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      The Boston Symphony cancels its European tour over virus concerns.

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      The Boston Symphony Orchestra announced on Monday that it was canceling a four-city tour of Europe because of concerns about the spread of the coronavirus in Europe and the United States.The orchestra said the tour, which was to have included stops next month in Germany, Austria and France, was not feasible because of the potential for the virus to disrupt travel. The orchestra has recently reported a surge in cases among players and members of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.“Given the ongoing presence of Covid, brought home by its unfortunate impact on a significant number of our own artists, we must keep as our first priority the health and safety of everyone involved with the Boston Symphony Orchestra,” Gail Samuel, the orchestra’s president and chief executive, said in a statement. “Sadly, the only prudent and responsible course of action is, with deep regret, to cancel the European tour.”Many classical music ensembles hoped to resume global tours this year after the long hiatus brought by the pandemic. But the persistence of the Omicron variant has continued to complicate plans.The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra recently announced it was canceling a tour of Japan and South Korea in June because of concerns about the virus.Orchestra tours have been a staple of classical music going back decades, when the biggest ensembles in the United States and Europe began leading whistle-stop visits to global capitals. In those days, tours served not just artistic purposes but also commercial ends, giving orchestras exposure to new markets and, occasionally, lucrative sponsorships.Tours are no longer the moneymakers they used to be, except for a small number of elite ensembles like the Vienna Philharmonic. But they bestow international prestige on orchestras — an attractive prospect for donors — and give ensembles an opportunity to build cohesion.Overseas trips came to a halt at the outset of the pandemic, when classical touring was one of the first industries to shut down. (At the end of January 2020, before the disruptions caused by the coronavirus were widely felt in the United States, the Boston Symphony announced that it was canceling a tour of Asia.)Other ensembles have plans to go overseas in the coming months. The New York Philharmonic is planning a residency at a festival in Usedom, Germany, next month. The Philadelphia Orchestra is planning a tour of Europe in late summer. More

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      Ukraine Benefit Featuring Russian Ensemble Is Canceled in Vienna

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      A planned benefit concert in support of Ukraine was canceled in Vienna on Monday amid concerns about the Russian-based ensemble it was to feature, MusicAeterna, which is led by the conductor Teodor Currentzis and is supported by a state-owned bank in Russia.The concert, organized by the Konzerthaus in Vienna, one of Austria’s premier halls, was to take place on Tuesday and feature MusicAeterna, which is based in St. Petersburg and is financed in part by VTB Bank, one of Russia’s largest financial institutions. The United States and other western countries have recently imposed sanctions on the bank because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.The Vienna Konzerthaus said it canceled the concert after the Ukrainian ambassador to Austria, Vasyl Khymynets, expressed concern about featuring Russian artists at an event meant to benefit Ukraine. The ensemble’s founder, Mr. Currentzis, who was born in Athens, is a charismatic conductor who has built a large following in Russia and abroad.“The Vienna Konzerthaus cannot ignore the political dimension of the performance of a St. Petersburg-based orchestra at a time of immense suffering caused by the Russian Federation’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” Matthias Naske, the hall’s chief executive and artistic director, said in a statement. “We understand and share the despair over the war crimes in Ukraine and condemn this aggression without reservation.”The Konzerthaus said that it would suspend ticket sales for future appearances by MusicAeterna until the group secured an independent source of financing. But it also said it would allow MusicAeterna to perform a separate concert planned for Monday night. (The ensemble already performed at the hall on Sunday.)Mr. Khymynets and the Ukrainian foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The cancellation of the benefit concert comes as tensions between Russia and the west continue to reverberate in the performing arts. Several high-profile Russian artists have lost global engagements in recent weeks because of their ties to the government of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.MusicAeterna, renowned for its intense, electric performances, has come under scrutiny for its connections to VTB Bank, which has helped finance some of its tours and recording projects. Mr. Currentzis called for peace in Ukraine in a statement issued last month by the SWR Symphony Orchestra in Germany, where he is chief conductor, though he has not directly criticized the Russian government or Mr. Putin.“Teodor Currentzis and the members of the SWR Symphony Orchestra unequivocally support the common appeal for peace and reconciliation,” the statement said. The orchestra has said it was aware of MusicAeterna’s association with VTB Bank, but it has continued to defend Mr. Currentzis. “From today’s perspective, this is certainly problematic, but it has existed for a longer period of time,” the statement said, referring to the bank’s support for MusicAeterna.The benefit concert in Vienna was to feature works by Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and others.MusicAeterna is set to perform in Germany, Austria and France in the coming weeks. Mr. Currentzis is scheduled to lead the ensemble in a production of Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” at the Salzburg Festival this summer, paired with “De temporum fine comoedia” by the German composer Carl Orff. The Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Germany, another major concert hall, said on Monday it had no plans to cancel a series of engagements this week by MusicAeterna. More

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      Outspoken Composer to Lead International Contemporary Ensemble

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      George E. Lewis, a Columbia scholar who has documented how Black composers have been excluded from experimental music, will lead the renowned group.A composer and scholar who has spoken forcefully about the exclusion of Black artists from experimental music will lead the renowned International Contemporary Ensemble, the group announced on Friday.George E. Lewis, a professor of music at Columbia University known for his groundbreaking work in electronics, will take the helm as artistic director later this month. Lewis, 69, a trombonist and frequent collaborator with the ensemble, will be the first Black leader in its 21-year history. He said in an interview that he hoped to bring more of a multicultural focus to one of New York’s premier new music groups, and to feature a wider variety of artists.“I’m looking to bring newer people who happen to have great ideas, but who might be overlooked by other ensembles or institutions, to the forefront so they can be noticed by everybody,” Lewis said. “It’s a sense of widening the community.”Lewis is an influential voice in the effort to “decolonize” classical music, at a time when the field is reckoning with questions about racial injustice and a legacy of exclusion.“The composers and improvisers are not the ones producing the sounds of colonialism,” he wrote in a recent essay. “Rather, it is the music curators and institutions who have been composing and improvising colonialism.”Lewis has called on music schools to recruit more young composers who belong to racial and ethnic minority groups. He has also said that ensembles should commission more works from composers of color.“There is no reason why major music institutions that tout themselves as international should continue to present all-white programs,” he wrote in the essay.The International Contemporary Ensemble, with its 35 members, has long been an important outlet for modern composers — including Lewis, long revered among avant-garde jazz fans. In 2011, the ensemble premiered his “The Will to Adorn,” inspired by a Zora Neale Hurston essay and also the title of a 2017 album of his works made by the ensemble.Lewis will replace Ross Karre, a percussionist who after five years as artistic director is stepping down to take a teaching position at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. The ensemble was co-founded and led for years by the flutist Claire Chase.The group’s leaders said Lewis, a board member since 2018, had long had an outsize influence on their work.“George’s impact on this ensemble is almost immeasurable,” Rebekah Heller, a bassoonist and board member, said in a statement. “His voice and his vision have been quietly shaping the musical direction of our collective.”Lewis said he hoped to help the ensemble move beyond rigid notions of genre, in part by encouraging artists to listen to each other through improvisation.“At a certain point, classical music becomes so fluid that it becomes like a permeable membrane where you start to realize that it’s a point of connection rather than a set of practices or a set of received histories,” he said. “It’s something that accretes and accumulates new information, rather than something that excludes or does gatekeeping.” More

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      Review: A ‘St. Matthew Passion’ Balances Grandeur and Calm

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      Bernard Labadie led the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and three choirs, in Bach’s sprawling, meditative masterpiece.Of Bach’s two surviving Passions, “St. John” is the more fiery, dramatic and troubling. “St. Matthew” is something like its wise and contemplative sibling.And that’s how the “St. Matthew Passion” came across on Thursday at Carnegie Hall, with Bernard Labadie leading the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, along with three choirs and a half-dozen soloists. That is the battery of musical forces required for Bach’s Lenten masterpiece, which over nearly three hours recounts the death and resurrection of Jesus, with reflective asides in the form of chorales, recitatives and da capo arias.Bach’s score begins as if its volume were being carefully turned up. Here, it was more like a radio dial finding a station, with the orchestra unsteady before settling into flowing momentum. Under Labadie’s baton, the music was unwaveringly measured but balanced; its flashes of grandeur didn’t need to be overstated to land powerfully. From the start: The opening calmly built toward what the conductor John Eliot Gardiner has called an aural analogue to an “altarpiece by Veronese or Tintoretto” — immersive, its elements gaining sweep from their interplay.The Orchestra of St. Luke’s played with qualities of historically informed performance but not a wholesale devotion to it in the strings’ lightly gliding bows, judicious ornamentation and the use of largely modern instruments. Split into two groups, it also had two concertmasters: Krista Bennion Feeney, a violinist with a gift for elegant phrasing, and Benjamin Bowman (who has the same role with the Metropolitan Opera’s orchestra), impressively agile and clear. Stephen Taylor’s humane oboe took on the character of a vocal soloist, and Mélisande Corriveau’s viola da gamba had crisp, authoritative articulation befitting her prominent placement at center stage.But the performance’s stars may have been the choirs: La Chapelle de Québec and the Handel and Haydn Society Chorus, and the boys of the St. Thomas Choir aloft in the first ring of boxes, all virtually without fault in trickily woven polyphony and memorable even in passing moments like the jolting vigor of “Sind Blitze, sind Donner.”Julian Prégardien, center, as the Evangelist, a role he sang with a raconteur’s conviction and excitement.Richard TermineAs the Evangelist, the tenor Julian Prégardien (inheriting a role from his father, Christoph) recounted Matthew’s story with conviction and excitement; tellingly, he was the only soloist not singing with a score in hand. Expressive, with a soft and sympathetic upper range, he was also at times less steady and assured at full voice — unable to match the quaking turmoil of “Und siehe da” following Jesus’s death.Jesus was sung by the bass-baritone Philippe Sly with stoic fatalism, his smooth warmth rending for its tragic dignity in lines like “Du sagest’s,” then shattering in its resigned agony at his final words, “Eli, Eli, lama asabthani?”Joshua Blue, a tenor stepping in for the ill Andrew Staples, had a consistent brightness — much like his fellow soloist, the soprano Carolyn Sampson, who after warming up bounded through runs with skillful control and enunciation. The young countertenor Hugh Cutting was on less sure footing in similar passages, in which his intonation was unreliable compared with smoother legato melodies. Those were where he shined and showed the most promise: Cutting possesses penetrating strength and a lushness that doesn’t come easily to his voice type. His instrument might not be fully formed, but his “Erbarme dich” was.Another standout was Matthew Brook, who during Part I was chameleonic in arias attached to Judas and Peter but in Part II took a solemn turn: first in “Komm, suß Kreuz,” then in “Mache dich, mein Herze, rein,” which he sang soothingly, with the rocking phrases of a lullaby.That aria was all the more moving for how unforced its sentiment was. The “St. Matthew Passion” is more meditation than melodrama, and this reading carried that belief to the final measure — its dissonance barely held, the slightest tension resolving with the grace of the restfulness it’s meant to reflect.Orchestra of St. Luke’sPerformed at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan. More

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      Review: A Chinese Concerto and a Romantic Classic Gaze Back

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      The New York Philharmonic, under Long Yu, played works by Rimsky-Korsakov, Qigang Chen and Rachmaninoff at the Rose Theater.The New York Philharmonic played Russian music on Thursday, for the third week in a row. It was yet another argument against President Vladimir V. Putin’s claims that his country’s culture is being canceled in the West.That wasn’t the only political resonance of the orchestra’s concert on Thursday at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center. It is still all too uncommon for Chinese composers and artists — especially conductors — to be featured by American orchestras outside of Lunar New Year celebrations. But this program was led by Long Yu, experienced with the Philharmonic over the past decade, and included a substantial work by Qigang Chen.They are two of China’s most eminent classical artists. Yu leads no fewer than three major ensembles there: the China Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Shanghai and Guangzhou symphonies. And Chen served as music director for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.But though the New York Philharmonic has played three of his pieces in the past, they have all been on Lunar New Year programs; this was his subscription series debut. And his pristine cello concerto “Reflet d’un Temps Disparu” (“Reflection on Time Past”), written in the mid-1990s, was the highlight on Thursday.The aim of the half-hour, single-movement work is by now a familiar one: to bring together traditional Chinese sounds with the forces of a Western orchestra. But Chen, who studied in France with Olivier Messiaen in the 1980s, makes the interaction both surprising and natural.The melodic germ is “Meihua san nong,” an ancient tune whose title is often translated as “Three Variations on the Plum Blossom.” The cello soloist — here the eloquent, calmly commanding Gautier Capuçon — begins alone, notes subtly bending to evoke the twang of a qin. (It’s in a version for that Chinese zither that “Meihua san nong” is best known.)A woozy veil of winds casts a cloud of Messiaen-style European modernism, quickly settling into more openhearted warmth. But darkness keeps threatening, from groans in the low winds and brasses, and the cello’s line shifts from quietly clicking taps to pizzicato plucks of gonglike resonance — echoed in a large battery of percussion, including temple blocks.Trills and brushy arpeggiated motifs conjure the Bach suites at the center of the cello’s repertory, as the solo line goes back and forth from anxiously repetitive riffs to serene, expansive lyricism. The cello doesn’t quite lead the orchestra, but its music keeps being echoed within the ensemble; the soloist is something like a diamond in a ring, supported by and glinting onto its setting.Before the piece ends in wisps, it climaxes in a huge, lushly Romantic, quite saccharine explosion, like something out of John Williams.Or out of Rimsky-Korsakov, whose “Tsar’s Bride” Overture opened the concert. Or Rachmaninoff, whose “Symphonic Dances” followed intermission. These dances, like Chen’s concerto, are Proustian music, evocations of the Russian past presented in a modern, occasionally even jazzy, light. (The work’s alto saxophone solo is one of its most distinctive elements.)With its ingenious recastings of Russian Orthodox chants and the Catholic “Dies Irae,” this can be a grand, mesmerizingly intense score, a danse macabre written as World War II was underway. But while Thursday’s performance under Yu had robustness and dash, it was ever so slightly square — loud and quick, when warranted, but overall mellow in its impact.New York PhilharmonicThis program continues through Saturday at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      For This Opera Director, a Lot Is Riding on a ‘Handmaid’s Tale’

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      For her English National Opera debut, the company’s new artistic leader, Annilese Miskimmon, has chosen a work she hopes can bring in a new audience.LONDON — Annilese Miskimmon, the British opera director, looked tired and frazzled when she appeared on a recent video call. She was taking a short break from rehearsing “The Handmaid’s Tale” — the first production at English National Opera she is directing since taking over its artistic leadership in the middle of the pandemic. Those rehearsals had not been running smoothly, Miskimmon said, and had been hit by a recent surge in coronavirus cases in England. For a few weeks, the production had been rehearsing partly online.“This is Zoom stress more than opera stress,” she added, with an awkward laugh. She had already canceled two nights of the run, which now consists of just four performances, from April 8 through Apr. 14.Miskimmon said she chose “The Handmaid’s Tale” for her English National Opera debut because the company was founded on the idea of “opera for everyone.” The novel it is based on, by Margaret Atwood, is well known here, and its popularity has only grown thanks to the recent TV adaptation. Both of these, and the opera, by the Danish composer Poul Ruders, imagine a near future in which women are seen as little more than birthing machines. The story felt politically urgent, Miskimmon added. “Every day it’s getting more and more dangerous in some parts of the world to be a woman,” she said.A rehearsal for English National Opera’s produciton of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” The production’s run, which begins April 8, has been cut to just four performances.English National OperaFor opera watchers, Miskimmon’s decision to start with a dystopia may seem appropriate. In recent years, English National Opera has been hit by crises both real and imagined. Those have included funding cuts and resignations, as well as complaints about a dwindling number of performances each season. To raise revenue, the company — which only performs in English — now rents out its West End home, the Coliseum, to musical productions each summer.Miskimmon’s 2019 appointment was a surprise. The announcement came shortly after the American director Daniel Kramer resigned as the opera’s artistic director, two weeks after announcing his second season. Kramer had a never held a senior position at an opera house before joining the company, and many critics felt he wasn’t up to the job.Hugh Canning, an opera critic for several British newspapers, said he was “puzzled” that Miskimmon had left a job running the well-funded Norwegian Opera and Ballet in Oslo to take up the reins at English National Opera, also known as ENO. “Maybe she enjoys controversy,” he said.Others in Britain’s opera world agreed that Miskimmon had taken on a tough job. “Running any opera house is hard, but ENO is even harder,” said Gus Christie, the executive chairman of the Glyndebourne opera festival. As London’s “second” opera house, ENO was always competing for audiences with the much-better funded Royal Opera House, just a few blocks away, he added. (The British government gives the Royal Opera House about $32 million a year; ENO gets around half as much.)“If she can turn things around there, hats off to her,” Christie said.John Allison, the editor of Opera magazine, said that Miskimmon had gotten off to “a very good” start. During the coronavirus pandemic, she kept things at ENO moving when most British opera houses were shut, with a series of original ideas that raised the company’s profile. Those included a drive-in staging of Puccini’s “La Bohème” (featuring breakdancers and ice cream trucks), a made-for-TV performance of Mozart’s “Requiem” and a community outreach program in which ENO singers offered vocal lessons to people whose breathing had been affected by Covid.But most of the productions in Miskimmon’s first season had been planned before her arrival, including a staging of Wagner’s “Die Walküre” that will play at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 2025. “A lot is riding on this ‘Handmaid’s Tale,’” Allison said. “It’s her first big calling card.”The opera opens in the year 2195, with a lecturer describing the horrors of the Republic of Gilead, a theocracy in which women have no rights and where “handmaids” are forced to bear children for the ruling class.Annemarie Woods, the production’s designer, said that the creative team had researched totalitarian systems and thought about how artifacts of those regimes and their atrocities were preserved. The Coliseum’s stage will look like an exhibition space, Woods said, with items of clothing — including around 50 of the handmaids’ famous red hooded cloaks — suspended and lit like items in a Holocaust museum. Other “exhibits” will include a chunk of a wall where handmaids are executed, displayed like segments of the Berlin Wall.Kate Lindsey, an American mezzo-soprano who plays Offred, the opera’s main character, said she was enjoying rehearsing with Miskimmon, who “made every effort for people to have a voice in the room artistically.”“That’s a real sign of a confident director, and a really, really confident leader,” Lindsey said.Miskimmon said she wanted to turn ENO into a “truly national company” that collaborates with regional opera companies to stage major productions. Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesMiskimmon’s route to the heights of British opera is far from typical. Born in 1974, she grew up in Bangor, a small town outside Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the sectarian conflict that is known as “the Troubles.”She saw her first opera at 10 years old, when her father performed in an amateur production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” in a church hall. It was a distinctly lo-fi production: Her father’s costume for the role of Papageno was “a flat cap and some pan pipes on a string around his neck,” Miskimmon said.Yet Miskimmon soon fell hard for the art form. As much as opera was an escape from the violence of the Troubles, part of its appeal was that it also somehow reflected them, she said: At the time, Northern Ireland was a place where people didn’t feel they had much control over their destiny, since they could “go out for an ordinary day’s work, and be blown up.” In opera, Miskimmon said, “the characters are relentlessly driven toward heaven and hell,” without much agency, either. It felt “a much more honest, artistic representation of life.”At Cambridge University, where she studied English literature, Miskimmon directed some student productions. But she never thought she would become a professional director, she said, until she was invited to assist the British director Graham Vick at Glyndebourne. After working on seven productions there, she landed a job as the artistic director of the Opera Theater Company, Ireland’s national touring opera, before eventually moving to the Danish National Opera in Aarhus, and, later, the Norwegian Opera and Ballet in Oslo.Andrew Mellor, an opera journalist who specializes in the Nordic countries, said that Miskimmon was successful in Denmark, with several innovative productions that became talking points. Her take on Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte” in Aarhus offered audiences two productions — one traditional, one contemporary — and began each night with a vote to decide which would be staged. Equally attention-grabbing was an opera Miskimmon commissioned there called “Brothers,” about Danish soldiers dealing with post-traumatic stress after fighting in Afghanistan.Her time at Oslo was more “turbulent,” Mellor said. The Norwegian company’s music director, Karl-Heinz Steffens, left before Miskimmon even started, and she “had a fight with its ensemble system” when she wanted to use more guest singers, Mellor said. Amid the conflict, Miskimmon staged several acclaimed productions, including one of Britten’s “Billy Budd” that featured a huge submarine onstage.“She’s no shrinking violet, and when she has an idea she pursues it,” Mellor said.Miskimmon said her “memories of working in Oslo are not ones of turbulence,” and added that, in her opinion, it had been “a very positive working experience.”Whatever happened in Norway, Miskimmon’s experiences of dealing with tough situations will hold her in good stead for her role at ENO, especially given the challenges the company has ahead.At the end of March, the company canceled a production of Michael Tippet’s “King Priam” that had been set to run in the 2022-23 season. Ella Baker, an ENO spokeswoman, said in an email that this was “with financial prudence in mind,” given the ongoing impact of the pandemic.The company also faces perhaps more significant financial challenges. Over the past year, Britain’s government has focused on a program called “leveling up,” designed to boost the fortunes of areas outside London. Although “leveling up” includes all sectors of Britain’s economy, arts funding has been a particular focus. Government subsidies for London-based arts organizations like ENO are set to be cut by a total of 15 percent later this year, so more money can be spent elsewhere. The government has said that some organizations may lose their funding entirely.Allison, the Opera magazine editor, said some British lawmakers have “always had ENO in their sights,” because funding opera is thought to be bad at the ballot box. With the Royal Opera House more prominent, ENO had “always looked vulnerable,” he said.During the hourlong interview, Miskimmon did not seem concerned by that threat, insisting that ENO already had plans to present more work outside London. Since starting at the company, she said she had been discussing how to turn ENO into a “truly national company” that collaborates with regional opera companies to stage major productions.Miskimmon added that she had a favorite saying: “A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.” She had repeated the adage so many times at ENO, including in rehearsals for “The Handmaid’s Tale,” that people must be getting sick of it, she said. But it suited her vision for the company, she added.“It’s about art, and it’s about life,” Miskimmon said. “We’re prepared to take big steps forward, because that’s what opera needs.” More

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      Joseph Kalichstein, Pianist of Subtlety and Refinement, Dies at 76

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      An acclaimed exponent of Schumann, Brahms and Mendelssohn, he was best known for his work as a member of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio.Joseph Kalichstein, an Israeli American pianist whose subtle, refined approach made him an exemplary chamber musician, especially as a member of the esteemed Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, died on March 31 in Manhattan. He was 76.His son Avi said the cause was pancreatic cancer.Across his career of more than 50 years, critics agreed that Mr. Kalichstein had an uncommon naturalness, whether in his earliest solo recitals or his later appearances on the chamber music circuit with his piano trio, in which he was joined by the violinist Jaime Laredo and the cellist Sharon Robinson.Mr. Kalichstein had a sense of line and timing that set him apart even as a young virtuoso. His Carnegie Hall debut “carried enough impact to remind one of Horowitz, and that is not a small thing to say,” Donal Henahan wrote in The New York Times in 1967, adding that although there was still some brash impetuosity to Mr. Kalichstein’s playing, he could already sustain “a long, poetic arc as only a born musician can.”That innate musicality made Mr. Kalichstein a stylish exponent of Schumann, Brahms and Mendelssohn, whose solo, chamber and concertante works he recorded with an apt balance of delicacy and drive.Mr. Kalichstein’s credentials as a soloist were never in question after his 1969 victory in the prestigious Leventritt Competition, which led, among other appearances, to dates with the New York Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra under the conductor (and Leventritt juror) George Szell. But he found particular admiration as a chamber musician.The venerable Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio came together by accident, after Mr. Kalichstein appeared as a late substitute for another elegant pianist, Rudolf Firkusny, in a program of Dvorak with his future partners — who were already husband and wife — and other musicians at the 92nd Street Y in 1976.Mr. Kalichstein in an undated photo. His credentials as a soloist were never in question after his 1969 victory in the prestigious Leventritt Competition, but he found particular admiration as a chamber musician.“In the end,” Mr. Kalichstein later recalled of that concert, “we all remarked how easy the performance was. We seemed to phrase together, breathe together, sing together. Sharon and Jaime came to me and said, ‘Maybe we should play together.’”Their official debut as a trio came in 1977, in unusually auspicious surroundings: the East Room of the White House, during the inauguration festivities for President Jimmy Carter, who hired them on the advice of the conductor Robert Shaw.From the start, the trio drew strong reviews for its poise and blend. Mr. Henahan suggested in 1978 that “while predictions as to its longevity and success would be pointless just yet,” the trio’s balance and evident good sense still brought to mind artists of the stature of the Guarneri String Quartet or, more to the point, the then-dominant Beaux Arts Trio.The Beaux Arts lasted 53 years in name, but its initial membership endured for little more than a decade. The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, arguably its successor in stature in concert halls if not on record, still had its original personnel at its last concert, in Phoenix on March 17 — 45 years after its debut.Joseph Chaim Kalichstein, later known as Yossi to his friends, was born on Jan. 15, 1946, in Tel Aviv, the third child of Yitzhak and Mali (Bendit) Kalichstein. Fervent Zionists, they had tried to settle in Palestine in the 1920s, returning to Poland only to flee the fate that befell much of the rest of their family in the Holocaust.Mr. Kalichstein played the piano from a young age and took lessons from Joshua Shor in Israel. He enrolled at the Juilliard School in New York in 1962, studying with Eduard Steuermann and Ilona Kabos. For his Carnegie Hall debut, he paid tribute with two works by Mr. Steuermann, a rarely heard Schoenberg acolyte who died in 1964.After graduating in 1967, Mr. Kalichstein received a master’s degree from Juilliard in 1969 and considered doctoral work before his solo career took off. Sponsored by the Young Concert Artists after 1967, he played Beethoven in one of Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic, in 1968, broadcast on CBS.European as well as American performances followed. The Musical Times noted after Mr. Kalichstein’s European debut in 1970 that the impression he made in Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto — with the London Symphony and André Previn — “was not of the extreme brilliance and confidence expected from a young virtuoso so much as thoughtful, sensitive musicianship.”Allan Kozinn of The New York Times in 1999 bracketed Mr. Kalichstein with pianists like Alfred Brendel and Richard Goode, as “a musician who searches beyond the dots on the page, recognizes the breadth of possibilities within a work and has the technique to give those possibilities life.”Mr. Kalichstein was by then primarily known as a chamber musician, above all for his work with the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, with which he cultivated a style of polished ease.The trio recorded much of the core repertoire, including the complete Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Brahms trios, as well as an exquisite set devoted to Ravel, for which Mr. Kalichstein contributed a moving account of the solo “Pavane Pour une Infante Défunte.” The trio commissioned works from such living composers as Arvo Pärt, André Previn and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, whose piano concerto Mr. Kalichstein recorded.Mr. Kalichstein consulted for the Kennedy Center after 1997 and was artistic director of its chamber music series until his death. He became a member of the piano faculty at Juilliard in 1983 and added a chair in chamber music studies in 2003.The pianist Emanuel Ax, a colleague at Juilliard, said in an interview that Mr. Kalichstein was “a remarkably direct and openhearted musician, in the best sense uncomplicated and natural.” He added that Mr. Kalichstein was a warm, witty teacher who did not impose his own views on his students, but “would think about the way someone was looking at a piece of music and try to help him or her attain the best possible of version of that.”In addition to his son Avi, Mr. Kalichstein is survived by his wife, Rowain (Schultz) Kalichstein; another son, Rafi; and three grandchildren.His wife had resolved to marry him before she had even met him, after being captivated by a recital he gave at Washington Irving High School in Manhattan in 1971. They were married later that year and were longtime residents of Maplewood, N.J., until moving to Rhode Island last year.In 1994, a reporter for The Los Angeles Times asked Mr. Kalichstein whether he and the other members of the trio enjoyed greater fame as individual soloists or as a collective.“It could very well be the trio,” he responded. “I certainly cannot complain if it’s one or the other. I hope people know me as someone with two different hats.”“I want to have that balance,” he added. “In fact, that is my ideal.” More

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      ‘¡Viva Maestro!’ Review: A Documentary in Need of a Conductor

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      A wunderkind conductor attempts to keep young Venezuelan musicians working despite political strife at home in this film from Ted Braun.The Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel earned his reputation as a wunderkind by leading prestigious symphonic groups like the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In front of the orchestras he leads, Dudamel is a live wire, his signature curls bouncing with each wave of the wand. And when the music stops, Dudamel turns his passion for his profession toward advocacy, supporting programs that help young Venezuelan musicians develop professionally.The documentary “Viva Maestro” follows Dudamel, combining vérité footage of him in rehearsals with interviews in which Dudamel explains how orchestras can help young people create a more beautiful world.The film begins in 2017, as political and economic strife in Venezuela forces an end to Dudamel’s planned tour with the Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, the country’s premiere youth orchestra. Dudamel leaves Venezuela, and the orchestra’s tour is canceled, leaving the young members of the Bolivars to join millions of protesters in the streets of Venezuela. But Dudamel continues to fight for his musicians to be able to perform, organizing international concerts as a way to keep his acolytes focused on a positive vision of the future.Dudamel is a joyfully appealing figure, and the film benefits from following such an amiable subject. But the documentary lacks the rigor it would take to turn this warm portrait into a proper cinematic symphony. The protests in Venezuela represent a major upheaval for Dudamel, even resulting in the death of one of his musicians. But the director Ted Braun does not take the time to show the protests or to explain what has prompted them, and so, much of the film’s conflict feels indistinct. Braun prefers to fondly listen to Dudamel’s musings in interviews. But even the most passionate speakers can come off as rambling with enough repetition.¡Viva Maestro!Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More