita gestured at the piece’s muscularity by firmly articulating its chords, but the performance lacked depth of sound — and the sense of a body leaning into the keyboard to unburden an emotional weight. Still, placid passages in both pieces glinted.Fujita didn’t linger over the harmonies of Clara Schumann’s Three Romances, Op. 21, instead using them to propel himself forward, and something clicked in the last movement, a glimmering Agitato that he colored in shades of twilight. After laying down the final G minor chord with touching delicacy, he immediately jumped into a piece in the same key, Robert Schumann’s Second Piano Sonata.Playing at furious speed, angsty and furtive, the melody peeking in and out view, Fujita seemed transformed. Where some pianists use the right-hand octaves to crown the motion of the first movement, Fujita dispatched them efficiently, as if they too were caught in the swirl of Schumann’s wildness. The audience clapped excitedly after the movement, either inspired by its feeling or thinking they were applauding the end of Clara’s Romances.In his criticism and music, Schumann sometimes wrote in the style of two distinct personalities that he named Florestan and Eusebius, and Fujita handled the pendulum swings between them — spiraling tempestuousness on the one hand, starry serenity on the other — with purposefulness and direction in the final movement.The pieces by the Schumanns would have been the recital’s highlight were it not for Fujita’s first encore, the opening Allegro from Mozart’s infectious “Sonata Facile.” Here, Fujita outdid his recording of this music and also the Mozart earlier in the program, trading the piece’s usual extroversion for beguiling interiority, with cheeky ornaments of his own devising and an approach to melody that, admittedly, might have been too free. The uniformly pretty tone was still there — but there was also the confidence of an artist who was sharing not only some music but something of himself with his audience. More

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      He Quit Singing Because of Body Shaming. Now He’s Making a Comeback.

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      The tenor Limmie Pulliam, who made his debut at Carnegie Hall on Friday, hopes to break barriers for larger artists.As a rising young tenor in the 1990s, Limmie Pulliam dreamed of a career that would take him to the world’s top stages. But Pulliam, who has struggled with excessive weight for much of his life, quit singing in his early 20s because of concerns about body shaming in the music industry, finding work instead as a debt collector and a security guard.Now, after spending much of the past decade rebuilding his voice and career, Pulliam, 47, is finally realizing his dream. He made his debut at Carnegie Hall on Friday with the Oberlin Orchestra, singing the title role in R. Nathaniel Dett’s “The Ordering of Moses.” And last month, he made his Metropolitan Opera debut in the role of Radamès in Verdi’s “Aida,” filling in for a tenor who had canceled his appearance — making Pulliam the first Black singer to perform that role in the Met’s history.His solemn performance received a warm ovation at Carnegie.“To hear Limmie succeed in this moment so beautifully, and at this point in his life, was personally satisfying for me,” said Timothy LeFebvre, the chair of the voice department at Oberlin. “We always cheer on our colleagues when they reach these notable achievements, but even more so when it is so hard fought.”In an interview, Pulliam reflected on his 12-year break from singing and the challenges facing larger artists, who once were common in the industry but have faced pressure in recent years to slim down. He also talked about how a chance to perform the national anthem while working as a field organizer in Missouri for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign allowed him to rediscover his voice. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.After you attended the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, you seemed destined for a career in opera. Then you quit. What happened?There was a lot of pressure on artists in terms of appearance. The industry cared about things that really had nothing to do with the voice, but with physicality, and that made it difficult for singers of size. It made it easy for me to walk away. I made myself a promise that if it ever stopped being fun, I would do something else. And so I did.What was it like at the time for singers struggling with concerns about their weight?People within the industry were able to make comments regarding someone’s physical look with impunity. In other industries, that would not be accepted, but it was almost widely accepted within the classical music world. It felt like it was OK to make fun of people of size and that we weren’t worthy of careers. It was a very difficult time, and it’s still a very difficult time.What would people say to you?I’ve had general directors send me email messages complimenting me on my voice and then saying, “Well, when you lose 50 pounds, get in touch with me again, and I’ll give you a live audition.”How did it feel to hear those comments?I began to look at rejection in a different way. I used to get a bit down when I received a note like that or just a flat-out refusal about an audition. But I began to use that as fuel to make me want to work even harder — to be an even better vocalist. I thought, “They may not want me right now, but they will need me at some point.”During your break from classical music, you worked a variety of jobs, eventually starting your own security firm. Did you sing at all, even for your own pleasure — at home, in the shower, at church?Not really. I was deliberately making the decision not to sing. I just didn’t have the desire. I wasn’t singing that much in church, and I rarely listened to the radio in the car. There wasn’t much going on musically for me during that time. I was just concentrating on this new life that I was trying to build and trying to move forward.And then, in 2007, when you were 31 and working as a field organizer for the Obama campaign in Missouri, your home state, you got an unexpected chance to perform the national anthem.We had invited someone to sing the national anthem. And they got cold feet at the last minute and decided they didn’t want to do it. And it happened to be an event that I had invited my boss to attend. And he immediately said, “I remember seeing on your résumé that you used to be an opera singer. Why don’t you sing it?” And I said, “Well, you know, I haven’t sung for a number of years. And the national anthem is not an easy song to sing. I’m not sure I can pull it off.” It was terrifying; it was not something I had practiced or prepared. I did not know what was going to come out.But he convinced me to do it. And I sang at the event and ended up singing at several other events. And in doing so, I noticed some very interesting changes in my voice. It had taken on a more mature, burnished quality. And it had grown substantially in size. And it really piqued my interest as to the type of repertoire I could possibly sing with this new instrument.Your returned to the stage five years later, when you were 36, at the National Opera Association’s vocal competition. How did you prepare?I pulled out my old lesson tapes from the conservatory and began working with those lesson tapes and polishing things, just out of interest to see what the voice could do. And I eventually reached out to a voice teacher in Memphis, Tenn., and began working with her. We realized that we had something that was special — that there wasn’t anyone like me as an artist out there. We were working to rekindle the voice. That’s when I found the joy again in singing.Was it easy to get back into the business?It took a good three years or so before that first staged operatic engagement came, and it came because I was posting clips of my singing on YouTube and other platforms and just sharing wherever I could, and reaching out to friends who were still in the industry and letting them know I was back and basically trying to sing for anyone who would hear me.A friend saw a clip of me singing “Ch’ella mi creda libero e lontano” from Puccini’s “La Fanciulla del West” with my former high school choir director playing the piano. She shared it with her husband, who happened to be the music director of a small opera company in the Seattle area. They invited me to to sing the role of Canio in “Pagliacci.”You were the first Black singer to perform the role of Radamès at the Met. Do you feel that classical music is doing enough to address racial and ethnic disparities?As a Black man, I’m usually the only one who looks like me in a rehearsal setting. So there always is a sense of isolation, of not fitting in. You have to learn to work through that and do your job to the best of your ability.We always seem to have had celebrated Black female voices in the industry, like Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Grace Bumbry and Shirley Verrett. But the list of Black men has always been quite short. There are some in the industry who have difficulty in seeing Black males in romantic leads. We’ve made progress, and we just have to keep pushing forward and breaking down some of these walls.How did it feel to make your debut at Carnegie Hall?It was very difficult for me to enjoy it fully. It has been a challenging year for me personally. On May 8, my father passed away. And the following week, after the funeral, I left to get on a plane to prepare for my debut with the Cleveland Orchestra singing the role of Otello. I arrived in New York on Nov. 10 to begin my cover contract with the Met for “Aida.” On Nov. 14, my eldest sister passed away.It has been an emotional roller coaster for me. One never knows how grief will manifest itself. And grief is a very sneaky thing. And it pops up on you at very odd times, and you never know what’s going to trigger it. I was able to make it through because of the strength of my faith and knowing that my loved ones were in complete support of me and my career and would have wanted me to be where I was.What did your family say to you after the performance?My mother walked up to me and gave me a hug and a kiss and said: “God bless you. I’m extremely proud of you.” My oldest brother, whenever I go to perform, he always reminds me to make the family proud. And his response on Friday night was, “That’s how you make us proud.” More

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      Review: Carnegie Hall Makes an Intimate Space More Intimate

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      Zankel Hall has been temporarily reconfigured so that audiences can sit in the round, beginning with an enjoyable performance by the group yMusic.New York’s classical music powerhouses would like to get closer to you.Mere months after the New York Philharmonic’s stage at David Geffen Hall was shifted 25 feet out into the audience, with seating added behind the orchestra, as part of a gut renovation, Carnegie Hall has followed suit. If more economically: It has reconfigured its second stage, the subterranean Zankel Hall, and rearranged it so that audiences can sit in the round.To make that happen inside such a steeply raked space, Carnegie has raised the Zankel stage. This has reduced distances for everyone: the critics in prime seats, and the bargain-hunting customers in the balconies. It’s all part of initiative that Carnegie is calling “Center Stage,” with programming, from Thursday night through Jan. 27, designed to take advantage of the enhanced proximity.The Thursday concert, a richly enjoyable performance by the group yMusic, could be seen as a validation of Zankel’s temporary change. And yet what was best about the evening was more along the lines of business as usual for the hall. This vivacious and canny sextet — an idiosyncratic combination of cello, violin, viola, clarinet, a trumpeter who doubles on horn and a flutist-vocalist — debuted two Carnegie co-commissions: the world premiere of Allison Loggins-Hull’s nine-minute “Supply,” and the American unveiling of Andrew Norman’s 24-minute “Difference.”Helping to fund new work from younger American composers is part of what Carnegie’s Zankel wing does well. And that part of the machine is humming along just fine.In “Supply” — inspired by a tale of extramarital office romance — Loggins-Hull makes stirring use of the multiple talents of the flutist-vocalist Alex Sopp (who was lightly but effectively amplified). There was seductiveness in her singing of lines like “Tell me your dreams and I’ll show you the way.” More fragmentary bits of text (“Can I get a pass?” and “I want what I can’t have”) were more aggressive. The work moves between these emotional poles with smart instrumental writing, including some ferocious yet melodically supple passages in rhythmic unison.Norman’s “Difference” was likewise a showcase for yMusic’s abilities in both precision and abandon within the same piece. As in some of his recent orchestral works, Norman here alternates between hushed stasis and manic volleys of virtuosic eruption. In those extremes, CJ Camerieri’s muted trumpet brought a quizzical, mellow edge to some moments, while Nadia Sirota’s sinewy viola (and headbanging stage presence) took the lead in nervier ensemble episodes.The performance by yMusic validated the idea of a concert in the round, but was perhaps more notable for its premieres.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesNorman’s score, as is often the case, was exquisitely paced. Ideas don’t overstay their welcome, but even when that threatens to become the case, he tends to pile on fresh material just in time (and long past the point where another composer might stop). As the patterns deepen and the lengths of phrases extend, to the point of beggaring belief, Norman’s music makes you want to cheer for him — as well as for the artists who bring it to life.Both of those pieces would probably have come across just fine in Zankel’s regular configuration. The real barrier to intimacy with audiences might not be the space’s design, but the fact that music like this most often comes to town for a single night, then disappears.What if audiences were allowed to find this music over the course of a week, or even a full month, like they can with orchestral and operatic programming? What if yMusic had a residency that featured the newly commissioned works multiple times? They certainly wouldn’t have trouble filling out additional programs; the rest of Thursday’s concert featured yet more novelty in a half-hour of miniatures composed by the group’s members. (That happened thanks to some encouragement from Paul Simon, one of the pop musicians who have collaborated with yMusic in the past.)As yMusic wrote in program notes for the concert, original group composition is expected in pop but unusual in classical music. Some of the results in the nine-section suite were tentative — not quite songs, even with Sopp’s vocalizations. But there was also promise, such as the dense chords and almost-bluesy trumpet writing of “Sober Miles” and the occasionally Minimalist-influenced miniatures like “Zebras” and “Three Elephants.”A recording of all this music is unlikely to be released within the year. I know I’d like to revisit the Loggins-Hull and Norman pieces much earlier. And the same goes for seeing yMusic’s creativity and ensemble spirit again — no matter how the Zankel stage is situated.yMusicPerformed on Thursday at Zankel Hall, Manhattan. More