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      An Orchestra’s ‘Ode to Joy’ Calls for Ukrainian Freedom

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      Not long after the Berlin Wall fell, in 1989, Leonard Bernstein traveled to the once-divided German city and led a performance of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” replacing the word “Freude,” or joy, with “Freiheit” — freedom.In an echo of that historic concert, the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, a touring ensemble formed in the early months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, presented Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in the suburbs of Berlin on Thursday. And, for the famous “Ode to Joy” choral finale, the text was translated to Ukrainian, with the key word being “slava,” or glory, as in “Slava Ukrainii”: Glory to Ukraine.“I’m driven by my passion for Ukraine,” the orchestra’s conductor, Keri-Lynn Wilson, said on Thursday afternoon before the concert, at the garden of Schönhausen Palace. “And my desire to get rid of Putin and his regime through culture.”Around her was a bustle of activity: ushers laying pillows on chairs, sound technicians consulting in a booth, pink umbrellas being placed to shield an orchestra from the sun. The orchestra, made up of 74 Ukrainian musicians — some of whom live in that country still, some of whom have fled — was about to perform as part of its second summer tour of Europe.“Russia says there’s no Ukrainian culture, or music, or language,” said Anna Bura, a violinist in the orchestra. “They want to erase Ukrainian culture. We want to show people we are here.”The program included the second violin concerto by the contemporary Ukrainian composer Yevhen Stankovych, and ended with the Beethoven. While on vacation three weeks ago, Wilson arrived at the idea that the “Ode to Joy” should be sung in Ukrainian, and worked with Mykola Lukas and the vocal coach Ivgeniia Iermachkova to create a new singing translation of the Friedrich Schiller text.Keri-Lynn Wilson, right, conducted the orchestra, whose performances featured Valeriy Sokolov as the soloist in Yevhen Stankovych’s Second Violin Concerto.Andreas Meichsner for The New York TimesThe orchestra’s stop in Berlin coincided with Ukrainian Independence Day. Kyrylo Markiv, a violinist in the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, helped rehearse the choir, the Ukrainian Freedom Chorus, which was assembled for the occasion from the Diplomatic Choir of Berlin and other singers. He serves as a first-desk violinist in the Odesa Philharmonic and is choirmaster at the Transfiguration Cathedral in Odesa, which was built in the early 19th century, reconstructed between 1999 and 2003 and then damaged last month by Russian airstrikes.The night the cathedral was bombed, Markiv had left his violin there in preparation for a concert the next day. “My colleagues wrote in a work chat that the building was on fire,” he said. “I got dressed and went with my brother, who is a deacon there, and saw destroyed cars, fire. In the building, I looked for my violin. Everything was destroyed, but my violin was about 80 percent OK.”Now, his violin is being repaired by a luthier in Lviv. The attack, he said, strengthened his resolve for the tour. “I’m proud that we came to show our art,” he said. “These times are hard for us. We’re strong, and the European people make us stronger.”Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York and Wilson’s husband, helped to arrange and raise money for this tour and the one last summer. “The intensity of the war has raised the stakes this year,” he said. “These musicians all live there or have families there. The war makes everything more intense: their playing, their relationships with each other. Everything is magnified.”The violinist Anna Bura.Andreas Meichsner for The New York TimesKyrylo Markiv, the choirmaster of the Odesa Transfiguration Cathedral.Andreas Meichsner for The New York TimesAt a rehearsal on Thursday, as Wilson led the orchestra into a breakneck run-through of the Beethoven’s second movement, the two first-desk bass players, Nazarii Stets and Ivan Zavgorodniy, bounced along to the rhythm with broad smiles on their faces. Stets, who lives in Kyiv, said in an interview that this summer’s tour was less celebratory than he had hoped: “I expected it would be the victory tour, and it’s still a tour with continuous fighting.”A member of the Kyiv Camerata, a chamber orchestra that plays contemporary Ukrainian music, he had a solo recital scheduled on the day after the invasion began.“My bass was already at the concert hall,” Stets said. “I spent the night in my house, and then the war started.” After two months with his family in the west of the country, he returned to Kyiv. Since then, he has played in “a lot of charity and benefit concerts,” he said — mostly for the Music Unites charity fund, which donates medicine and food to children, and cars and communications equipment to soldiers.Many musicians have used their art to raise money. The cellist Denys Karachevtsev now lives in Berlin but spent the first year of the war in his hometown, Kharkiv, the site of vicious fighting at the beginning of the conflict. More than 600,000 residents fled that city as Russian shells and rockets destroyed homes and public buildings. A video he recorded of Bach’s fifth cello suite among the ruins garnered attention and donations.From left, the vocal soloists Vladyslav Buialskyi, Vassily Solodkyy, Nicole Chirka and Olga Kulchynska.Andreas Meichsner for The New York TimesBut music, Karachevtsev said, was just one part of his efforts. “I had my car,” he added, “so I was evacuating people and taking them to the trains, bringing back medicine and food. We didn’t know how the situation would go on.”The videos brought him to the attention of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, which invited him to participate this year. “I think it’s a good way to continue helping our country,” he said. Now, Karachevtsev is studying in Berlin while continuing to teach students in Kharkiv online. It is still considered too dangerous to have in-person lessons. “The nearest Russian city is about 50 kilometers away,” he said. “It takes 30 seconds for the bombs to come.”As the sun began to set in Berlin, the orchestra ate dinner. Dignitaries, including Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Oleksiy Makeev, and the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, arrived as audience members began to file in for the free concert. Some sat in the chairs, and others spread out picnic blankets. Children ate ice cream; the atmosphere was warm and friendly.Audience members at the concert included Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Oleksiy Makeev, and the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.Andreas Meichsner for The New York TimesSome people wore Ukrainian flags and some a vyshyvanka, a traditional embroidered blouse. Viktoria Neroda, who arrived in Berlin as a refugee from Rivne in western Ukraine last year, said she was there primarily to celebrate Ukrainian Independence Day. “I love Ukrainian music,” she said in a German-language interview, “but I’m hearing this orchestra for the first time tonight.”This tour’s performances are taking place at an uneasy moment for Ukrainians. The war has dragged on far longer than many expected, and hopes for a quick victory, heightened by the success of Ukrainian self-defense early on, have faded. Life is lived between air raid sirens. Every week brings more bad news: friends killed fighting on the front, family members’ homes destroyed by drone strikes or rocket attacks.European solidarity, too, is shifting. Berlin is 10 hours by train from Przemysl, the Polish city near the Ukrainian border where, in the war’s first weeks, refugees poured in.Berlin citizens swung into action: operating welcome centers, bringing supplies to train stations, offering rooms in their apartments. Governments announced special visa rules for Ukrainian refugees. German lawmakers spoke of a “Zeitenwende,” an epochal change in German defense policy, and sent, if sometimes reluctantly, weapons and tanks to the Ukrainian army.At the Berlin State Opera, the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko withdrew under pressure from a new production of Puccini’s “Turandot” because she had not, the house stated, adequately distanced herself from the invasion. She had said that she opposed the war, but didn’t go as far as criticizing the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, whom she had supported in the past.Denys Karachevtsev, a cellist in the orchestra.Andreas Meichsner for The New York TimesNazarii Stets, a bass player.Andreas Meichsner for The New York TimesSolidarity is still visible, but it is also beginning to splinter. Many Germans, struggling with inflation, fuel bills and the country’s economic stagnation, are questioning the price of support. The far-right Alternative for Germany party, which has been sympathetic to Putin, has surged in the polls. And classical music stages, where Russia was long a moneymaking destination, have also wavered. As the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra rehearsed last week, Netrebko was set to start rehearsals for a revival of Verdi’s “Macbeth” at the State Opera in September. (The company’s leader, Matthias Schulz, told Berlin public radio this year that Netrebko had spoken out, in his opinion, as far as she was able.)Thursday’s concert, then, was both a celebration of Ukraine’s independence and Germany’s solidarity, and part of an effort to preserve those two things. After speeches from the dignitaries, the orchestra launched into energetic, insistent Verdi, followed by a searing account of the Stankovych concerto. That piece ends with a sustained, harmonious major third in the strings, which clashes with the solo violin’s plucked minor third. The dissonance holds, softly, then fades out.The orchestra’s concert on Thursday was met with standing ovations.Andreas Meichsner for The New York Times More

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      In Kentucky, a Maestro of the People

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      Teddy Abrams, the 36-year-old music director of the Louisville Orchestra, has embedded himself in his community, breaking the mold of modern conductors.On a muggy July night at an amphitheater in suburban Kentucky, the conductor and composer Teddy Abrams — sporting black jeans, camouflage sneakers and a bouncy mop of golden curls — took the podium and began to evangelize.It was the final stop on the Louisville Orchestra’s summer tour across Kentucky, and Abrams, the ensemble’s 36-year-old music director, paused to speak to the crowd of roughly 900 in Bardstown, 40 miles or so south of Louisville, about his mission.He told the audience — teenagers in tie-dye, retirees snacking on nachos and workers from nearby Bourbon distilleries among them — that he wanted to use music to “bring people together across all backgrounds.” Invoking his idol, the eminent conductor Leonard Bernstein, he said music was a universal language: “We have to do something with it.” He spoke of the need for Kentucky to promote its rich cultural traditions.“This is your Louisville Orchestra, everyone,” he said. “Kentuckians know good music. We’ve made a lot of the music that the world loves, invented entire genres right here in our state. That’s what this is all about — sharing the incredible music-making that takes places in Kentucky.”During his nine years at the helm of the Louisville Orchestra, Abrams has helped the 86-year-old ensemble emerge from a period of turmoil to reclaim its reputation as one of the most innovative in the United States.And he stands out for another reason. While many modern maestros lead jet-set lives, spending only as much as time in one place as contractually required, Abrams, a California native, has broken the mold, putting down roots in Kentucky and embarking on an ambitious project to make the orchestra part of daily life for Kentuckians.“Teddy, it’s so easy!” Students in the rap program invited Abrams to take part in a dance video, at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesHe lives in a house near downtown Louisville, where he regularly hosts musicians, activists, city officials and entrepreneurs, and rides a bicycle around town. (He finally got a driver’s license in October.) He writes music honoring local figures, including a “rap opera” about Muhammad Ali (a musical, “Ali,” by Abrams and the actor and director Clint Dyer, is set to premiere in Louisville next year and is aimed for Broadway in 2025). He has expanded the orchestra’s public efforts, starting a rap program for young people; founding a creator corps that invites artists from around the country to embed themselves in Kentucky; and leading a two-year statewide tour, which began in May, including the stop in Bardstown.His approach stands in stark contrast to that of many music directors, who often take on full-time commitments to several orchestras at once and can live thousands of miles from their ensembles.Abrams says that conductors too often operate at a distance from their communities, missing an opportunity to build connections.“We expect mayors and university presidents and police chiefs to be in the city,” he said. “I think that the conductor of the orchestra should be in that same category of civic leader. Because if they’re not, what does it say to the people of that town?”Abrams’s vision has drawn attention at a time when many arts organizations are looking to forge closer ties with residents and communities. His approach recalls that of Bernstein, who as music director of the New York Philharmonic popularized a series of concerts for young people and was credited with helping make classical music accessible to the public.“This is your Louisville Orchestra, everyone”: The orchestra performing in Bardstown. Jon Cherry for The New York TimesFiling into the stands at Bardstown.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesAbrams also draws inspiration from his mentor, Michael Tilson Thomas, the former music director of the San Francisco Symphony, who studied with Bernstein and has also initiated music education efforts, including the popular “Keeping Score” television series.Thomas, who has known Abrams since he was a child, said his protégé had created “a very natural space for people to feel comfortable inside of the music.”“He is extraordinarily devoted to helping people better understand what the music is all about, and what they’re all about,” Thomas said. “I’ve never really seen anything quite like it, and it fills me with an enormous sense of hope.”Abrams’s success in Louisville has fueled speculation that he might be tapped for a more prominent post, perhaps in Los Angeles or elsewhere. He doesn’t rule out such a move, he said, but at the same time he doesn’t feel pressure to climb the ladder.“I never thought I’m just going to stay here until a larger orchestra comes along, until I can get a ‘better’ gig,” he said. “That’s not the calling. I was brought here to do something for this place.”Born in Berkeley, Calif., the son of lawyers, Abrams played piano and clarinet as a child. He was drawn to conducting after seeing Thomas lead an all-Gershwin program with the San Francisco Symphony when he was 9. He wrote a letter to the famed maestro soliciting advice — and lessons.“I never thought I’m just going to stay here until a larger orchestra comes along, until I can get a ‘better’ gig,” Abrams said. “That’s not the calling. I was brought here to do something for this place.”Jon Cherry for The New York TimesThe singer Lisa Bielawa performed in the premiere of Tyler Taylor’s “In Memory’s Safe” in Bardstown. Both Taylor and Bielawa are composers in residence with the orchestra.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesJ. Bryan Heath, a trombonist in the orchestra, sang and played guitar in an arrangement of “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”Jon Cherry for The New York TimesThomas urged him to seek out 20th-century composers, including Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Bartok, in addition to Beethoven and Mozart, and told him to “keep your ears open.” (Thomas’s reply, framed, now hangs in Abrams’s Louisville bedroom.)Soon Abrams was studying with Thomas, who offered guidance on life as well as music. When he saw Abrams, then a teenager, with a pencil behind each ear, he counseled him that “one pencil is endearing; two are eccentric.”Thomas said that Abrams was eager from the start: “He always had this tremendous and thorough enthusiasm for music in all of its different forms.”At 11, he enrolled at community college because his family thought it would be a better fit than traditional schools (“I was a diminutive kid who related to adults,” he said). At 18, he graduated from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and went onto the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, becoming one of the youngest conducting students to enroll there.Abrams seemed destined for a traditional career, earning plum posts as a fellow at the New World Symphony in Miami, co-founded by Thomas, and as an assistant conductor at the Detroit Symphony under its then-music director, Leonard Slatkin.Then the Louisville Orchestra, which had been searching for years for a replacement for Jorge Mester, its veteran conductor, invited him for an audition. Abrams said he felt an immediate connection with the orchestra, and in 2014, when he was 27, he became the youngest music director in Louisville’s history.He took up full-time residence in the city, buying a sprawling two-story home in the trendy NuLu neighborhood, and furnishing it with two pianos, a Hammond organ, a keyboard and other instruments. Abrams, who is also fluent in genres like jazz, swing and blues, sometimes took his keyboard to the street to entertain passers-by.When he arrived, the orchestra was still feeling the pain of having declared bankruptcy in 2010 in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. At the time, the orchestra made cuts to musicians’ pay and reduced the size of the ensemble to 55 from 71.Abrams with donors and board members at Toogie’s Table in Bardstown.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesAbrams watching the dance video he made with the students.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesAbrams signs a concertgoer’s program in Bardstown.Jon Cherry for The New York Times“We were left with ashes,” said Kathleen Karr, the principal flutist. “His ability to make us feel so worthy of all his ideas gave us new hope.”Abrams set out to improve morale and to rethink the orchestra’s place in the community.“The orchestra was in such a place of questioning and an identity crisis that it meant when I came here it was an open book,” he said. “We could write the story in a new way.”The Louisville ensemble had a reputation for experimentation going back to the 1940s, when the city’s mayor, Charles Farnsley, a fan of composers like Stravinsky and Villa-Lobos, came up with a plan to save the orchestra by commissioning works by living composers. In the decades that followed, as the orchestra premiered and recorded hundreds of new pieces, few ensembles could match Louisville’s ambition.Abrams has sought to resurrect that legacy, inviting composers and artists to Louisville for residencies and commissioning more than 70 works, including pieces by rappers and R&B stars. He has also presented many of his own works, including a piece about Mammoth Cave, in central Kentucky, which premiered this spring inside the cave with the renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma.The star pianist Yuja Wang, a classmate at Curtis who often enlisted Abrams to accompany her while rehearsing concertos, went to Louisville last year for the premiere of a piano concerto that Abrams wrote for her, which combines jazz, funk, big band and television and movie music. “He has this way of expanding on every thought and making it even more imaginative,” she said. “He always has a clear vision of what he wants.”As he enters his 10th season in Louisville, Abrams is keeping the focus on community, amicably playing the role of musical ambassador (a photo of him conducting greets visitors at the Louisville airport).One day this summer, he spent time with a group of students in the hip-hop program, a joint project of the orchestra and the education group Hip-Hop N2 Learning. When the teenagers invited him to take part in a dance video they would post on TikTok, he agreed with some hesitation, watching intently as they taught him the routine.“I’ve never done this before,” he said. “I’m worried this will be the white guy cannot dance situation.”“Teddy, it’s so easy!” the students exclaimed, and he began to sway his hips and cross his arms.When they finished, Abrams turned to the students. “Let me know when we get to a million views,” he said.Craig Greenberg, the mayor of Louisville, said Abrams often showed up in unexpected places to promote the orchestra. Several years ago, he said, Abrams brought a small band of orchestra players to perform at a wrestling match.“He’s always looking to break down the barriers,” Greenberg said, “so that more people have access to art and have an entry point to begin to enjoy the arts even more.”The pandemic, which forced the cancellation of in-person concerts, brought new challenges. But Abrams and the orchestra’s chief executive, Graham Parker, have kept the organization’s finances relatively stable. The annual budget has more than doubled to about $12 million over the past decade, and donations and grants have risen sharply.Still, there is work to be done: The orchestra’s audiences remain predominantly white, as do its players, despite the fact that about 24 percent of Louisville’s residents are Black and about 7 percent are Hispanic.A year after Breonna Taylor, a Black medical worker in Louisville, was shot and killed by police officers, Abrams and the orchestra joined forces with Jecorey Arthur, a rapper and City Council member, for a virtual program that included a Ravel piano concerto, as well as Black spirituals and a hip-hop track.Jecorey Arthur, a rapper and City Council member, said of Abrams: “He’s always very intentional, not just musically, but also socially and politically, and knows that he is a part of something that is bigger than him as an individual.”Jon Cherry for The New York Times“He’s always very intentional,” Arthur said, “not just musically, but also socially and politically, and knows that he is a part of something that is bigger than him as an individual.”Abrams, who has signed with Louisville through at least the 2024-25 season, acknowledges that he has lofty ideals and that he may at some point be tempted to try his community-driven approach elsewhere.But for now, he says, he is content where he is.“If Louisville becomes a destination city for composers, and they all start leaving Williamsburg and L.A. and Nashville and wherever they are, then the question is reversed,” he said. “Why would I leave? Why would you leave something if you actually helped make it?” More

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      The Maestro John Eliot Gardiner, Accused of Hitting Singer, Apologies

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      John Eliot Gardiner expressed regret after he was accused of lashing out at a singer after a concert in France, and he withdrew from the rest of a planned tour.The renowned conductor John Eliot Gardiner, who drew widespread criticism this week after he was accused of hitting a singer after a performance in France, apologized on Thursday, saying that he had lost his temper and that “physical violence is never acceptable.”In a statement, Gardiner, 80, said that he had apologized to the singer, William Thomas, 28, and that he would withdraw from the remaining concerts on a European tour with two of his venerated ensembles, the Monteverdi Choir and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. The incident occurred Tuesday night after a concert performance of the first two acts of Berlioz’s opera “Les Troyens” at the Festival Berlioz in La Côte-Saint-André in southeastern France.“I deeply regret the incident which occurred at the Festival Berlioz at La Côte-Saint-André on Tuesday evening and apologize unreservedly for losing my temper immediately after the performance,” Gardiner said in the statement. “I make no excuses for my behavior and have apologized personally to Will Thomas, for whom I have the greatest respect. I do so again, and to the other artists, for the distress that this has caused.”“I know that physical violence is never acceptable and that musicians should always feel safe,” he added. “I ask for your patience and understanding as I take time to reflect on my actions.”Gardiner provoked an outcry when, on Tuesday evening, he struck Thomas backstage because he had headed the wrong way off the podium at the concert, according to a person who was granted anonymity to describe the incident because the person was not authorized to discuss it publicly.After the incident, Gardiner abruptly withdrew from the festival and returned to London to see his doctor, missing a performance on Wednesday night.Thomas, a rising bass from England who was performing the role of Priam, was not seriously injured and performed on Wednesday.On Thursday, Askonas Holt, the agency representing Thomas, confirmed in a statement that an incident had taken place and said that Thomas would continue to take part in the tour, which will next head to the Salzburg Festival in Austria, the Opéra Royal in Versailles, the Berliner Festspiele in Germany and the Proms, the BBC’s classical music festival, in England. The agency said Thomas would not comment on the incident.“All musicians deserve the right to practice their art in an environment free from abuse or physical harm,” the statement said.The Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras, a nonprofit that oversees Gardiner’s ensembles, said in a statement on Thursday that Dinis Sousa, an associate conductor with the organization, would replace Gardiner for the rest of the tour. Sousa had stepped in for Gardiner on Wednesday in France.“We continue to look into the events that occurred on Tuesday evening,” the group said. “Our values of respect and inclusivity are fundamental to us as a company and we take seriously the welfare of all our performers and employees.’’Gardiner — a crucial figure in the period-instrument movement and the founder of some of its most treasured ensembles, the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique — conducted at the coronation of King Charles III of Britain in May. He has made numerous recordings, many of which are considered classics, and wrote “Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven” in 2013 about the life and music of Johann Sebastian Bach.In a 2010 interview with The Financial Times, Gardiner was asked about his famously demanding style.“Can I protest my innocence?” he said. “I can be impatient, I get stroppy, I haven’t always been compassionate. I made plenty of mistakes in my early years. But I don’t think I behaved anything like as heinously as you have heard. The way an orchestra is set up is undemocratic. Someone needs to be in charge.” More

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      John Eliot Gardiner, Famed Conductor, Accused of Hitting Singer

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      John Eliot Gardiner was accused of lashing out backstage at a singer who had headed the wrong way off a podium during a performance of Berlioz’s opera “Les Troyens.”The appearance by the conductor John Eliot Gardiner leading the Monteverdi Choir and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique in southeastern France this week was supposed to be a celebration: the start of a tour across Europe by one of classical music’s most revered maestros and his esteemed ensembles.Instead, Gardiner, 80, provoked an outcry when, on Tuesday evening, he was accused of hitting a singer in the face backstage after a concert performance of the first two acts of Berlioz’s opera “Les Troyens” at the Festival Berlioz in La Côte-Saint-André.Gardiner struck the singer, William Thomas, a bass, because he had headed the wrong way off the podium at the concert, according to a person who was granted anonymity to describe the incident because the person was not authorized to discuss it publicly.Thomas, a rising bass from England who was performing the role of Priam, did not appear to be seriously injured and was set to perform again on Wednesday evening. His representatives did not respond to requests for comment.Gardiner withdrew from the festival on Wednesday to return to London to see his doctor, said Nicholas Boyd-Vaughan, a spokesman for Intermusica, the agency that represents him. Gardiner was unavailable for comment, Boyd-Vaughan said.Gardiner — a father of the period-instrument movement and the founder of some of its most treasured ensembles, the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique — conducted at the coronation of King Charles III of Britain in May. In addition to making numerous recordings, many of which are considered classics, his 2013 book about Johann Sebastian Bach, “Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven,” was well received by critics.The incident at “Les Troyens,” which was first reported by the classical music website Slippedisc, prompted criticism in the classical music industry, with some saying that Gardiner should face consequences. Gardiner and the ensembles still have four more planned stops on the tour, including at the Salzburg Festival in Austria, the Opéra Royal in Versailles, the Berliner Festspiele in Germany and the Proms, the BBC’s classical music festival, in England.“John Eliot Gardiner is still going to be allowed to conduct @bbcproms?” the mezzo-soprano Helena Cooke wrote on Wednesday on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “Are you joking?”The Proms said it was investigating. “We take allegations about inappropriate behavior seriously and are currently establishing the facts about the incident,” said George Chambers, a spokesman for the festival.Gardiner was replaced at the Festival Berlioz on Wednesday by Dinis Sousa, an associate conductor of the Monteverdi Choir, for a performance of the final acts of “Les Troyens.”Bruno Messina, the general and artistic director of the Festival Berlioz, said in a statement that he was “devastated by the incident,” which he did not describe or give details of, but that he felt it was important that Wednesday’s show go on. More

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      What Spatial Audio Can and Cannot Do for Classical Music

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      Immersive audio formats, while newer for pop, have been used by composers for decades. But not all works call for spatial treatment.Recent developments in spatial audio — albums old and new being mixed for immersive formats — have made news in the world of pop.Given the right production process (in the studio) and tech setup (at home), headphone sounds no longer need feel so statically pressed to each ear; instead, they can seem to whiz around your head or beckon from the nape of your neck.Or simply breathe anew. Whether you’re focusing on a stray slide-guitar accent in the Dolby Atmos mix of Taylor Swift’s “Mine (Taylor’s Version)” or appreciating the serrated details of brass-arrangement filigree in Frank Zappa’s vintage “Big Swifty,” the idea is to bring the souped-up, three-dimensional feel of large-speaker arrays into your ears.But classical music was there decades ago. Deutsche Grammophon and the Philips label both experimented with “Quadraphonic” — or four-channel releases — in the 1970s. More recently, binaural recordings and mixes, designed to simulate that 3-D feel, have been a delight. Now, though, these and other spatial-production practices are enjoying deeper corporate investment, including head-tracking technology as a feature of Apple’s newest Beats headphones. (When you move your head while wearing these — with the tracking option enabled — sound-points seem to stay fixed in your 360-degree field, even if you swerve about.)Head-tracking seemed largely pointless to me — even distracting — until I tried it with the new archival recording “Evenings at the Village Gate,” featuring John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy.Hearing Dolphy’s bass clarinet in front of my face — in a way that remained stable, even when I shook my head in wonder at his playing — allowed me the fleeting sensation that I was sharing space with the legend. A neat trick, though not one more important than Dolphy or Coltrane’s playing on its own terms.Around the time that recording was made, classical composers were bringing spatialized concepts into their creative practice. Even before the comparatively meek technology of two-channel stereo sound was standard in every home, Karlheinz Stockhausen and others were using more complex mixes for works involving electronics or taped elements.There’s a reason Stockhausen is one of the cultural worthies on the cover of the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”: The composer’s works, like “Gesang der Jünglinge,” from 1956, employed a five-speaker mix (including one on the ceiling). That made a lasting impression on Paul McCartney, who once described “Gesang” as his favorite “plick-plop” piece by Stockhausen.Now, more traditional corners of the classical music world are getting in on spatial audio as well.Esa-Pekka Salonen rehearsing with the San Francisco Symphony, which has released spatial audio recordings.Ulysses Ortega for The New York TimesLeading conductors in the orchestral world — including Riccardo Muti and Esa-Pekka Salonen — have personally approved spatial audio mixes of their recent recordings, which have been released on Apple Music and its stand-alone classical streaming app. And, as with other genres, Apple has gathered playlists of spatialized remixes.The regular players in classical music’s immersive cohort have meanwhile continued to ply their trade: Members of SWR Experimentalstudio came to the Time Spans Festival in New York this month, bringing surround-sound works by the Italian modernist Luigi Nono. And the American composer-saxophonist Anthony Braxton brought a new surround-sound concept, “Thunder Music,” to the Darmstadt Summer Course in Germany.Those live performances were terrific. It’s a different story on recordings: After listening to a variety of Dolby Atmos mixes recently, I sensed that classical music’s more mainstream slate of spatial offerings remains a work in progress.Somewhere in between was the Sonic Sphere, a realization of a spatial audio concept by Stockhausen, at the Shed in New York this summer. Its 124-speaker setup encircled about 200 listeners at a time. In early July, I heard a new mix of Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians” that suffered from muddy bass frequencies. This, unfortunately, also robbed the work of its chiseled, Minimalist grace; instead of following the bass clarinet lines, you just guessed that they were there. A sense of drama had been frittered away.Similarly, some selections you can find in Apple Music’s “Classical in Spatial Audio” playlists seem poorly selected for the format. A recording of a profound solo work like Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier” isn’t exactly crying out for the spatial treatment. But when it receives one — as in an otherwise pleasant recording by Fazil Say — it merely sounds like it’s had its reverb levels jacked to the sky. It’s more distracting than moving. Such extraneous mixes are also a poor advertisement for what Dolby Atmos can provide when applied to the right repertoire.For a contrast, look to the opening work on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s recent album “Contemporary American Composers,” Jessie Montgomery’s “Hymn for Everyone.” That track is plenty inviting in its regular stereo mix; even as its singable opening motif is passed between sections, taking on new timbral colors, it never loses its openhearted sense of invitation. In the Dolby Atmos mix on Apple Music, that enveloping effect deepens. The spaces among bowed strings, brasses and percussion are wider. A centrally mixed pizzicato line takes on an even more dramatic, bridging role.The orchestra’s audio engineer, Charlie Post, said in an interview that “contemporary music seems to lend itself particularly well for this.” And he related how, since joining the Chicago Symphony in 2014, he’s been “future-proofing” sessions by recording with more microphones than are strictly necessary for radio broadcast or archival purposes. Now, when a format like Dolby Atmos comes into play, the ensemble is ready with a robust audio-capture program — think of it as a highly detailed orchestral data set — from each performance.After working with the producer David Frost and the spatial-mixing expert Silas Brown, Post is then required to get the sign-off from Riccardo Muti, the Chicago Symphony’s music director. Post recalled that when the conductor, wearing Sennheiser headphones, heard a binaural rendering of the 2018 album “Italian Masterworks,” he counted himself impressed — and gave the ensemble’s spatial-audio team his blessing to do more in this realm.“He thought it was more wide and pleasing to him,” Post said. “So that was a great thumbs-up to get.”At the San Francisco Symphony, Salonen has been equally enthusiastic — and even more hands on — with engineers as he plots coming performances and releases.“We have a very, very good team, so they don’t need any kind of mothering,” he said in a video interview. “But I’m just fascinated by the process myself, because it’s a new kind of mixing. When you position sound objects in 360 space, it becomes like a superfun computer game — very entertaining. And there are some musical artistic gains which are not gimmicky. It doesn’t have to be technology for the sake of technology; there can be an expressive purpose.”That much is clear in Salonen’s recent San Francisco recordings of music by Gyorgy Ligeti, several of which now exist as Dolby Atmos-enabled singles. (A take on Ligeti’s “Lux Aeterna,” which Stanley Kubrick famously used in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” is also available on YouTube in a binaural, headphone-optimized version.)In Ligeti’s “Ramifications” — a piece that requires different orchestral groups to play in microtonally different tunings — the Dolby Atmos mix brings across the peculiar differences. Eerie, branching strings are easier to locate and appreciate, smeared across a wide soundstage; the chattering climax has fresh force.Salonen, who has been interested in blending technology with the traditional orchestra, both as a conductor and as a composer, thought about which Dolby Atmos recordings he would like to see. Thinking about Stockhausen’s “Gesang der Jünglinge,” he said, “I would buy that!”Karlheinz Stockhausen, a pioneer of spatial audio in composition, conducting in 1984.Agence France-Presse, via Getty ImagesIn an email, Kathinka Pasveer, Stockhausen’s longtime companion and collaborator, said that there were no plans to remix the Stockhausen Verlag catalog. The market, she added, is currently too small.Apple’s market share could change that. But for now, there are other distributors of cutting-edge spatial audio compositions.The composer Natasha Barrett’s recent album “Leap Seconds” — perhaps the most vivid spatial-audio work I’ve encountered in the past decade — comes with a headphones-only binaural mix when bought from the Sargasso label. And the British label All That Dust has been releasing binaural mixes of albums on its Bandcamp page.This year, the best spatial audio purchase I’ve made was an All That Dust download of Stockhausen’s “Kontakte” for piano, percussion and electronic sounds. That may not be as newsworthy as the latest buzzy technology, but neither is it as expensive.The week I visited the Shed, tickets for the Reich show started at $46, for a concert that amounted to an hourlong playback session. But my “Kontakte” recording was something of a corrective: just 5 pounds ($6.37). With that binaural release and ones like it, you don’t need to be hustled into hyped equipment from Apple. Anyone with solid over-ear headphones — as with the Sennheiser line that Muti used in Chicago — can experience this magic. More

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      Philadelphia Orchestra Musicians Authorize Strike

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      As contract talks stall, the vote, supported by 95 percent of Philadelphia Orchestra players, raises the possibility of a tense standoff.The musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra voted on Saturday night to authorize a potential strike as negotiations over a new labor contract stalled, raising the possibility of a tense standoff just weeks before the start of a new season.Of those who took part in the vote, 95 percent decided to authorize the strike. In a news release, members of the orchestra said that the vote was necessary because they felt the ensemble’s managers were ignoring their demands for better compensation, retirement benefits and working conditions.“The musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra have declared that enough is enough,” Ellen Trainer, president of Local 77, the union that represents the musicians, said in a statement. “Management has shown that musicians are a cost to be contained, rather than the most important asset.”The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Kimmel Center Inc., which as a joint entity oversee the orchestra, expressed disappointment over the musicians’ strike authorization.“We will continue to negotiate in good faith towards a fiscally responsible agreement that ensures the musicians’ economic and artistic future,” Ashley Berke, a spokeswoman for the organization, said in a statement.The dispute has become more heated in recent weeks as the musicians have grown more outspoken. They have asked for more generous leave policies, as well as better pay, for themselves and for freelance musicians. And they have called on the orchestra to fill 15 vacant positions.Earlier this month, the musicians wore blue union T-shirts during an open rehearsal at the orchestra’s summer residency in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. In an unusual display of solidarity with the musicians during labor talks, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the orchestra’s music director since 2012 and a member of its administration, wore one of the shirts as well.The Philadelphia Orchestra was hit hard by the pandemic, which forced the ensemble to cancel more than 200 concerts and lose about $26 million in ticket sales and performance fees. In 2021, the orchestra announced that it would merge with its landlord, the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, as part of an effort to streamline operations and establish new sources of revenue.Audiences have been slow to return since live performances resumed in the fall of 2021, though there have been signs of hope in recent months. Attendance last season was about 64 percent of capacity, compared with about 75 percent before the pandemic.The orchestra has gone through other painful periods in recent decades. It declared bankruptcy in 2011 after the financial crisis, but has since balanced its budget and worked to rebuild. Despite expense cuts and bankruptcy, that has not been easy: In 2016, its musicians held a brief strike that began on the night of the orchestra’s season-opening gala.The coming season is set to begin on Sept. 28 with a concert led by Nézet-Séguin, and featuring the star cellist Yo-Yo Ma. More

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      Did Gérard Grisey’s Music Predict His Own Death?

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      Eerie coincidences make the composer’s final work, “Four Songs for Crossing the Threshold,” seem like a requiem written for himself.In November 1998, the French composer Gérard Grisey went out to dinner with friends in Milan. He could be anxious, but he seemed strangely grounded that evening.Atli Ingolfsson — a former student and friend, who was among those I interviewed for my new book, “The Life and Music of Gérard Grisey: Delirium and Form” — noticed that the composer didn’t complain about the food, as he sometimes did, nor did the cigar smoke from the next table bother him, as it often would.“I feel good,” said Grisey, a pioneer of spectral music, which is inspired by acoustics. “Maybe I won’t compose anymore.”He was unusually satisfied with his latest composition, “Quatre Chants pour Franchir le Seuil,” or “Four Songs for Crossing the Threshold,” a 40-minute work for solo soprano and an ensemble of 15 players. Grisey intended the piece as a requiem for his mother, Lucie Monna, who had died in 1995. He completed it in the summer of 1998 while alone in a village in the Swiss Alps. “After three months in Schlans in the utmost silence and concentration,” he wrote in his journal, “I finished ‘Quatre chants’ with the lullaby of the dawn.”Born in 1946 to Monna and Jules Henri Grisey, a farm boy turned Resistance operative and car mechanic, Grisey became an essential figure in contemporary classical music. He was raised in the provincial eastern town of Belfort. At 5, he began playing the humble accordion. Then, at 9, he wrote his first piece, and progressed quickly, studying composition at the Paris Conservatory with Olivier Messiaen.In 1974, Grisey completed arguably the first piece of spectral music — “Dérives,” for large orchestra — while on a scholarship at the Villa Medici in Rome. In that piece and the more famous works that followed, including six later collated into the orchestra cycle “Les Espaces Acoustiques” (1974-85), he used the harmonic spectrum, noise and linear musical processes as building blocks. Unlike many of the serial composers prominent at the time, Grisey wanted to foreground the capacities of human listening. The contours of his pieces are often easily audible.“We are musicians, and our model is sound not literature,” Grisey said at a lecture in 1982, “sound not mathematics, sound not theater, plastic arts, quantum theory, geology, astrology or acupuncture.”“Four Songs” signified the beginning of a new period in Grisey’s output. By the mid-90s, his first spectral pieces had spawned imitators, and he had grown wary of repeating himself. Four meticulously chosen texts helped him discover a freer way of working. In the first movement, which sets a poem by Christian Gabriel/le Guez Ricord, an angel is pulled down from heaven by lamenting saxophones and metallic percussion. In the second, the soprano recites an archaeologist’s survey of the writing on ancient Egyptian sarcophagi — complete with indications of illegible hieroglyphics and destroyed coffins — accompanied by a slowly mutating harp motive.Grisey as a child in the early 1950s.via Josienne LanzaIn the third movement, which uses a fragment by the ancient Greek poet Erinna, the soprano is overwhelmed by the echoes of her own voice. And in the final two movements, the singer, inhabiting the character of Gilgamesh, describes the myth’s apocalyptic flood and its aftermath.Grisey illustrates his texts as a Romantic lieder composer might: In the fourth movement, pattering rainfall turns into a violent storm, and microtonal tubas evoke the groans of dying elephants. But the work has no traditional ending. In the fifth and final piece, not a complete song but a short “Lullaby,” a crystalline, pulsing texture is there one second and gone the next.On the early morning of Nov. 10, 1998, Grisey returned from Milan to the Paris apartment he shared with his partner, the mezzo-soprano Mireille Deguy. The “Four Songs” were originally meant for her to sing, but during the composition process Grisey decided he needed high notes beyond her range.“Don’t worry,” she told him. “You’ll write another piece for me.”After breakfast, Deguy went to work. Grisey left for a meeting at the Paris Conservatory, where he was a professor. He came home at lunchtime and made an unusual number of calls to friends. Deguy returned to their apartment in the evening. They had plans to meet friends for dinner, but Grisey suggested having a drink before leaving, wanting to savor their early-evening contentment.Deguy remembers that Grisey removed his watch and asked her to do the same before he collapsed from a brain aneurysm. He fell into a coma and was brought to a hospital. He crossed the threshold the following morning, at dawn. He was 52 years old.Intended as a requiem, “Four Songs” became an autorequiem. It’s an unsettling circumstance, made more so by the frequent references to death in Grisey’s writings. “He was fascinated by death, as a symbol and as a fact,” said Gérard Zinsstag, a composer and close friend. In June 1998, after finishing the “Four Songs,” Grisey had written in his diary: “Why are the final decisions the most painful ones? Saying goodbye? Attachment? To what, from what?”Such eerie consonances have a history in classical music. Mozart left his Requiem unfinished when he died in 1791. In 1983, the composer Claude Vivier, a friend of Grisey’s, was murdered, leaving behind the beginning of a piece called “Do You Believe in the Immortality of the Soul?”Did these composers know — consciously or subconsciously — what was coming?In Grisey’s case, the evidence suggests that he did not. After completing the “Four Songs,” he began sketching a piece based on lines from Samuel Beckett’s French-language poetry collection “Mirlitonnades.” Grisey hadn’t settled on an instrumentation before he died, but he did plan to use a mezzo-soprano voice in Deguy’s range. The couple had spoken about leaving Paris for the country and adopting a child.Many of Grisey’s friends recalled that after completing the “Four Songs,” he was exhilarated about the new aesthetic possibilities he had discovered. He told a friend, the astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Luminet, that he’d found “a new language that begins with this composition.” A letter to the then-artistic director of the Donaueschingen Music Festival in Germany, Armin Köhler, shows that Grisey was planning commissions past the year 2000.Rather than a premonition, “Four Songs” is the remainder of a tragedy: the first piece in a late style that would never come. Grisey’s life ended as the “Lullaby” of the “Four Songs” does. One moment, he was there; the next, he was gone.In February 1999, the “Four Songs” premiered at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, performed by the London Sinfonietta and the soprano Valdine Anderson under the direction of George Benjamin. A group of those close to Grisey — including his son, Raphaël, his ex-wife, Jocelyne, and many friends and colleagues — traveled from Paris to London for the concert. “That a man in the prime of life feels an imperative to write his own elegy without realizing it,” Fiona Maddocks wrote in The Guardian, “raised questions yet more disturbing than the potent work itself.”The effect of the music must have been staggering: After two decades, most of Grisey’s circle still finds the performance impossible to talk about. More

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      For Classical Music, Every Summer Is a Liberation

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      During a time of year in which anything can be a stage, the joy of music making has room to breathe outdoors.A Philadelphia Orchestra concert at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.James Estrin/The New York TimesConsider classical music a late bloomer. In New York, as the city emerges from its winter hibernation — the snow on tree branches replaced by dreamily pastel cherry blossoms, the short, sleepy days extended by increasingly dramatic sunsets — performers tend to remain indoors. A concert in May doesn’t look so different from one in January.But then comes summer.Around early June, orchestras and opera companies close out their seasons, and music making begins to take on new, liberated forms. Instruments that seem so precious onstage make their way outdoors, suddenly looking as casual as the artists wielding them, who sometimes swap their formal concert attire for, well, whatever they want.Samantha Lake with Make Music New York, on Lexington Avenue.The Metropolitan Opera’s float at the New York City Pride March.The old-hat claims of classical music’s elitism and lack of approachability just don’t hold up in summer. Performances pop up as if out of thin air; the New York Philharmonic puts on a series of free outdoor shows that sprawl across the city’s boroughs; everyone, regardless of skill or expertise, is invited to take part in local celebrations for the global Fête de la Musique on the June 21 solstice.A Boston Symphony Orchestra concert at Tanglewood in Massachusetts.During this season, a singer from the Metropolitan Opera might appear on a makeshift stage or in a band shell, performing for passers-by and die-hard fans alike. Friends and families gather on picnic blankets to camp out, some for hours, and enjoy one another’s company, eat and play games before the day culminates in a Philharmonic concert played for thousands more people than could fit inside the orchestra’s home at Lincoln Center.The Met — an institution that throughout its history has been a haven for queer fans but only recently has represented people like them onstage — leaves its velveteen temple to let its hair down and celebrate Pride in the streets, complete with its own float, a mobile concert sung by the likes of the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo and the mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe.A Death of Classical concert at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.Caramoor.Bard College.Anything, after all, can be a stage in the summer: a patch of grass, a barn, the catacombs of a cemetery. Music moves farther and farther away from concert halls, away from cities into the countryside and mountains. New Yorkers wind their way up the Hudson Valley to the bucolic grounds of Caramoor, or to the expansive lawns of Bard College and its sculptural, Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center.The Boston Symphony Orchestra, which in town has the air of a bastion of tradition, embraces the relaxed — and relaxing — grounds of its idyllic Tanglewood campus in the Berkshires. Students also stay there for the summer, exploring new music with monastic focus and learning from some of the finest artists in the field.The Met’s float at the Pride March.Pride in New York.Tanglewood.Joan Forsyth with Make Music New York.Things that would be unfathomable in a concert hall suddenly seem possible. The cannons of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” can be literal cannons. The joy of music making has room to breathe, inviting the sounds of nature to join in: a chorus of birds and insects, a roar of thunder, hopefully not the needy wail of a car alarm.A New York Philharmonic concert in Central Park.The Philharmonic’s concert.A Philadelphia Orchestra concert in Saratoga Springs.Soon, it won’t be so pleasant to lay out a picnic spread while waiting for the Philharmonic. As the trees shed their leaves and the sunsets come earlier, the concert hall will become a refuge. But come next summer, so will the outdoors. More