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      ‘The Opposite of Airlines’: When Larger Audiences Require Fewer Seats

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      Yes, the comfy chair. The War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco put in roomier seats just in time to try to lure audiences back from the couches they got used to during the shutdown.SAN FRANCISCO — Wagner was the worst. Five hours — sometimes more — of squirming in 1932-era seats at the War Memorial Opera House here, sinking into lumpy, dusty cushions, suffering the bulge of the springs and the pinch of the wide armrests, craning for a glimpse of the stage around the head of the tall person one row ahead.“Particularly on a long opera — oh my God,” said Tapan Bhat, a tech executive and a season-ticket holder at the San Francisco Opera since 1996.When the San Francisco Opera opens Saturday, starting its scaled-back 99th season with Puccini’s “Tosca” after a shutdown of more than a year, those punishing seats will be gone. The opera has used its forced sabbatical to complete a long-planned $3.53 million project to replace all 3,128 seats with more comfortable, roomier ones. The opera used its forced sabbatical to complete a long-planned $3.53 million project to replace its 3,128 seats. Kelsey McClellan for The New York TimesAnd San Francisco is not alone. Theaters, concert halls and sports arenas around the country have been increasingly investing in comfort in recent years — with wider and plusher seats — to try to accommodate audiences that have grown in breadth, if not in numbers. In the early 1960s, when the War Memorial Opera House was only a few decades old, the average weight of adult men in the United States was 168 pounds, according to federal data; it is now 199.8 pounds.Since the pandemic struck, the owners of theaters and live venues have come to see such investments as more urgent than ever. As coronavirus restrictions are dropped, presenters face the challenge of luring back patrons who, during more than a year without theaters, have grown accustomed to consuming home entertainment from the sprawling comfort of their own couches and recliners.“The entire patron experience has really been under a lot of scrutiny,” said Gary F. Martinez, a partner with OTJ Architects, a Washington-based firm. “Venues are working diligently to improve that experience. We’ve never spent so much time on seats.”The Lyric Opera of Chicago put in wider seats in the summer of 2020, following the example of the Music Hall in Cincinnati and the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. On Broadway, where older theaters have been notorious for cramped quarters, the Hudson Theater added wider seats during a recent renovation. The seats in the new Yankee Stadium are wider than those in the old one, and venues including the Daytona Speedway and Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore added wider seats during recent renovations.The old seats were thick with faded cushioning and challenging to climb out of, and had wide armrests that made them feel narrower.Kelsey McClellan for The New York TimesEven before the shutdown, audience members of all sizes were growing accustomed to ever-larger, ever-sharper television screens with an ever-broader array of streaming options. And when people did go out, many had seen the what-could-be potential in movie theaters that had installed wide, comfortable stadium-style seats, which recline and have slots for drinks and, sometimes, trays for snacks. Why pay as much as 20 times the cost of a movie — tickets at the San Francisco Opera go for up to $398 a seat — to be scrunched up in a cramped holdover from the last century?“I think anything we can do to break down barriers and improve the experience we should be doing,” said Matthew Shilvock, the general director of the San Francisco Opera. “If someone is having an uncomfortable evening at the opera that is an experience they should not be having.”“The seats have historically been patrons’ No. 1 concern for the building,” he said. “Letters to me. Letters to the box office. Letters to the city. And with some justification. We had springs coming through some of the seats.”San Francisco put in its new seats just in time for the reopening of the opera and the San Francisco Ballet, which share the stage of the War Memorial. The new seats have wooden backs, which could improve the acoustics, and cup holders. (No clinky ice cubes will be allowed, though.)Kelsey McClellan for The New York TimesThe new, ergonomically tuned chairs are slightly higher, roomier and firmer than the old ones. There is 2.5 inches more leg room, and the chairs have been staggered to improve sightlines, giving even the shortest operagoers and balletomanes a better shot at seeing what is taking place onstage. The seat widths are about the same as before, ranging from 19 inches to 23 inches, but the new armrests are narrower, making seats feel roomier. And there are cup holders for those who want to bring a drink to their seat. (Ice, though, with all its clinking distractions, is not permitted).Comfort comes at a cost: This will mean a loss of 114 seats, and the revenue they bring.The situation in Chicago was not quite as dire as in San Francisco — its seats were at least renovated in 1993 — but they were decidedly in need of replacement. The widths of Lyric seats ranged from 18 to 22 inches before the renovation; now they range from 19 to 23 inches. The number of seats there was reduced from 2,564 to 2,274.“We are doing the opposite of airlines,” said Michael Smallwood, the technical director at the Lyric Opera, referring to the practice of cramming more narrow seats onto planes. “Now you can sit at home and watch Netflix. People want to be comfortable. Operas want to be long. People expect different things.”“To put it bluntly, it takes a lot more effort to sell a ticket these days,” Smallwood said. “You want it to be comfortable so they’ll be here again.”Many of the seats in the New York Philharmonic’s Lincoln Center home, David Geffen Hall, will be a bit wider as well when its current renovation is complete. While most of the seats in its old hall were 20 inches wide or less, more than three-quarters of the new seats will be 21 inches wide or wider.The San Francisco Opera will return to the opera house on Saturday with “Tosca.” Alfred Walker, left, and Michael Fabiano sang at a recent rehearsal.Cory WeaverThe seat backs in San Francisco were once covered with cushioning. The back of each seat is now wood; doing away with that cushioning means more leg room for those sitting behind. “I am 6-foot-1 without shoes,” said Danielle St. Germain-Gordon, the interim executive director of the San Francisco Ballet. “And I have very long legs. They were the type of seats that when I sat in them, my knees came up to my belly button.”The old seats at the War Memorial had become vintage relics, thick with faded cushioning and challenging to climb out of, a particular concern to the opera crowd, which tends to skew older.“Like those seats you saw when you went to your grandma’s,” said Jennifer E. Norris, the assistant managing director of the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center, who oversaw the project. “You know, when your grandma had her favorite chair and it sits a little too low, and was a little too worn.”With uncushioned seat backs, the sound in the hall should be crisper. “Applause won’t die in the room, so you’ll have a great sense of enthusiasm around you,” Norris said. “It’s also possible the lady with the candy wrapper will annoy us more. I am hoping that peer pressure will remind her to unwrap her candy before the performance begins.”The renovation began in 2013 with replacement of seats on the box level, and it includes 12 bariatric seats, designed to hold weights of up to 300 pounds, that will be 28 inches wide, as well as 38 spaces for wheelchairs, an increase of six from before the renovation. The project was funded by a ticket fee ranging from $1 to $3.The new seats were designed by Ducharme Seating of Montreal, which also installed seats at the renovated David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, as well as halls in Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Toronto. The historical nature of the Beaux-Arts building near San Francisco City Hall — it opened in 1932 — and the exacting demands of its high-end opera house and ballet made this project particularly complicated.“This is the most extensive design we have ever done on a seat,” said Eric Rocheleau, the president of Ducharme Seating. “The opera houses are always the most stringent customers.”Germain-Gordon said that theaters probably have little choice but to invest this kind of money as the world slowly returns to normal after the pandemic. “People can have in their home a beautiful media room,” she said. “Back in the olden days, if you wanted to see something you had to go see it. Nobody had TVs the size of movie screens, or La-Z-Boys. But people are investing in their comfort and they want to see it when they go out.”Bhat, the tech executive, said anything would be better than the seats he had suffered over 25 years of long nights at the opera.“They were creaky,” he said. “The upholstery would be fraying. So if you’re sitting in an opera in less than comfortable seats, something that’s going on for four and a half hours, or the first act of ‘Götterdämmerung,’ which is like 90 minutes long — it’s torture.” More

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      A Celebrated Afghan School Fears the Taliban Will Stop the Music

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      The Afghanistan National Institute of Music became a symbol of the country’s changing identity.For more than a decade, the Afghanistan National Institute of Music has stood as a symbol of the country’s changing identity. The school trained hundreds of young artists, many of them orphans and street hawkers, in artistic traditions that were once forbidden by the Taliban. It formed an all-female orchestra that performed widely in Afghanistan and abroad.But in recent days, as the Taliban have been consolidating control over Afghanistan again, the school’s future has come into doubt.In interviews, several students and teachers said they feared the Taliban, who have a history of attacking the school’s leaders, would seek to punish people affiliated with the school as well as their families. Some said they worried the school will be shut down and they will not be allowed to play again. Several female students said they had been staying inside their homes since the capital was seized on Sunday“It’s a nightmare,” Ahmad Naser Sarmast, the head of the school, said in a telephone interview from Melbourne, Australia, where he arrived last month for medical treatment.The Taliban banned most forms of music when they previously ruled Afghanistan, from 1996 to 2001. This time, they have promised a more tolerant approach, vowing not to carry out reprisals against their former enemies and saying that women will be allowed to work and study “within the bounds of Islamic law.”But the Taliban’s history of violence toward artists and its general intolerance for music without religious meaning has sowed doubts among many performers.“My concern is that the people of Afghanistan will be deprived of their music,” Mr. Sarmast said. “There will be an attempt to silence the nation.”In 2010, Mr. Sarmast, an Afghan music scholar who was trained in Australia and plays trumpet and piano, opened the school, which has more than 400 students and staff members, with the support of the American-backed government. It was a rarity: a coeducational institution devoted to teaching music from both Afghanistan and the West.The school’s musicians were invited to perform on many of the world’s most renowned stages, including Carnegie Hall. They played Western classical music as well as traditional Afghan music and instruments, like the rubab, which resembles the lute and is one of the national instruments of Afghanistan.The school placed special emphasis on supporting young women, who make up a third of the student body. The school’s all-female orchestra, Zohra, founded in 2015, earned wide acclaim. Many were the first women in their families to receive formal training. In a symbol of its modern ways, head scarves for girls at the school’s campus in Kabul were optional.The school’s habit of challenging tradition made it a target. In 2014, Mr. Sarmast was injured by a Taliban suicide bomber who infiltrated a school play. The Taliban tried to attack the school again in the years that followed, but their attempts were thwarted, Mr. Sarmast said.Now, female students say they are concerned about a return to a repressive past, when the Taliban eliminated schooling for girls and barred women from leaving home without male guardians.Several female students — who were granted anonymity because they feared retaliation — said that it felt like their dreams to become professional musicians could disintegrate. They worried they might not be able to play music again in their lives, even as a hobby.In recent weeks, as the Taliban swept through the country, the school’s network of overseas supporters tried to help by raising money to improve security on campus, including by installing an armed gate and walls.But it’s now unclear if the school will even be permitted to operate under the Taliban. It is also increasingly difficult for citizens of Afghanistan to leave the country. Airport entrances have been chaotic and often impassable scenes for days, even for people with travel documentation. The Taliban control the streets, and though they say they are breaking up crowds at the airport to keep order, there are widespread reports that they are turning people away by force if they try to leave the country.The State Department said in a statement that it was working to get American citizens, as well as locally employed staff and vulnerable Afghans, out of the country, though crowding at the airport had made it more difficult. The department said it was prioritizing Afghan women and girls, human rights defenders and journalists, among others.“This effort is of utmost importance to the U.S. government,” the statement said.In the 1990s, the Taliban permitted religious singing but banned other forms of music because they were seen as distractions to Islamic studies and could encourage impure behavior. Taliban officials destroyed instruments and smashed cassette tapes.Understand the Taliban Takeover in AfghanistanCard 1 of 5Who are the Taliban? More

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      I Found Myself at Band Camp

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      A concert in the morning, then a rehearsal in the afternoon. Bringing your violin outside to practice under the trees, and studying scores before bed.

      Summer is a time of exploration and self-discovery for all kinds of young people. But for budding musicians, band and orchestra camp can be especially transformative.

      It’s their first full immersion in their instrument; an opportunity to meet others who love Beethoven, Barber and bowing technique as much as they do; and a taste of what life as a player might actually be like.

      Here is a glimpse of the 11- to 15-year-old campers this summer in the intermediate division at Interlochen Center for the Arts in Northern Michigan, learning about Mozart and themselves.

      Their schedule includes both regular camp activities (like capture the flag and cleaning the bunk) and, well, less regular ones, like chatting with fellow eighth graders about phrasing in a Mendelssohn quartet.

      This is Anika Patel’s sixth summer at Interlochen. “People are really, really serious about their music here, which I really like.”

      “Living with the people you play with is a different experience,” Trinity Williamson, who plays violin, said.

      “There’s a lot of playful competitiveness.”

      Anthony McGill, the principal clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic, credits Interlochen with showing him what being a musician could be like. “This was the first time I had that level of performances every week, that whole sense of what a regular schedule would be,” he recalled.

      “I was like a professional musician, but I was 11.”

      Román Berris is from Venezuela and took up the oboe when he was 5. “The instrument was really big for me.”

      He was playing first oboe in a recent concert when the conductor told him to stand up after a solo. “All my friends were in the audience, and the ones playing with me, they were clapping for me,” he said.

      “I just met them like five days before, and we were so close.”

      As the intermediate orchestra’s concertmaster, Tai Caputo got to conduct the Interlochen theme song, played after every concert. After being isolated for a year and a half it was even more special.

      “Everyone knew that our time with each other to make music is just really precious.”

      Diamond Ramos played trombone in an ensemble. After six hours of class each day, she also enjoyed making s’mores and going boating.

      Chloe Wyruch is a third-generation camper. “If you’re in your school band, some people’s parents might be making them do it,” she said. “But at Interlochen, everybody is super excited and into it.”

      Looking back, McGill from the New York Philharmonic said, camp “was the first time I was away from home, and it was eight weeks, so I was homesick, but I was able to make serious lifelong friends.”

      Liszt’s “Les Préludes” always closes out the summer. And by then, he said, “everyone is crying.” More

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      After a Quarter-Century, the Queen of Salzburg Calls It Quits

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      Since 1995, Helga Rabl-Stadler has ruled the Salzburg Festival, classical music’s premier annual event, as its president and public face.SALZBURG, Austria — It was intermission at the Salzburg Festival’s surreal and melancholy new production of “Don Giovanni,” and a small crowd of donors filled the office of Helga Rabl-Stadler, the festival’s president since 1995.Dropping the medical-grade FFP2 masks that have been required indoors at the 101-year-old festival, classical music’s premier annual event, the group sipped champagne and nibbled canapés. After some small talk, Rabl-Stadler gave a short speech about this summer’s program, a continuation of last year’s centennial — which was truncated by the pandemic but, through elaborate planning and force of will, not canceled entirely.“We couldn’t celebrate a hundred years,” she said, “by not doing everything.”As the applause died down, Reinold Geiger, the billionaire who runs the French beauty company L’Occitane en Provence, and whom Rabl-Stadler some time ago recruited to help underwrite the festival’s youth programs, spoke up to suggest a reason Salzburg had been one of the few major performing arts events that went forward during 2020.“Maybe,” he said with a smile, “it is because this festival has a president who is a bit unusual.”The Salzburg Festival returned to almost full strength this summer, including Romeo Castellucci’s surreal, melancholy staging of “Don Giovanni.”Monika Rittershaus/Salzburg FestivalComing from a prominent Austrian family, and with long experience in journalism, politics and business, Rabl-Stadler, 73, has indeed been unusually — perhaps uniquely — suited to the job of Salzburg’s de facto chief networker.This is her final summer after 26 years here, far longer than she or anyone else anticipated — and many would be happy for her to stay on. Her genial but no-nonsense presence has become a reassuring sign of stability, and the festival is bracing for a new leader at a delicate moment, as it faces the ongoing pandemic and looks toward a major renovation of its theaters that will cost hundreds of millions of euros.Salzburg is a massive operation, with a budget of roughly 65 million euros ($76.6 million) for about 200 opera, concert and drama performances in a six-week burst starting every July. Managing it in a triumvirate alongside an intendant (artistic director) and a finance director, the president serves as head fund-raiser, but also as a kind of all-purpose sounding board, tension diffuser, public face and global booster: “the principal host of the festival,” as Lukas Crepaz, the head of finance since 2017, put it.Tanja Ariane Baumgartner, left in red, as Klytämnestra and Ausrine Stundyte in the title role of “Elektra.”Bernd Uhlig/Salzburg Festival“She is incredibly loyal to every intendant,” said Markus Hinterhäuser, a longtime festival administrator who has been artistic director since 2017. “She supports me even if she might not always like what I’m doing. She is loyal; she is helpful; she is empathetic.”Rabl-Stadler and the venerable festival have grown synonymous. Last October, when she agreed to extend her contract for one final year, the governor of the region called her “the living embodiment of the Salzburg Festival.”The pandemic has been among her finest moments. Last summer, when few arts institutions were putting on full-scale productions, Salzburg pressed ahead with a curtailed but robust program, including Strauss’s mighty “Elektra” — with the full forces of the Vienna Philharmonic, the festival’s house band, crowded into the pit. Rabl-Stadler and her team lobbied politicians to make it all possible, rallied governmental and private funding sources to make up for ticket revenue lost because of capacity restrictions, and created an intricate safety plan.Then, this summer, Salzburg returned at nearly full strength. The festival brought back the two operas mounted last year, both set among a contemporary bourgeoisie much like the audience here. “Elektra” was conducted with cool elegance by Franz Welser-Möst and featured a laser-focused Vida Mikneviciute as Chrysothemis. A spare “Così Fan Tutte,” presented in a single, substantially cut act, was tenderly led by Joana Mallwitz and boasted, in Elsa Dreisig and Marianne Crebassa, commandingly sympathetic sister protagonists.Marianne Crebassa and Bogdan Volkov in a spare production of “Così Fan Tutte.”Monika Rittershaus/Salzburg FestivalBut Romeo Castellucci’s hotly anticipated staging of “Don Giovanni” was dreary, an unsatisfying mixture of naturalism with ambiguous symbols like basketballs and a meat slicer. Set in a permanent haze behind a scrim, the production, aided by clever casting and costuming, at least finally made Giovanni and his servant, Leporello, the uncanny doppelgängers they are in the libretto. Teodor Currentzis conducted his ensemble, MusicAeterna, with solemnity verging on somnolence. Handel’s “Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno,” set by the director Robert Carsen in the aftermath of a reality-TV model competition and conceived as a vehicle for Cecilia Bartoli, was unremarkably sung, if sensitively played by Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco under Gianluca Capuano.But the concerts over a week in the middle of August were superb, including Evgeny Kissin’s pensive reading of Berg’s Piano Sonata, which felt the natural partner of the works by Gershwin and Chopin that joined it on the program. The violinist Isabelle Faust was the soloist in a sparkling “Mozart-Matinee” performance. A rapt audience packed the Kollegienkirche for Morton Feldman’s simmering monodrama “Neither.” MusicAeterna brought vibrancy to a Rameau program, if also a tendency to overdo gimmicks like foot-stomping and dramatic lighting shifts.In a staging inspired by reality TV, Handel’s “Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno” was a vehicle for Cecilia Bartoli.Monika Rittershaus/Salzburg FestivalThe Vienna Philharmonic, which appeared in almost everything, showed off its prodigious range over 12 hours on Aug. 15, including an afternoon “Così” and the evening premiere of a rare staging of Luigi Nono’s “Intolleranza 1960.” A coruscating parable of emigration, discrimination and violence, the work whips between ethereal choral chants and pummeling roars and shrieks, both instrumental and vocal. The director, Jan Lauwers, choreographed an endless danse macabre of bodies rushing around the stage, and Ingo Metzmacher conducted with nearly miraculous delicacy and precision.The Philharmonic had started its day at 11 that morning, playing Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” under Riccardo Muti, a Salzburg fixture for 50 years who was conducting the work this summer for the first time. The performance was the glory of seven days at the festival: radiant, intense, dignified, grand. And there was Rabl-Stadler in her seat on the aisle, leaning forward to chat with friends before the lights dimmed, and perusing the program as she listened.She was born in Salzburg in 1948. Her father, Gerd Bacher, was an influential journalist and media executive who eventually became the head of ORF, the Austrian national broadcaster; her mother was a fashion businesswoman. Rabl-Stadler spent time as a newspaper columnist; working for her mother’s business; as a member of parliament for the conservative ÖVP, or Austrian People’s Party; and as head of Salzburg’s chamber of commerce before coming to the festival in 1995, anticipating she’d stay perhaps 10 years.“She was not always like she is now,” Hinterhäuser said. “She had difficulties at the beginning; real difficulties.”The director Jan Lauwers choreographed an endless danse macabre of bodies rushing around the stage in Luigi Nono’s “Intolleranza 1960.”Maarten Vanden Abeele/Salzburg FestivalFor decades the festival had been ruled — and set firmly in its ways — by the conductor Herbert von Karajan. When he died, in 1989, the brilliant, pugnacious Gerard Mortier was brought in as artistic leader; in his flair for modern provocations, he represented a break with the Karajan era.But for all his artistic coups, Mortier hogged the spotlight and thrived on tensions, alienating conductors, directors and the Vienna Philharmonic, and secretly seeking to sideline Rabl-Stadler. The move backfired, and when he left a few years later, in 2001, the tenure of his replacement, the far more introverted Peter Ruzicka, proved an opportunity for her to come into her own.Her savvy and determination revived a long-stagnant effort to renovate the smallest of the festival’s three opera houses — which she set on track to open in 2006, Mozart’s 250th birthday year, when the festival planned to present all 22 of his operas. The Haus für Mozart, as the theater was called, became informally known as the Haus für Helga.“When you ask me what I did for the festival,” she said, “I can say that without me there would not be a Haus für Mozart.”She proved agile at courting corporate sponsors, and instituted (and starred in) a globe-trotting road show in the off-season to broaden Salzburg’s appeal around the world. She helped heal the raw relations with the Philharmonic.Through the brief tenures of Jürgen Flimm and Alexander Pereira, she was asked to take on more and still more responsibilities — including, for seven years, the combined duties of the president and finance director. On top of all that, for the summers of 2015 and ’16 she filled in as an artistic leader alongside Sven-Eric Bechtolf, to fill the gap before Hinterhäuser’s arrival. She was bruisingly overworked. But with Hinterhäuser and Crepaz, real stability arrived at last — the kind that could survive even the pandemic.While she has left sponsorship deals in place to tide the next president over for a time, that new person will preside over the continuing effects of the coronavirus. Rabl-Stadler’s replacement will be selected by the festival’s board, which is drawn from different levels of Austrian politics.“It’s a political decision,” Hinterhäuser said. “And I’m a little concerned which direction they will go. It will be a very decisive decision for the future of the festival.”It is considered likely that the next president will be a woman, since Crepaz (whose contract lasts until 2027) and Hinterhäuser (until 2026) are both men. But beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess.“A president is not a sponsorship department,” Hinterhäuser said. “This person has to have real empathy for what the festival is, what we do, what we want to achieve. I really believe in a kind of cosmopolitan elegance; it’s the Salzburg Festival, but it’s open to more than 80 countries. And then you need a very remarkable political and economic network — and also the capacity not just to have this network, but to use it in an intelligent way.”The next president will be tasked with advancing a long-simmering renovation plan that is currently budgeted at about 300 million euros (about $350 million). If the person can bring that project over the finish line, it will be a Haus für Helga-style achievement.Next summer, the consummate Salzburger won’t be in town: Rabl-Stadler plans to rent a villa in Tuscany so as not to seem to loom over her successor. During an interview, her voice grew thick with emotion recalling what Riccardo Muti had told her a few minutes before, as he embraced her backstage.“Helga,” he said, “the festival will not be the same without you.” More

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      A Reliably Varied Music Festival Returns to New York

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      Time Spans, a wide-ranging immersion in contemporary work, balances good taste and risk-taking.The Time Spans festival has carved out a unique place for itself in New York’s musical life over the past decade — and not just because it occupies an otherwise barren stretch of the calendar in late August.This contemporary-music event, now a multiweek affair, is that perfect paradox: reliably varied. On successive evenings you might find electroacoustic experiments, meditative string quartets and barreling pieces for chamber orchestra.There is no stylistic tribalism on offer, just a sagacious balance of good taste and calculated risk-taking. That’s thanks in part to the curatorial hand of the festival’s executive and artistic director, Thomas Fichter, a veteran bassist.And it’s also because of the quality of the performers. Ensembles like the JACK Quartet and Alarm Will Sound may well be familiar to music lovers. But they’re rarely presented in such concentrated helpings. Each Time Spans show generally lasts about an hour, while managing to feel like a full meal.After the pandemic led to the cancellation of last year’s festival, Time Spans restarts live performances on Tuesday, and runs through Aug. 29. Presented by the Earle Brown Music Foundation Charitable Trust, and held once again at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in Manhattan, it’s an early sign of concert life springing back to action in the city this fall.Here is a closer look at four of this edition’s presentations. (Details about the festival’s Covid-19 safety protocols are available at timespans.org.)‘Or we don’t need light’The cellist Mariel Roberts’s debut album, “Nonextraneous Sounds,” announced her as a talent to watch back in 2012. Since then, she has commissioned music by George Lewis and joined the Wet Ink Ensemble, a respected collection of composers and instrumentalists. Her first composition for the full group will be heard at the ensemble’s Time Spans slot on Friday, and draws its inspiration from a narrative embedded within “Seiobo There Below,” a novel by the Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai.“The story is about this man who’s going to the Acropolis,” she said in a recent interview, “and he’s trying to climb up on the Acropolis. But the light is so intense and unyielding that he can’t even see his surroundings. I thought that was an interesting concept in music, as well.”She added that the piece shares some traits with “Armament” — her recent, often ferocious solo album of her own works that closes with some earnest (if still aggressive) passages of lament.

      Armament by Mariel RobertsBoth “Or we don’t need light” and “Armament” make use of electronics, she said, adding that among the two works, “there’s a relation in that I’m interested in exploring beautiful harmonies, but with really kind of gruff and intense textures layered on top of them, almost obscuring them a lot of the time.”‘La Arqueología del Neón’The composer Oscar Bettison’s gutsy, peripatetic “Livre des Sauvages” was a notable highlight of the 2018 Time Spans festival, when it was played by the Talea Ensemble. (It has since been recorded for the Wergo label by Ensemble Musikfabrik.)Oscar Bettison’s “Livre des Sauvages”Ensemble Musikfabrik (Wergo 68692)On Aug. 23, Bettison and Talea reunite for a new work that channels similar energies. “I’ve got a little obsession about artificiality,” he said. “You know, distortion. There’s a lot of preparation on instruments. Those are the two things that are sort of themes that I keep coming back to in things I do.”“This piece is very up,” he added. “It’s always trying to move; it’s very frenetic.”This opus, though, is more intimate in forces than “Livre des Sauvages”; it’s written for just seven players. “I think of this piece as really being a chamber concerto for Talea,” Bettison said. “They really like to work, you know? They like to get into it. I wanted to write something that would push them a bit.”‘Neumond’The percussion and piano quartet Yarn/Wire is playing the premiere of a piece by Wolfgang Heiniger.Bobby FisherTo get a preview of Yarn/Wire’s next album, which will be released on the Wergo imprint on Sept. 10, you can hear its Time Spans set on Aug. 24. In addition to pieces by Andrew McIntosh and Zosha Di Castri, this percussion and piano quartet will give the premiere of this work by Wolfgang Heiniger.This is truly a premiere, said Russell Greenberg, one of the group’s percussionists, since the album version was recorded in multitrack fashion — with percussion and keyboard parts (and even some vocals) recorded individually.“So this will be the first time we’ve played it live,” Greenberg said.“The surface melodies and the harmonies, they’re so unique and dramatic; they kind of hit you immediately,” he said, adding, of Heiniger: “He thinks of it as a passacaglia. It’s pretty short, and just these motives just keep coming along. When I sent him the record, he said, ‘Yes you got it; it’s so goth.’”‘For George Lewis’The composer and instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey has formed a productive collaboration in recent years with the ensemble Alarm Will Sound. The group’s players have immersed themselves in his ongoing work “Autoschediasms” — which blends Sorey’s conducting skills, improvisational responsiveness and ventures into notated composition — with sterling results.They’ve also been preparing his meditative, fully notated tribute to the composer George Lewis, a mentor of Sorey’s. In an interview, Alarm Will Sound’s conductor, Alan Pierson, spoke of “a deliberateness with which Tyshawn places each of the sounds in this environment” as the work’s defining characteristic. (A recording will be released on the Cantaloupe label on Aug. 27.)“This is not a piece that belongs on a concert with other music,” he added. “So we’re really carefully and thoughtfully designing an experience of the piece for the DiMenna Center.” The ensemble will appear in the round, with specially planned lighting.“He spends all this time creating this landscape,” Pierson said, “and then once you’re there, there’s a kind of magical thing that happens — about 40 minutes into the piece — where Tyshawn suddenly takes you back to where the piece started. But takes a subtly different path, and makes the space for this really unexpectedly beautiful melodic thing to happen.”Time SpansThrough Aug. 29 at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in Manhattan; timespans.org. More

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      Glimmerglass Creates Magic in Its Own Backyard

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      The pandemic forced the company outdoors and to trim staples by Verdi and Mozart. Our critic found the experience to be ripe with potential for drawing in new audiences.COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — The Glimmerglass Festival has long boasted two features that made it a magnet for opera lovers during summer seasons: A bucolic setting in upstate New York, and the acoustically splendid, ideally intimate Alice Busch Opera Theater, which has a sizable stage and just 914 seats.That very intimacy has made this theater an especially challenging space to present works during the pandemic, and like most performing arts institutions, Glimmerglass was closed last summer, though there was some online programming. But in July live opera came back: the company hosted a monthlong outdoor season — at least it could make the most of its environment.Under the adventurous leadership of Francesca Zambello, the Glimmerglass Festival built a temporary stage on the grassy grounds of the campus. Audience members either sit on the lawn in socially distanced squares, or purchase one of 14 wood sheds, seating six. Of course amplification was necessary. The singers wear microphones; the Glimmerglass Festival orchestra performed from the stage of the opera house, with its sound channeled into the general amplification. (Singers watch the conductor via video monitors.)Natural sound has been the glory of opera for centuries. It’s always hard to fully assess amplified voices. Yet, for the four rewarding programs I took in recently, the sound came across with resonance (sometimes too much) and clarity. The lawn theater, created by the set designer Peter J. Davison, served its function: the raised wood stage is framed by a network of black steel beams, with colored light bulbs dangling on cords from above. A group of tree trunks off to one side provided a permanent feature of scenic designs and blended in magically with the forest background.Raehann Bryce-Davis, a mezzo-soprano with a burnished voice and dramatic fervor, as Azucena in “Il Trovatore.”Karli Cadel/Glimmerglass FestivalThe ongoing challenges of Covid-19 compelled the company to keep performances to 90 minutes or less, with no intermissions. That meant making considerable trims to staples like Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” and Mozart’s “The Magic Flute.” For some devotees this might seem sacrilegious. But during earlier golden eras of opera works were routinely cut. I found the experience fascinating, and rich with potential for drawing in new audiences. Zambello said in an interview that with the informal outdoor setting and intermission-less programs, the festival attracted many people attending for the first time. The crowds have averaged about 700 per performance, she said. The audiences I saw — beginning on Thursday morning with “Il Trovatore” — were eager, despite some steamy weather.The core of the “Trovatore” story might seem the ill-fated love between Leonora, a lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Aragon, and Manrico, the troubadour of the title, an officer in the forces of a rival prince at time of civil war. But the opera is driven by Azucena, supposedly the mother of Manrico, who is consumed with fulfilling her mother’s dying command to “Avenge me,” after the woman was accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake.Zambello, who directed the production with Eric Sean Fogel, decided to make Azucena the focus. This adaptation, set in contemporary times, opened with Part 2 of Verdi’s work, which the composer subtitled “The Gypsy.” Here, Azucena (Raehann Bryce-Davis, a mezzo-soprano with a burnished voice and dramatic fervor) sang the character’s gloomy, haunting aria, when she recalls her mother’s dying words, while looking at a steel container emitting smoke from burning refuse. Then, we were taken back to the actual start of the work, the scene with Ferrando (Peter Morgan) and his band of soldiers, here presented as scrappy militia forces of the count.In an opera with a plot as convoluted as this one, it was hard to complain that the reordering of scenes made a hash of the story. Dramatically, the reframing certainly gave a central place to the obsessed Azucena. The bright-voiced veteran tenor Gregory Kunde was a volatile Manrico; the soprano Latonia Moore, the Leonora of this production, was ill on Thursday and replaced by Alexandria Shiner, who displayed a gleaming, powerful voice. The young baritone Michael Mayes was a compelling Count di Luna. Joseph Colaneri conducted a sure-paced account of the abbreviated score.Eric Owens and Lisa Marie Rogali in “The Magic Flute.”Karli Cadel/Glimmerglass FestivalThat evening came Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” performed in an English adaptation and translation by Kelley Rourke, directed by NJ Agwuna, and conducted by Colaneri. This trimmed version introduced Sarastro, the priest who heads a temple of wisdom, as the narrator of Mozart’s fairy-tale opera. We first saw him (the formidable bass-baritone Eric Owens) reading the tale from a huge story book.The concept allowed the creative team to do away with whole chunks of spoken dialogue in Mozart’s work, which, truth to tell, there’s too much of. The other leads, mostly younger artists, were all impressive: the tenor Aaron Crouch as the questing Tamino; the soprano Helen Zhibing Huang as the tender Pamina; Emily Misch as the fearsome Queen of the Night; Michael Pandolfo as a wonderfully hardy Papageno.Concerns during a pandemic about casting three children in the roles of the three boys led to a bold decision: The three ladies who serve the queen see the light, turn against her, and eventually side with Sarastro! So they become the guiding spirits who help bring the opera to its joyous end. And why not? The relative goodness and badness of the characters in this opera is an open question.On Friday morning, the festival presented the final performance of a new play with music, “The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson,” which tells the story of the pioneering founder of the National Negro Opera Company in the early 1940s. Sandra Seaton wrote the play, which loosely focuses on an incident in 1943, when Dawson, who had been presenting opera performances on a floating barge on the Potomac River, tried to book a hall in Washington, D.C., for a performance of “Carmen.” But she was met with Jim Crow policies that would have entailed playing before a segregated audience, which she refuses here to do.Denyce Graves, center, with, to her left, Mia Athey, Victoria Lawal and Jonathan Pierce Rhodes in the world premiere of “The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson.” The play by Sandra Seaton has music by Carlos Simon. Karli Cadel/Glimmerglass Festival“Passion,” directed by Kimille Howard, was conceived as a vehicle for the mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves, who was glamorous, gritty and poignant in the title role. We see her rehearsing three young singers (Victoria Lawal, Mia Athey, Jonathan Pierce Rhodes) for the “Carmen” she hopes to present, while taking infuriating calls from the renter of the hall. Dawson’s story is little-known and this work is an important step in telling it. In a revealing moment for Dawson, we hear Graves sing a melting, wistful song, “Free,” by the composer Carlos Simon, with words by Seaton. But this 70-minute play could benefit by being a little longer and having more of Simon’s music. Zambello, in the interview, said she hopes to develop the work further with Graves in mind.Weather, of course, is always a factor in outdoor opera, and rain and lightning forced the cancellation of Friday evening’s performance of “Songbird,” an adaptation of Offenbach’s “La Périchole.” (It was only the second cancellation, so far, of a 28-performance season.)“Gods and Mortals,” on Saturday morning, was a 90-minute program of excerpts from Wagner operas, directed by Zambello (with Foley as associate) and led by Colaneri. The work came across not just as a staged concert, but also as a dramatic entity on its own terms. Selections from “Tannhäuser,” the “Ring” operas, “Der Fliegende Holländer” and, a rarity, “Die Feen,” Wagner’s first completed opera, were presented in a manner that invited you to simply follow the themes of fate, love, mortality and the supernatural that run through Wagner’s works.The singers were excellent. Shiner, so good in “Trovatore,” was the star here, singing several excerpts thrillingly. Ian Koziara proved a youthful, exciting Wagner tenor. Owens gave a solemnly expressive account of Wotan’s farewell from “Die Walküre.” There was even a feisty performance, with six female singers wearing jeans and forest-green T-shirts, of the “Ride of the Valkyries” ensemble, against a dream-come-true Wagnerian backdrop: a real forest.From left: Mia Athey, Emily Misch, Alexandria Shiner, Stephanie Sanchez and Lisa Marie Rogali in “Gods and Mortals” at the Glimmerglass Festival.Karli Cadel/Glimmerglass FestivalI found the baritone Mark Delavan’s brooding, powerful account of the Dutchman’s monologue from “Holländer” especially moving. He sang this role memorably in 2001, when, four days after the Sept. 11 attacks, New York City Opera returned with a new production of this opera, signaling a first step back to normalcy. The 20th anniversary of that horrific event is coming up, even as New York, the performing arts, and the entire world continue to grapple with a very different kind of crisis. “Glimmerglass on the Grass,” as this summer’s festival was called, provided rewarding signs of renewal.Glimmerglass FestivalThrough Aug. 17; glimmerglass.org. More

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      Review: ‘The Threepenny Opera’ Returns Home, Liberated

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      Barrie Kosky’s new production for the Berliner Ensemble, at the theater where the famous work premiered, knows where to break the rules.BERLIN — “I’m not asking for an opera here,” the notorious criminal Macheath says at his wedding, early in a work that happens to be called “Die Dreigroschenoper” (“The Threepenny Opera”).And in Barrie Kosky’s hauntingly enjoyable new production of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s famous “play with music” for the Berliner Ensemble — at the theater where it premiered in 1928 — Macheath then reaches into the orchestra pit in search of nuptial entertainment and steals the “Threepenny” score from the conductor’s stand. He flips through the pages while humming the show’s big hit, “Mack the Knife,” tears them up and throws the scraps into a metal bucket. Then he lights them on fire.The line “I’m not asking for an opera here” dates back to the ’20s, but Weill and Brecht never wrote what follows — nor did their essential collaborator Elisabeth Hauptmann, who with this production is finally getting proper billing alongside them after decades of neglect. Yet this kind of ironic gesture toward the art form wouldn’t be out of character for them; coming from Kosky, it’s a subtle tribute, and a blazing declaration of independence.It’s a moment, along with many others in Kosky’s production that epitomizes the adage of knowing rules in order to break them.Kosky clearly understands the work: the social critiques that course through Brecht and Hauptmann’s crass text; the ways in which Weill’s earworm score lodges those ideas in your mind; and how, in its tension between words and music, “Threepenny” dares you to connect with it emotionally amid constant reminders of theatrical artifice.He also seems to know that “Threepenny” is ultimately a problem piece. It may be the defining artwork of Weimar-era Berlin, but more often than not it makes for a joyless night at the theater. Its dizzying layers of satire and style tend to overwhelm directors, who as if operating with a Wikipedia understanding easily succumb to visual clichés, vicious affect and didacticism. The worst productions aspire to the sexily somber Berlin of Sam Mendes’s take on the musical “Cabaret.”But “Threepenny” isn’t, as Kosky said in an interview with The New York Times, “‘Cabaret’ with a little bit of intellectualism.” Indeed, it was quintessentially 1920s Berlin — a timely tale, despite its setting of London’s criminal underworld in the 19th century, that became a pop culture phenomenon known as “Threepenny fever” — but its legacy is far richer and more widespread than that. Especially after the 1950s, once the show found belated success in the United States with a long-running adaptation by the composer Marc Blitzstein.Covers of “Mack the Knife” abounded, and made for one of Ella Fitzgerald’s greatest live recordings; Brecht’s poetic lyrics influenced Bob Dylan; the artist Nan Goldin named her photography collection “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” after one of the show’s songs. And the metatheatrical devices of “Threepenny” are alive and well: In Leos Carax’s new film, “Annette,” emotion and artifice fit snugly together in a deliberate tension you could trace back to Brecht and Weill.Even so, the vitality of “Threepenny” depends on intervention and adaptation; it can never be performed, as it too often has been, as a museum piece. And Kosky never treats it as one. Instead he adds and subtracts, breathing new life into a work that desperately needed it. He sheds the excesses of Act I and eliminates entire characters, for example, to reveal a recognizable but freshly presented story focused on that most fundamental of human dramas: love.Capitalism, and Brecht’s scathing indictment of it, still loom over the show — but more obliquely, as an insidious force behind relationships that renders them slippery and unreliable. In Kosky’s view, it also feeds and thwarts Macheath’s pathological need to be loved, whether by his fellow characters or the members of the audience.Nico Holonics portrayed Macheath with a weariness that betrays the darkness behind his carefree demeanor. Joerg Brueggemann/OstkreuzMacheath, a.k.a. Mack the Knife — performed by Nico Holonics with unflappable joy but a weariness that betrays the darkness behind his carefree demeanor — is not a man to give up his habits, as he is described in the show. He gives away wedding rings as if they were pennies, and smiles as he watches women fight over him. Like Don Giovanni, he never loses faith in his ability to manipulate them, even as they abandon him one by one.He is introduced, as ever, with “Mack the Knife” (following the overture, here lithe yet lyrical in chorale-like passages, conducted by Adam Benzwi). Through a curtain of black tinsel, a sparkling face appears — that of Josefin Platt as the Moon Over Soho, a role created for Kosky’s production — to sing the murder ballad with the rapid vibrato of Lotte Lenya, Weill’s wife and a legendary interpreter of his music.Kosky is a showman — just look at the invaluable work he has done to revive Weimar-era operettas at his company here in Berlin, the Komische Oper — and he knows the power of a hit song. So he reprises “Mack the Knife” throughout the evening, at one point having its tune played through one of the souvenir music boxes tourists can buy in his nearby hometown, Dessau.In general, Kosky seems to have more of an affinity for Weill’s music, which he expands with relish, than the text. Where he truly defers to Brecht — his production, after all, is for Brecht’s company — is in the staging, which shatters the fourth wall from the start and continually reminds its audience, in anti-Wagnerian fashion, that what they are seeing isn’t real.Polly Peachum, here a commanding Cynthia Micas, calls for her own spotlight and gestures for the curtain to be raised, revealing a jungle gym of a set (by Rebecca Ringst) that is more dynamic than it at first appears; Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum (the darkly charming Tilo Nest), Polly’s father and Macheath’s underworld rival, cues the orchestra; stagehands make no effort to hide their work.The effect, in Brecht’s school of theater, is to temper the audience’s emotional response and trigger an intellectual one — which is crucial to the political success of “Threepenny,” yet is often difficult to reconcile with the seductive grip of Weill’s music. That can get messy, but Kosky’s production comfortably has it both ways; the result may not please purists of Brecht or Weill, but on balance it makes for persuasive, satisfying drama.And by homing in on Macheath, Kosky allows room for psychological richness, particularly with the women in his orbit: Polly; her mother, Celia Peachum (lent the authority of a power broker by Constanze Becker); Jenny (arguably the soul of the show, wistful and bitter as sung by Bettina Hoppe); and Lucy Brown (Laura Balzer, a master of physical and musical comedy). You could also count among them Lucy’s father, the police chief Tiger Brown, here performed by Kathrin Wehlisch in drag — not a gimmick, but a homoerotic treatment of Macheath’s oldest friendship as yet another fragile romance.From left, Cynthia Micas, Constanze Becker and Tilo Nest as the Peachum family.JR Berliner EnsembleAll these relationships fail — usually because of money, in some way. But Macheath is undeterred, by the end looking for his next connection as a brightly lit sign descends from the rafters: “LOVE ME.” That’s another Brechtian touch, a modern take on the projections used in Caspar Neher’s set for the original 1928 production.But what follows is all Kosky. After the winkingly jubilant finale, the Moon Over Soho shows its face again, bleakly sending off the audience with a “Mack the Knife” verse, written by Brecht in 1930, that says some people are in the dark, and some are in the light; and while you can see those in the light, you’ll never see the ones in the dark.Die DreigroschenoperThrough Sept. 4, then in repertory, at the Berliner Ensemble, Berlin; berliner-ensemble.de. More

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      Jan Lisiecki, Piano’s Doogie Howser, Comes of Age With Chopin

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      For this rising artist, Chopin’s 21 nocturnes are “pieces I play for myself.” A new recording will bring them to an audience.The Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki started out as something of the Doogie Howser of classical music. He was signed by the august record label Deutsche Grammophon when he was just 15, and at 18 was named an unusually young Young Artist of the Year by Gramophone magazine.But Lisiecki’s technique was mature even then, and he won respect from critics and fellow musicians for his clarity and precision.“I appreciate a clean sound,” Lisiecki (pronounced lee-SHETS-kee), now 26 and still living with his Polish-born parents in Calgary, said in a recent interview. “Not too bombastic, not too virtuosic, not too audacious.”Lisiecki is poised and fairly inscrutable during concerts, his eyes often closed. In an interview, Annik LaFarge, the author of “Chasing Chopin,” said she regards his “unhistrionic” style as “extremely Chopinesque.”Chopin, as it happens, is a focus of his young discography. On Friday, Lisiecki released his new recording of that composer’s complete nocturnes, which he set down last October in Berlin for Deutsche Grammophon.Lisiecki (shown here performing last year) is poised and fairly inscrutable during concerts, his eyes often closed.Sven Lorenz/Klavier-Festival RuhrChopin’s 21 nocturnes, written over the course of nearly his whole composing life, are single-movement pieces of generally less than six minutes. Their allusion to the night refers not to gloom but to evening intimacies, the pianist and scholar Kenneth Hamilton said in an interview.Suggestive of music played for close friends, or even for a lover, the nocturnes get an even more intimate, meditative reinvention from Lisiecki, who said he regards them as pieces ideally to be played alone. His starkly slow tempos — with the works running, in some cases, a minute or longer than usual — give these nocturnes a Satie-like inwardness.Lisiecki spoke about the recording and his approach to music on a video call from his home in Calgary. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did you prepare for this new album of the nocturnes?I had dreamed of recording them for quite a while, but I knew that to do it well I would have to play them in concert first, to get the right emotion. They’re not technically difficult — you can approach them from an early age — but it is very difficult to make them sound good. I have been scheduling many of them in my recitals to get that experience of communicating them. The nocturnes make me feel like I’m at home at night and I have an emotion I want to express; they’re pieces I play for myself. To play them in front of people — to break that private bubble — has been the challenge.In recordings, the complete nocturnes are usually presented in chronological order. Why did you stick with that precedent?I’m very traditional. I’m the type of person who likes sending out postcards written in fountain pen, who uses a landline phone with a rotary dial. I am also traditional in how I listen to and present music. After I recorded the nocturnes, I did think about the order. They were not written to be played together — they are very individual pieces — but the slight adjustments I could have made to improve the flow of the recording were not worth compromising the tradition.Why did you choose to record in the Meistersaal, an early-20th-century Berlin concert hall?We chose it because it was very practical during Covid. We could have it to ourselves; there was nobody in the office; there were no distractions. And it isn’t too cavernous, so I didn’t have the feeling I was playing for an empty hall. Also, there is natural light, which I really appreciate. And we could easily adjust the electric lights if I wanted a different ambience. In the end, it was just a very inspirational space.Even when he was first gaining notice, as a teenager, Lisiecki was respected by critics and fellow musicians for the clarity and precision of his playing.Amber Bracken for The New York TimesWhat kind of piano did you use?I didn’t get to select my piano, but I was lucky enough to be able to choose Daniel Brech, who lives in western Germany, as my piano technician. I have worked with him several times, and he and I have the same vision for how a piano should sound. We bonded when we first met in 2013, when I replaced Martha Argerich in an Orchestra Mozart concert with the late Claudio Abbado. For a solo piano recording, it’s very important what instrument you’re playing on — if it is not correct, there is very little you can do. He brought his own piano, a Steinway D, and I trusted him.Why do you play the nocturnes faster in concert than on your new recording?To keep an audience invested in a performance, that sort of slow tempo would be nearly impossible in a concert hall, where there are external factors, like hums or slight noises. Any small disturbance will break the spell, but in the studio I could keep that spell for much longer.Chopin’s early nocturne, Op. 9, No. 2, is one the best known pieces of classical music, regularly used in film soundtracks. How did you approach it?I pay careful attention to the left hand. The right hand — the melodic line — is what draws most of us to Chopin. But what makes that melody work or shine is the waltz-like left hand, which often suffers. If you forget about the structure, then you lose the logic of the piece, and then you lose the beauty.Why do you like to close your eyes when you’re playing in concert?After so many hours spent on the piano, I pretty much know where all the keys are. When you shut down one of your senses, you heighten the others. Generally there are no smells onstage, so I heighten my hearing and completely immerse myself in the music. In a concerto with an orchestra, I have to communicate visually, not only with the conductor, but also individually with the musicians. I know when I have to look, and I am very respectful — except for a few rare cases where I have not enjoyed working with a conductor and I played with my eyes closed the whole time.Some of your fellow young pianists have used their fame to speak out on political issues. You seem to avoid that.I am a pianist, and I have a lot of knowledge about the piano. I am interested in other matters, but that is not my profession. There are things that collide with my own personal views, but it doesn’t go as far as saying I won’t play with a certain conductor or won’t play in a certain country. Or I might make those choices, but on a quiet level, without making a statement about it.We are divided on every point these days, and all sorts of matters are very politicized. Vaccine, no vaccine; political left, political right; refugees, no refugees. A concert should welcome everybody and be a unifying force. We’re playing music, which doesn’t have a political standpoint. Of course, certain composers did, but the music itself does not. It’s apolitical — it’s just music, and it’s beautiful, and I hope it can remain that way.You and the gymnast Simone Biles are roughly the same age, and you have both been in the public eye since your early teens. Did her recent struggles at the Tokyo Olympics strike a chord with you?I did identify with her, especially with her so-called “twisties.” Playing the piano onstage is not nearly as high-risk; I can’t injure myself. But there certainly are days when I’ve done everything I can — when I have slept decently, and am completely prepared — and then I go out onstage, and I feel like there is a blank page in front of me, like I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t put it down to being nervous. It’s just one of those days when I’m not in my element — I’m just not. As a musician, I can get past it. I have practiced enough, and I can rely on my instincts. But I can understand where she is coming from. More