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      A Temporary Concert Hall Hopes for a Permanent Audience

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      The Isarphilharmonie in Munich, a prefabricated stopgap during a renovation, is trying to lure listeners far from the city center.MUNICH — It was an unusual sight last Friday: the denizens of this wealthy city lifting the hems of their gowns and adjusting their bow ties as they stepped into a rough-around-the-edges industrial space for one of the premier cultural events of the fall.They were entering the lobby of the Isarphilharmonie, a new concert hall far from the old-fashioned grandeur of the Bavarian State Opera or the Herkulessaal, inside the former royal palace. And far from the city center, where most of Munich’s high-profile classical music performances take place.The new hall is a rarity: an ephemeral, prefabricated venue designed with top-level acoustics and built for 40 million euros (about $46 million) in only a year and a half, all as a renovation stopgap. A temporary replacement for the ungainly and unremarkable concert hall at the Gasteig, which is closing for a multiyear makeover, the Isarphilharmonie is just one entity of that complex — including the Munich City Library and education facilities — to make an interim move nearly three miles down the Isar River to Halle E, once a transformer hall for a power utility, in a quieter, less polished part of town, next to a tire shop.The modular concert hall is a prefabricated box of wood coating a steel frame, with acoustic design by Yasuhisa Toyota.HGEsch/gmp ArchitektenFor many, the journey there is not nearly as easy as to the Gasteig, which is within walking distance of Munich’s Old Town and is outside a busy S-Bahn station. Isarphilharmonie attendees on Friday were encouraged to use public transportation, then take a short walk to finish the journey, or a bicycle. But not their cars, please, because unlike the Gasteig, the new complex (known as Gasteig HP8 for its address on Hans-Preißinger-Straße) has no parking facilities. For now, some drivers can park at a nearby wholesale flower market and ride a shuttle the rest of the way.It’s not lost on the leadership of the Gasteig and its house orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, that the Isarphilharmonie needs more than novelty to lure people downriver during the renovation, which had been expected to last several years but could stretch to nearly a decade. About 60 to 70 percent of tickets sold for the new space are from the orchestra’s subscribers, said Paul Müller, the Philharmonic’s executive director, but that still leaves a significant gap to bridge.So Müller and his colleagues — including Max Wagner, the Gasteig’s director — have examined potential models elsewhere. Such as the Philharmonie de Paris, so far from Paris’s center that it overlooks the freeway that forms the city’s border, and which has kept ticket prices low to remove at least one barrier to potential audiences. The Isarphilharmonie, Müller said, will be similar: “This needs a very different structure. You cannot ask for €90 per ticket.”A former power utility structure, now called Halle E, serves as the Isarphilharmonie’s lobby.Robert Haas/Gasteig GmbHBut perhaps the highest priority in attracting new concertgoers and pleasing existing ones is to provide a hall that doesn’t feel like the substitute that it is. Shifting to nomadic performances during the Gasteig renovation — as the New York Philharmonic is doing while its Lincoln Center home, David Geffen Hall, is overhauled this season — was not feasible here, Wagner said. So the Isarphilharmonie, designed for temporary use but with a potential future after the Gasteig’s reopening, was designed to hold its own among Germany’s important concert halls. (It will also host Munich’s other major ensemble, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.)Designed by von Gerkan, Marg and Partners, and with prestige acoustics by Yasuhisa Toyota — of the Paris Philharmonie and Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles — the 1,900-seat, modular space is a striking yet unshowy black wooden box, with a pale timber stage that focuses attention like a movie screen (or like Richard Wagner’s proto-cinematic stage at the Bayreuth Festival Theater a bit north of here).“We wanted to build something only in wood,” Max Wagner said. (That proved impossible given local fire codes; in the final design, wood coats a steel frame.) “We were lucky because wood is now like gold. But we ordered all this before the pandemic, so we had the delivery and the old price.”That was crucial to the Isarphilharmonie opening on Friday after construction that began in spring 2020; the rest of Gasteig HP8 will follow by next March.Among the hall’s opening festivities is a cycle of Beethoven’s five piano concertos with Daniil Trifonov as the soloist, beginning with the Fourth.Tobias HaseThe hall’s sound was put to the test that night with a three-hour Munich Philharmonic concert — led by the orchestra’s music director, Valery Gergiev — which, while a bit scattered, demonstrated a variety of acoustic possibilities. It was also a milestone for pandemic-era performances: the first in Bavaria, because of newly implemented measures, to allow a full audience, mask free.A premiere, Thierry Escaich’s “Araising Dances,” opened the program, answering any questions about Toyota’s acoustics with a cello’s pristine pizzicato resonating above the rest of the orchestra, and a solo violin’s ethereal high note eerily bleeding into spectral harmonics. Written for the Isarphilharmonie, the work explored opposites of sound: the full might of the ensemble in a danse macabre versus a chamber group from just the principal strings. As a pièce d’occasion it did the trick, showing off the space and providing a rousing finale that would have lingered in the air longer had it not inspired immediate applause.Next came Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, featuring Daniil Trifonov as soloist. Among the Isarphilharmonie’s opening offerings is Trifonov’s first outing playing all five Beethoven concertos, but in the Fourth he entered with muddled phrasing that virtually contradicted the transparency of the Escaich. (Exceptional acoustics only get you so far.) What followed was an interpretation of overexcited extremities, as if he hadn’t yet settled on a reading of the piece. And he was at odds with the Philharmonic, which could have been lighter but still aimed for restraint and delicacy under Gergiev. Trifonov’s encore, an arrangement of Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” was a return to form: unquestionably sensitive, approaching sublime.On Saturday in Halle E, the Philharmonic unveiled its new late-night programming, featuring FM Einheit in a work by Vangelino Currentzis.Tobias HaseAlthough the second half of the concert may have wandered, it nonetheless proved a showcase for both the hall and the Philharmonic: Henri Dutilleux’s “Métaboles” reached a satisfyingly earsplitting volume; the opening of Rodion Shchedrin’s “The Sealed Angel” was an appetizing preview of choral performances to come; and Ravel’s second “Daphnis et Chloé” suite was a fittingly grand combination of orchestra and voices. Here, the flutist Michael Martin Kofler spun sensual melodies that, in a space that hid not even Gergiev’s occasional grunts, cut easily through the other players. The opening-night listeners were always going to applaud heartily, but that didn’t make their enthusiastic response to the Ravel any less deserved.With the end of the concert came a reminder that the Isarphilharmonie is still new, with problems to work out — such as finding a way for 1,900 people to exit gracefully without bottlenecking. As if to offer an apology, servers were waiting throughout Halle E with trays of sparkling wine. The following evening, the space would be used less formally, for one of the Philharmonic’s new efforts in alternative programming: a late-night performance, featuring FM Einheit and members of the orchestra, of an experimental work by Vangelino Currentzis (the brother of the conductor Teodor Currentzis).But on Friday, if the transition to a new hall wasn’t entirely seamless for attendees, it was for another group: taxi drivers. Clearly having heard the news of the opening, they were lined up outside, ready to shepherd the chilly and stranded audience back home. More

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      Two Singers Reveal the Core of Art Song, on Stages Big and Small

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      This weekend, Jonas Kaufmann gave a recital at the vast Carnegie Hall, while Will Liverman appeared at the intimate Park Avenue Armory.Two recitals over the weekend in New York might have seemed, at first, to inhabit very different realms of art song.On Saturday evening at Carnegie Hall, Jonas Kaufmann, one of the world’s leading tenors, presented a program of songs in German. Then on Sunday afternoon at the Park Avenue Armory, the rising baritone Will Liverman, currently at the Metropolitan Opera in the lead role of Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” gave a varied recital that included works by four Black composers he champions.The Armory’s recital space — the roughly 100-seat Board of Officers Room — is close to the salons and living rooms where Schubert and other composers of his time essentially created the lieder concert. Carnegie Hall, which sold out nearly all of its 2,800 seats for Kaufmann’s engagement, is massively bigger than anything the progenitors of lieder could have imagined.Yet at its core, art song is a genre in which music is put, sensitively and compellingly, at the service of poetic texts. And though the stages Kaufmann and Liverman performed from could not have been more different, both artists proved themselves singers who put words first.Kaufmann, who has been frustratingly elusive in New York in recent years, appeared with his regular recital partner, the fine pianist Helmut Deutsch. They began with nine works that can be heard on their recent recording of lieder by Liszt, whose roughly 90 songs remain somewhat overlooked. In “Vergiftet sind meine Lieder,” an impassioned setting of a Heine poem, Kaufmann was almost in Wagnerian mode, like a despairing Tristan, singing with burnished top notes, yet shaping aching phrases tenderly.Now and then, in the Liszt songs and elsewhere, his voice had its rough patches. (A week earlier, he had canceled some performances in Munich because of a tracheal infection.) But he mostly rallied, and sounded at his clarion-voiced best as the program went on. These Liszt works are marvelous, full of musical-poetic flights, alternately epic and ruminative. The piano parts, not surprisingly for this composer, are often elaborate, with daring chromatic harmonies and wondrous colorings. I was most impressed, however, when Kaufmann lifted melting phrases with focused and floating sound, like the pianissimo moments of “Die Loreley.”Helmut Deutsch, left, with Jonas Kaufmann at Carnegie Hall on Saturday.Jennifer TaylorHe then sang 13 songs by Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Zemlinsky and others, ending with Mahler’s profound “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” (from “Rückert-Lieder”), in an effectively restrained performance. That was supposed to have ended the recital, after 75 minutes with no intermission. But the enthusiastic audience had other ideas, and Kaufmann complied, with six encores. During the last one, Strauss’s “Cäcilie,” Kaufmann, visibly annoyed, stopped after a couple phrases. “I do everything for you,” he told the audience, “but please respect the rules and don’t film!” People applauded in support, then he started over — and sang vibrantly.Though Liverman has been rightly praised for his wrenching performance in “Fire,” he did sometimes have trouble being heard over the orchestra at the Met. Yet at the Armory, joined by the excellent pianist Myra Huang, his sound almost overwhelmed the space. It was exciting to hear his fearsome account of Loewe’s “Erlkönig” (Goethe’s chilling poem, best known from Schubert’s setting). And he balanced forceful intensity with winningly intimate singing in songs by Strauss, Ravel and Rachmaninoff, all played with taste and flair by Huang.Then, turning to the works by Black composers, Liverman brought affecting directness to Margaret Bonds’s “Three Dream Portraits” (to texts by Langston Hughes), which can be heard on his recent album “Dreams of a New Day: Songs by Black Composers.” Songs by H. Leslie Adams and Damien Sneed were also special, coming across like an elegant stylistic meeting place between art song and American standards. I was moved, and impressed, when Liverman performed his own arrangement of a medley of music by Brian McKnight — a favorite R&B artist of his, he explained — singing with lovely casualness while accompanying himself deftly on the piano.Not many opera singers have that skill, let alone the courage. And along the way, he had explored an overlooked legacy of American artists whose work speaks to him personally. More

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      Review: The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra Returns, With Gusto

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      The dynamic conductor Xian Zhang opened the symphony’s new season at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center on a balmy night in Newark.NEWARK, New Jersey — Since becoming the music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra in 2016, the dynamic conductor Xian Zhang has worked steadily to reflect diversity and inclusion through the institution’s programming, outreach initiatives and guest artists. This was crucial in a city where a majority of residents were Black and Latino; it also spoke to Zhang’s own experience as one of a small number of Asian female conductors leading major ensembles. These priorities were in evidence on Friday when, 557 days after its last full orchestra concert (because of the pandemic), the New Jersey Symphony opened its new season at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center on a balmy night in Newark.The program opened with the premiere of Michael Abels’s “Emerge.” Best known for his scores for the contemporary horror films “Get Out” and “Us,” Abels describes this eight-minute piece as suggesting a group of highly trained musicians getting back together after a long break, a scenario that speaks to the moment.It begins with an evocation of an orchestra tuning up. We hear the oboe playing a single pitch of A, which the other instruments pick up on. Soon the various players break off into short three-note melodic bits, quivering strings, fidgety rhythms and sustained sonorities that keep swelling and diminishing. During one episode the players seem almost to be in free-for-all, somewhat reminiscent of the way many orchestras warm up on the stage as the audience drifts in, creating a borderline-annoying mass of sounds. But the music here becomes as a restless aural collage pierced with flinty dissonance. Soon various players take off in bluesy solos, or engage in fleeting bits of counterpoint. Finally, the musicians team up in passages of mellow lyricism, skittish bursts, manic scales, all leading to a brassy, celebratory coda.Roumain fuses elements of hip-hop, jazz and classical contemporary styles in his work.Dan GrazianoNext up was the composer and violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain’s “Voodoo Violin Concerto,” a 25-minute work from 2002 that reflects his Haitian heritage but also fuses elements of hip-hop, jazz and classical contemporary styles. The solo part drives this work, and Roumain played commandingly on a violin that was amplified, including electronics with which he could eerily process certain sounds. In the first section, “Filter,” the violin jumps into orchestral atmospherics with perpetual-motion, repeated-note riffs. The instruments respond with pungent backup music for woodwinds, and jarring, jazzy full orchestra harmonies.There were extended episodes where Roumain improvised winding strands of frenzied yet lyrical lines over orchestra music that maintains a respectful distance. Though an unabashedly episodic work, with passages evoking call-and-response jazz styles and a bravura cadenza that tweaks the “Star-Spangled Banner,” the concerto still has compositional sweep that carries into “Prayer,” the mellow, elegiac second section, with the violin playing over a chorale-like piano music, and a funky, wailing “Tribe” finale.Though it’s hard to imagine that, as a music student at a traditional conservatory in Beijing, Zhang could have imagined performing a score alive with jazz, blues and improvisation, she led a confident and irrepressible account. Roumain, who has collaborated excitingly with Bill T. Jones, Savion Glover and other creators from outside classical music, this season begins an appointment as the orchestra’s Resident Artistic Catalyst, and the title says much about his ambitions in this role. After the concerto, he spoke to the audience about the responsibility we all have to love one another and be creative during what has been “a time of death and despair.”Zhang then led an elegant, rich-toned and spirited account of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. The slow movement was especially fine, taken at a true Allegretto pace, steady yet never forceful, restrained yet coursing with inner intensity. It was a long-awaited and rewarding return for an essential orchestra. More

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      Bolshoi Performer Is Killed in Onstage Accident

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      The man, in his late 30s, was crushed during a scene change as the opera “Sadko” was performed before an audience, the theater said.A performer was killed during an opera at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow on Saturday when there was an accident during a scene change, the theater said.The man, in his late 30s, was working as an extra in a performance of the opera “Sadko,” by the Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.Russian news reports said that the man had been crushed by a piece of scenery, and videos of the event that circulated online showed it happening as a backdrop descended to the stage. As the chorus kept singing and the orchestra continued to play, there was a sudden commotion onstage. Performers waved their arms and shouted “Stop!” The music ground to a halt, and most of the performers walked offstage while a few went to the rear of the stage to help the man. The curtains closed.The show was stopped immediately, the Bolshoi said in a statement, and the audience was asked to leave.“A tragic accident happened during the ‘Sadko’ production tonight,” the Bolshoi, one of Russia’s most prestigious theaters, said in a statement. The theater said it was assisting investigators as they sought to determine the circumstances of the man’s death.The man was identified as Yevgeny Kulesh. He worked as part of a 50-person group of Bolshoi employees who serve as onstage extras, supplementing singers and dancers.Russian news reports said that audience members had not initially seemed aware of the death and appeared to think that the panic onstage was part of the performance.The Bolshoi has a history of strange deaths and injuries. In 2013, the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet was severely injured when a masked man threw acid in his face. That same year, a violinist died after falling into the orchestra pit. More

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      Louise Farrenc, 19th-Century Composer, Surges Back Into Sound

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      Orchestras are turning to her turbulent symphonies; pianists, to her sophisticated études; chamber musicians, to her superb Nonet.Read the reviews that the composer, pianist and teacher Louise Farrenc received in the middle of the 19th century, and the kinds of gendered, backhanded compliments that male critics have so often given to female artists pop up with tiresome regularity.There was innuendo. “By the magic of her musical palette,” a critic wrote in 1841, “the composer envelops you with nocturnal images, at once mysterious and blissful.”There was surprise. “It is such a rarity for a woman to compose symphonies of real talent,” offered a journal in 1851.There was patronizing praise. “Well written,” Hector Berlioz called a Farrenc overture in 1840, “and orchestrated with a talent rare among women.”But if Farrenc’s success, greater than any of her female contemporaries except Emilie Mayer, had critics admitting she stymied their stereotypes, those stereotypes were then slyly reimposed. “The dominant quality of this work, composed by a woman, is precisely what one would least expect to find,” a critic wrote of her First Symphony in 1845. “There is more power than delicacy.”The conductor François-Joseph Fétis, one of her leading promoters, made the gambit clear. “With Mme. Farrenc,” he wrote, “the inspiration and the art of composing are of masculine proportions.”As the classical music world belatedly tries to put behind it the myriad prejudices it has inherited and perpetuated, Farrenc’s music is returning to a prominence that her newfound proponents argue she has always deserved.“The symphonies and the overtures should hold a similar place as Schumann and Mendelssohn,” said Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who conducted Farrenc’s Second Symphony this summer with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and leads her Third with the Orchestre Métropolitain in Montreal on Oct. 29. “I do believe that she’s completely deserving of that.”Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra during the pandemic in a streamed performance of Farrenc’s Symphony No. 2.Jeff FuscoScholarly attention to Farrenc remains meager in English, with no full biography appearing since Bea Friedland’s in 1980; unlike Florence Price, for example, she has enjoyed little in the way of persistent academic advocacy.But much of the chamber music in which Farrenc excelled has been recorded, including her sonatas, piano trios and famous Nonet, the success of which in 1850 led her to demand, and receive, equal pay on the faculty of the Paris Conservatory, where she had become the first female professor in 1842.“I find that a lot of pianist-composers from that time knew what instruments should sound like, but their craftsmanship was not always as immaculate as hers,” said the hornist James Sommerville, who performs the Nonet with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players on Nov. 7. “She has a great ear for melody, a great sense of structure.”And orchestras are turning to the three turbulent symphonies Farrenc wrote in the 1840s, which achieved significant success despite the Parisian public’s hostility to orchestral scores.“They are written in a style that is both Romantic and Classical, with a great thematic and harmonic originality, both poetic and energetic,” said the conductor Laurence Equilbey, who released recordings of the First and Third with the Insula Orchestra this summer and leads the Third with the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston on Nov. 5 and 7. “Her music is not as avant-garde as that of Berlioz, for example, but it is so solidly constructed.”Craft was Farrenc’s trademark, one she honed in a strikingly supportive environment. Born Jeanne-Louise Dumont in 1804, she came from a line of court sculptors and grew up among artists resident at the Sorbonne. Her brother Auguste’s “The Spirit of Liberty” still crowns the Place de la Bastille.Farrenc learned piano and theory from 6, tutored by a godmother who had studied with Muzio Clementi. At 15, she began private lessons with Anton Reicha, a friend of Beethoven’s who, as a professor at the Conservatory that barred Farrenc from entry as a composition student, also taught Berlioz, Liszt and César Franck.She briefly broke off these studies in 1821 to marry Aristide Farrenc, a flutist and publisher of some of the era’s major composers, Beethoven included. It was an unusually congenial match, if not an affluent one. Aristide encouraged Louise to perform, partnered with her to organize salons and other events that showcased her writing in the context of their joint interests, and, crucially, published her works.Conforming to the composer-virtuoso model of the day, Farrenc’s early piano pieces were rondos or sets of variations on popular and operatic tunes, but they were far from the ostentatious, flimsy norm. Her “Air Russe Varié,” from 1835, caught the attention of Robert Schumann, who praised its “delightful canonic games” in the spirit of Bach, and declared that “one must fall under their charm.”Joanne Polk, a professor at the Manhattan School of Music, last year released an excellent recording of the “Air Russe” and half of Farrenc’s set of 30 Études, which — like Chopin’s from the same decade — escape their pedagogical constraints.“She really knew how to write well for the piano,” Polk said, “so that the music fits beautifully in the fingers and yet challenges you.”The cover of the autograph manuscript of Farrenc’s 30 Études (Op. 26), which, like Chopin’s, escape their pedagogical constraints.Bibliothèque nationale de FranceFarrenc laid the groundwork for a generation of female pianists to succeed as interpreters in Paris, a group that included her daughter Victorine. Victorine’s first prize at the Conservatory in 1844 — one of several pupils of Louise’s to achieve that distinction — foreshadowed what the journal Le Ménestrel declared in 1845 would be the “reign of the women.”Even so, as the musicologist Katharine Ellis has written, Farrenc was unique among such women for her large-scale compositions, finding a niche as audiences and critics at once enthroned Beethoven and sought a retreat from his late style.This was a difficult environment for anybody to write in, let alone a woman, but it was an unavoidable one. Every living composer who had a symphony performed from 1831 to 1849 by the Société des Concerts, Paris’s sole enduring outlet for orchestral music, found Beethoven closing the bill. Even at matinees chez Farrenc, Beethoven dominated programs, though she sometimes took the opportunity to promote his more radical works, playing his Op. 109 sonata at the premiere of her Second Piano Quintet in 1840.Like Mendelssohn, Farrenc drew praise for working within the confines of older traditions. When the prestigious Institute de France awarded her a chamber-music prize in 1869, it cited her for works that “glow with the purest classical style.”That is not to say that her works sound dutifully conservative now, though that reputation surely once hurt their prospects; they seem to glance back less in imitation, and more as if to teach listeners where they are coming from.Her two overtures from 1834 — Pablo Heras-Casado and the Pittsburgh Symphony perform the first on Oct. 22 and 24 — look back to Haydn and Mozart, just as some of her études trained players in Baroque styles. But they have a spirit, even in their darkness, that is wholly their own.The same is true of the symphonies. The First, from 1841, “is more in a Baroque style,” Equilbey said, “really the beginning of something.”The Second, from 1845, is somewhat more experimental. “The Scherzo reminds me of the first symphonies of Bruckner, with the same kind of covered angst; it’s fleeting, but it’s dark,” Nézet-Séguin said. “There is a connection with Mendelssohn in the last movement, in the counterpoint, but she takes it to another level. It’s used as a dramatic construction.”The Third, from 1847, is her masterpiece, with a brisk, light Scherzo and a slow movement that unfolds gloriously.“When I dug inside the score, I discovered an incredibly skillful hand,” said Gianandrea Noseda, who led a fiercely dramatic account of the Third with the National Symphony Orchestra in June and will reprise it in February. “She had a personal language, while reflecting the form. There are moments where she suspends the development section, for instance, inserting more ideas, going in the direction of a third melodic idea without getting to that point. It’s very creative.”But Farrenc’s development was, perhaps, cut short. After the death of her daughter in 1859, she retreated from composition, writing just a few miniatures.She turned instead to trying to start an early-music revival, arranging a series of lecture-recitals in the Salle Érard from 1862, at which her students paired her works with those of Byrd, Frescobaldi, Rameau and others. When Aristide died in 1865, he left only eight completed volumes of their carefully edited compendium of three centuries of piano music, “Le Trésor des Pianistes.” Louise added 15 more, while continuing to teach.Farrenc died on Sept. 15, 1875, with a notice reaching The New York Times later that month. By then, tastes had already started to turn. “It is sad to say,” wrote one witness at her memorial, “but at the funeral rites for this genuine artist, the Conservatory — where she was professor for 30 years — was conspicuous by its absence.”Happily, Farrenc is an absence no more. More

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      Review: Carnegie Hall Reopens With a Blaze From Philadelphia

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      After a 572-day closure, the hall was lit by a vibrant concert from the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin.After being closed for 572 days because of the pandemic, Carnegie Hall, the country’s pre-eminent concert space, opened its season on Wednesday. It took only a simple greeting from the stage — “welcome back,” spoken by Clive Gillinson, the hall’s executive and artistic director — for the audience to burst into sustained cheers.On paper, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s program — including favorites like Bernstein’s joyous overture to “Candide” and staples like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony — seemed tilted toward an opening night’s traditional purpose as a crowd-pleasing fund-raising gala. Yet both the choice of works and the vibrant music-making went deeper into questions of classical music’s relevance and renewal than I had expected.Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the orchestra’s music director, began by leading a performance of Valerie Coleman’s “Seven O’Clock Shout,” a work that the Philadelphians premiered online in May. This five-minute score has become the orchestra’s unofficial anthem for this difficult period. Inspired by Boccaccio and the 7 p.m. cheers for frontline workers during the pandemic, the piece offers a hard-won vision of a more beautiful place.Nézet-Séguin, also the music director of the Metropolitan Opera, led vibrant, impetuous performances of works both classic and new.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesIt opens with cautious trumpet fanfares that activate tremulous strings. The music goes through passages of jittery riffs, burnished string chords, elegiac quietude and eruptive restlessness — complete with actual shouts and claps from the players. The piece at times has a Copland-esque glow, but Coleman adds tart harmonic tweaks and assertive syncopations that continually surprise.The brilliant pianist Yuja Wang was the soloist for Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2, a work from 1957 considered one of this composer’s lighter, wittier scores. But from the start, this performance — especially Wang’s commanding, colorful playing — seemed determined to look below the bustling surface for hints of the bitterly satirical Shostakovich.As the orchestra played the chortling opening theme, alive with woodwinds, Wang almost sneaked into the fray with a subtly lyrical rendering of the piano’s quizzical lines. Then, taking charge, she dispatched bursts of brittle chords, tossed off creepy-crawly runs and kept bringing out both the sweetly melodic and industriously steely elements of the three-movement work.Yuja Wang joined for a commanding, colorful performance of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesThen Nézet-Séguin, who in his other role as music director of the Metropolitan Opera is currently leading performances of Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” turned to the “Candide” overture — and may have tried too hard to tease out jagged edges and multilayered complexities in Bernstein’s sparkling, impish music.He then spoke to the audience about how the disruptions of the pandemic shook our collective sense of “where we are, where we are going,” and explained the pairing of the final two works on the program: Iman Habibi’s short “Jeder Baum spricht” (“Every Tree Speaks”) and Beethoven’s Fifth. The Habibi score, written in dialogue with the Fifth and Sixth symphonies, was premiered in Philadelphia on March 12, 2020, to an empty hall, just after pandemic closures began.Habibi imagines how Beethoven, a nature lover, might respond to today’s climate crisis. On Wednesday, the compelling piece came across like a series of frustrated attempts at cohesion and peace, with fitful starts, hazy chords and driving yet irregular rhythmic figures. Finally, there is a sense, however uneasy, of affirmation and brassy richness.Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphians will play seven concerts in all at Carnegie this season, including a complete survey of Beethoven’s symphonies.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesWithout a pause, Nézet-Séguin dove into the Beethoven. And if you think this classic work has to sound heroic and monumental, this performance was not for you. Here was an impetuous, in-the-moment account. Tempos shifted constantly. Some passages raced forward breathlessly, only to segue to episodes in which Nézet-Séguin drew out lyrical inner voices you seldom hear so prominently. It was exciting and unpredictable. Beethoven felt like he was responding to Habibi, as much as vice versa.The Philadelphians had planned to present a complete survey of the symphonies at Carnegie last season, as part of the celebrations of Beethoven’s 250th birthday. That cycle will now take place in five programs over the coming months, with most of these totemic works preceded by shorter new pieces. (Coming to Carnegie no fewer than seven times in all, the orchestra also plays more Coleman in February, alongside Barber and Florence Price, and Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” in April.)If the opening-night pairing and performances were indicative, this series will be a stimulating conversation between classical music’s storied past and the tumultuous present.Philadelphia OrchestraOther Beethoven symphony programs on Oct. 20, Nov. 9, Dec. 7 and Jan. 11 at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan; carnegiehall.org. More

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      Enescu, an Underplayed Composer, Is Still a Star in Romania

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      The pandemic could not derail the sprawling George Enescu International Festival in Bucharest.BUCHAREST, Romania — Romania has a long record of defying the catastrophes history has served up, so it certainly would not allow the pandemic to derail the George Enescu International Festival, devoted to its premier musical native son, which ended on Sunday. At stake was not only the 25th edition of this country’s largest cultural event, but also the renewal of a global artistic exchange that this still-marginalized part of Europe considers essential to its development.Stubbornly underappreciated elsewhere, Enescu (1881-1955), whose “Oedipe” runs at the Paris Opera through Oct. 14, remains a pervasive presence here, even beyond the musical realm. His face is on Romania’s five-lei note; Bucharest’s largest orchestra is the George Enescu Philharmonic. A sumptuous Beaux-Arts palace along the fabled Calea Victoriei that served briefly as his home is now the Enescu Museum and the headquarters for the Romanian Composers Union.Credited with giving Romanians a national voice inspired by the country’s rich folk music, Enescu also had a fully cosmopolitan outlook that embraced multiple stylistic shifts. He embodied an ideal of the complete musician in his roles as composer, virtuoso violinist and pianist, conductor, teacher and generous mentor to younger artists. Yehudi Menuhin praised him as “the most extraordinary human being, the greatest musician and the most formative influence I have ever experienced.”George Enescu, who is stubbornly underappreciated elsewhere but well represented in his home country.History and Art Collection/AlamyEven as the continuing pandemic dashed hopes for a return to more normal life, an astonishing roster of 32 orchestras from 14 countries managed to travel here for the festival, among the most extensive classical music events in the world. Scheduled every two years, it runs in alternation with the George Enescu International Competition for young performers and composers. The festival started in 1958, three years after Enescu’s death, and was initially presented every three years. But an attitude from the Communist government that could be described as ambivalent at best turned downright hostile and self-destructive during the regime of Nicolae Ceausescu. Much had to be rebuilt following the revolution of 1989.The festival lasts four weeks, with multiple events each day. A major focus is the lineup of top international ensembles, many of which are asked to include a work by Enescu in their touring repertoire. The ticketed events take place in four concert venues in the center of Bucharest, but seven other cities around Romania also present concerts under the festival’s auspices.The conductor Vladimir Jurowski, who concludes his tenure as the festival’s artistic director with this edition, emphasized in an interview the strategic importance of having visiting orchestras commit to a work by Enescu. Many of them will go on to perform these when they return home, he said, “further widening the appreciation and visibility” of the Romanian composer.Jurowski, whose tenure as the festival’s artistic director comes to an end this year.Alex Damian“I have been especially proud of bringing Enescu’s work to London and Berlin and Moscow with my own orchestras over the years,” he added, including a concert version of “Oedipe,” Enescu’s only opera.Luring audiences to Bucharest, however, continues to vex festival organizers. “Everybody has a false image about Romania,” said Mihai Constantinescu, the event’s executive director since 1991, when asked why the mammoth undertaking isn’t on the radar of many abroad.“But the moment they arrive here,” Constantinescu added,” they are amazed.”The violinist Leonidas Kavakos, a longtime regular, spoke of the intensity of the audience’s appreciation: “They remain very quiet, very receptive. You feel the thirst for music and for interacting, and that is something that is vital for anybody who goes onstage.”The violinist Leonidas Kavakos, who appeared in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto.Andrei GindacWhen Kavakos joined the Munich Philharmonic for the first of that orchestra’s two concerts under Valery Gergiev, he seemed to astonish himself with the sheer sonic pleasure of tracing Tchaikovsky’s continually repeated melodies in the Violin Concerto in as pure and unindulgent a manner as possible. The wildly unpredictable Gergiev was more engaged than in recent memory, presiding over a magnificently shaped version of Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony, an unusual and memorable pairing with the Tchaikovsky concerto.Enescu, the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja said, “is a universe for himself,” adding, “I find it remarkable how he discovered his language.” She is another festival regular, and at this edition introduced Valentin Doni’s orchestrated version of one of Enescu’s most fascinating and challenging chamber pieces, the Sonata No. 3 for violin and piano (“Dans le Caractère Populaire Roumain”).The violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, whose appearances included as a soloist with the Moldova Philharmonic Orchestra under Adrian Petrescu.Catalina FilipDespite her vivid stage presence and the valiant efforts of Edward Gardner and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the concept felt doomed from the start by the impossibility of balancing the forces; the orchestrated piano part kept distracting from Kopatchinskaja. But an experiment that didn’t work served to underscore the festival’s openness to exploring new facets of Enescu and his work.It was a sign of the respect the festival receives in musical circles that Gardner chose it as the occasion for his first public performance since officially taking the reins of the London Philharmonic. Their two programs were part of a deliberate emphasis on British orchestras in this festival edition as a post-Brexit statement of musical solidarity. Six of the seven London-based ensembles initially invited were able to work around the stringent quarantine protocols and perform in Bucharest.“It’s a beautiful requirement that the festival has for us to include a piece by Enescu,” Gardner said. The program framed the sonata orchestration with Michael Tippett’s Ritual Dances from “The Midsummer Marriage” and a colorful, high-contrast account of Elgar’s “Enigma Variations.” The next evening, Gardner proved to be a natural storyteller with a thrilling and theatrically paced rendition of Sibelius’s Second Symphony.However much Enescu has been lionized here, aspects of his legacy continue to be reappraised or even rediscovered by Romanians. The pianist Angela Draghicescu garnered media interest around the country for introducing to the festival the long-forgotten Piano Trio No. 1, from 1897, which she performed with colleagues from the Berlin Philharmonic.Draghicescu gave the trio its belated American premiere in 2019 and has become an authority on the enigmatic history of this precocious, Brahms-besotted score, written by Enescu when he was 16 and first discovered as a student in Paris.“It’s still unknown,” she says, “and only now, after the U.S. premiere, has it started to gain an international reputation.”A surprising number of works also received their belated Romanian premieres. One of these was Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s 1920 opera “Die Tote Stadt,” performed by the Enescu Philharmonic in a concert version infused with loving detail by the conductor Frédéric Chaslin. In the opera’s final moments, the central character recognizes the futility of his desire to arrest time and loss. The score’s radiant resolution settled like a benediction across the vast space of the Sala Palatului, a former congress hall for the Romanian Communist Party whose exterior still bears the scars of bullets from the 1989 revolution.Constantinescu has guided the festival since shortly after that traumatizing transition, but, along with Jurowski, he has announced his intention to depart following this 25th edition. The sought-after Romanian conductor Cristian Macelaru has been rumored to succeed him. Or was it just coincidence that toward the end of the festival, the announcement came that Macelaru had committed to record Enescu’s complete orchestral oeuvre with the Orchestra de France for Deutsche Grammophon? More

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      Carnegie Hall Counts Down to Its Reopening

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      “The biggest variables — box office sales and venue rentals — are moving in a good direction,” says the director of the hall, which opens its season Oct. 6.The pianos have been tuned. The crimson carpets have been cleaned. The crystal chandeliers have been dusted.After nearly 19 months without concerts, Carnegie Hall, the nation’s pre-eminent concert space, plans to reopen its doors to the public on Oct. 6.With the coronavirus still omnipresent, the reopening is a logistical feat, involving questions about air-ventilation systems, crowd control and hand-sanitizing stations.It’s also an emotional moment for Carnegie, which lost millions of dollars in ticket sales during the pandemic and at one point was forced to reduce its staff by nearly half. The hall is grappling with an anticipated budget deficit of up to $10 million and is planning a lighter-than-usual season of about 100 concerts (versus the usual 150) as it tries to gauge demand.Clive Gillinson, Carnegie’s executive and artistic director, inside hall’s archives.Michael George for The New York TimesClive Gillinson, the hall’s executive and artistic director since 2005, says Carnegie is ready for the challenge. The hall has added entrances, upgraded ventilation systems and increased the frequency of bathroom cleaning.“We have to keep adapting to whatever the situation is, not only to look after people as best we can, but also for people to feel as safe as they can,” Gillinson said. “It’s reality as well as perception. Both are equally important.”In an interview, Gillinson discussed the new season, which begins with the Philadelphia Orchestra and its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, performing Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the virtuoso Yuja Wang alongside works by Valerie Coleman, Iman Habibi, Bernstein and Beethoven.Gillinson also spoke about the lack of racial diversity in classical music and the return of the arts amid the pandemic. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Carnegie has been closed for the longest stretch in its history. Are you confident audiences will come back, especially given the continuing spread of the virus and the need for added safety protocols?Without doubt some people will be concerned. All I can say is the reaction we’ve had has been the opposite. It’s been that everybody is so thrilled that things are coming back to life again. When we opened the box office, beginning to start on the road back, we had people in tears because they were so excited about actually being able to buy tickets again. But at the same time, we feel we’ve got to look after the people who have still got concerns.During the height of the pandemic Carnegie was forced to make substantial cuts, including reducing its staff to 190, from 350. How are you planning the new season amid all the uncertainty?The biggest variables — box office sales and venue rentals — are moving in a good direction at the moment. But that doesn’t mean we count anything as done until we’ve completed the season. You have to be working incredibly hard all the time. You have to be responding to everything that’s happening every day because life just does change every day during Covid.What are you seeing so far in terms of ticket sales?The opening concerts look really strong and very positive. The others will continue to sell as we go along.We deliberately didn’t over-pack the fall. It’s much busier from the new year onward because we just wanted to make sure audiences had time to build up their confidence, and time to really get re-engaged with going out again. So it’s a very deliberate strategy.Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra will reopen the hall in the first of their seven Carnegie concerts this season.Chris LeeSince announcing the season earlier this year you’ve added a few concerts to the schedule, including a complete cycle of Beethoven’s symphonies with Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra that was supposed to happen last year. How did you decide what to revive?When we had to cancel because of Covid, I spoke to Yannick and said, “Look, I promise that we will bring this back in the future.” It was something that meant a huge amount to him. The Philadelphia Orchestra commissioned some contemporary works to go alongside the cycle that would actually have some sort of reflection on the world we live in today and look at Beethoven through that light.The minute we were able to open and the governor gave everybody permission to open with full seating, the first thing I did was phone Yannick to say: “This is it, if there’s any way you can do it. I promised you we would bring this back. How about now?” They jumped at it.At the same time there are many artists whose concerts were canceled who you haven’t been able to reschedule. How are you dealing with that?We do feel an obligation to try and bring people back who we haven’t been able to bring back so far. So that’s going to take some time, because if you lose a year and a half of concerts, there’s a lot of concerts. Sometimes the world can move on as well and they’ll be doing other things and there’ll be other repertoire. But we are looking to do the best we can in terms of looking after the people we had to cancel.The Sphinx Virtuosi perform at Carnegie on Oct. 15.Stephanie BergerDo you worry the pandemic has hurt the careers of rising artists whose engagements at Carnegie or elsewhere were canceled?One of the things I’ve always felt about what we do is that the great artists will always come through and they’ll always succeed. They’ve got something to say that is really important to people. Something like this clearly will have changed plans and will have delayed very early-days careers. But the reality is, I think talent and great artistry are never lost. That never, ever goes away.What about smaller venues and less established artists, who suffered a great deal during the pandemic. Do you think they will make a comeback? Has the pandemic fundamentally changed which kinds of artists and groups can survive?Some of the most innovative, interesting, imaginative work that’s ever happened is going on in New York. It’s the most dynamic scene we’ve ever seen.They’re very entrepreneurial people. They’re very creative people. And they’ll find a way to survive. It’s not like all us large organizations where we have massive overhead, much of which we can’t change.The pandemic has made it very difficult for many ensembles to go on extensive global tours, with stops at Carnegie and other venues. How do you think the pandemic will change touring?You’ve got all the issues like climate change and so on. I think there are going to be a lot more question marks about orchestras at least asking themselves how much touring they should be doing. And I think what they do, they will want it to have greater significance than it had before.It’s not just a question of touring and saying, “I’ve appeared in this city and that city.” It’s: “What have I left behind? Is there is there a legacy or is this something important that came out of my having been there?”This season Carnegie will prominently feature Valery Gergiev, the Russian conductor and friend of Vladimir Putin, who will perform a series of concerts with both the Vienna Philharmonic and the Mariinsky Orchestra. How do you respond to those who think he shouldn’t be given such an opportunity, given his silence on abuses in Russia?Why should artists be the only people in the world who are not allowed to have political opinions? My view is you only judge people on their artistry. If somebody was a racist or somebody said things that were clearly abusive of other races or other people in certain ways, that is completely different and that is unacceptable. But in terms of them being entitled to an opinion which happens to be a political opinion, they have every right as every other single member of society has.What do you make of the current debate around the idea that classical music, which has long been dominated by white, male composers, is racist, and that it has not adequately grappled with questions about representation and diversity?If you think of Western culture, literature, painting, music, the bulk of it was done by people who were white in one form or another. And it’s not invalidated. I always worry when people try and apply today’s values to the world of 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 300 years ago, because the fact is, what people were trying to do at that time was completely different and it was relevant for its time. We’ve got to be relevant for our time. Diversity is unbelievably important. That is central to the sort of society we must live in now. And that doesn’t invalidate the fact that there was great art created, and OK, a lot of it was created by white people, and some of it was created by people who were racists.Carnegie was one of the first institutions to impose a vaccine mandate for audiences. Did you meet any resistance?I’ve had a very, very small number of emails from people saying: “This is ridiculous. You’re being paranoid. It’s completely unnecessary.” But we know the world we live in has very, very different views on this. We can only have one view, which is, how do we look after people?How do you see the future of the arts in light of the pandemic?How people are likely to feel, nobody can judge that. We can’t tell. But I do think the arts will come roaring back.Why do people live in New York City? Why do the big companies want to be here? Why do the headquarters want to be here? Why is there all this tourism? Culture is the magnet that actually makes New York New York. More