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      Review: ‘Falling Out of Time’ Gives Song to a Father’s Grief

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      Osvaldo Golijov’s evening-length work, based on the book by David Grossman about his son, had its New York premiere at Zankel Hall.I didn’t know whether I was the right person to review the New York premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s song cycle “Falling Out of Time” at Zankel Hall on Friday.The work is based on the Israeli writer David Grossman’s book of the same name — part novel, play and epic poem — which expresses the grief after his son, Uri, died as a soldier in his country’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon, my parents’ homeland, which has been rocked for half a century by violent factionalism, including a civil war that took two of my father’s sisters.At Zankel, members of the Silkroad Ensemble gave voice to a father’s cry across a dozen or so songs in 80 minutes. The use of folk idioms — Sephardic, Middle Eastern and something like the blues — made the performance eerily intimate and age-old, like a community’s spirit had been cracked open. The piece provides a wide embrace, one that wrapped around me, too.Grossman’s book does not name a village or a country, nor does it assign heroes and villains in a geopolitical conflict. What it does do is describe people united in mourning. Golijov dedicated his “tone poem in voices” to the Parents’ Circle-Families Forum, an organization that brings together bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families.It makes sense, then, that Golijov built the sound world of “Falling” out of the Silkroad Ensemble’s melting pot of instruments. There’s a classical string quartet; a jazz bass; a kamancheh, a Persian bowed instrument; a pipa, a Chinese lute, which takes the place a zither might otherwise occupy in such music; a modular synthesizer; a drum kit; a one-man brass section; and three folk vocalists who approximate Near Eastern modes without actually using microtones.In the book, the Walking Man departs his home and leaves behind his wife to go to “there,” a place where he might reunite with his son. He walks ever-widening circles, first around his yard, then his house and finally his village. It’s an allegory of grief: You can trace it in different ways, but never escape it.The song cycle’s storytelling is far more opaque: Golijov set the most searing lines with little context. At Zankel, Mary Frank’s projections, like Chagall murals drained of color, guided the audience in concrete, moving ways.Golijov’s score unfolds deliberately, making a bane of patience: Grief will give you as much time as you need, and then it will give you some more. The strings played with broad tone. During “In Procession,” the percussionist Shane Shanahan drummed with unrushed rhythms, as the townspeople trailed up a hillside behind the Walking Man, who had become their Pied Piper of sorrow. In “Walking,” the bassist Shawn Conley plucked out a walking bass line with a dragging gait, and Dan Brantigan’s trumpet moaned like someone who was pushing through exhaustion. The synthesizer, played by Jeremy Flower, whistled an alien-sounding descant high above the other instruments — a portal to another dimension.“Falling” is so closely tied to the strengths of the Silkroad, which commissioned the piece, that it’s hard to imagine the trumpet part without Brantigan’s intense feeling and astonishing control. Or the kamancheh without Kayhan Kalhor’s liquid bowing. Or the pipa without Wu Man’s delicacy.Unfortunately, the same is true of the Walking Man, originally written for the Chinese vocalist Wu Tong’s raw expressivity and range, with notes so high they could make an operatic tenor’s eyes water. Yoni Rechter, a singer and musician with a long career in Israel, took the part at Zankel. He had a comforting, paternal presence, not unlike Tony Bennett, but vocally, he was tentative, imprecise and sometimes inaudible, even after taking melodies down an octave. Biella Da Costa, as the Woman, sang with deep, earth-rattling feeling. Nora Fischer narrated the show knowingly as the half-man, half-desk Centaur.“Falling” unraveled toward the end of the night, with improvisatory blues that stood out awkwardly from the piece’s musical fabric. Fischer’s choice to speak the haunting lullaby that closes the cycle so memorably on its 2020 premiere recording diminished its impact.In Jessica Cohen’s translation of the original Hebrew, Grossman makes a parent’s incomprehensible anguish legible: “It breaks my heart, my son, to think … that I have found the words.” At Zankel, Golijov and the Silkroad found the music — speaking for all of us who have had enough of sorrow.Falling Out of TimePerformed on Friday at Zankel Hall, Manhattan. More

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      Review: Igor Levit Arrives at the New York Philharmonic

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      Levit, one of the world’s eminent pianists, appeared with the orchestra at Carnegie Hall eight years after making his New York debut.Eight years ago, a young pianist made his New York debut with a brazen program of Beethoven’s final sonatas.Baby-faced and wearing a bow tie, Igor Levit, then 27, took the stage at the Park Avenue Armory’s intimate Board of Officers Room and proved that age is no impediment in interpreting some of the wisest and most challenging music in the keyboard repertory. “A major new pianist has arrived,” the critic Anthony Tommasini wrote of that night.Since then, each return engagement has had the air of an important event: Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations with the artist Marina Abramovic at the Armory’s drill hall, recitals with premieres at Carnegie Hall that started in its chamber-size Zankel space before moving to its main auditorium.Levit, who lives in Berlin, hasn’t brought his most madcap programming to the city — his essential, standard-setting take on Ronald Stevenson’s “Passacaglia on DSCH” or his turn in Ferruccio Busoni’s extravagant Piano Concerto — but he has graduated from newcomer to New York fixture.One important debut remained, and it came on Friday: his first appearance with the New York Philharmonic.Now 35, more scruffy than smooth and trading his bow tie for a casual black shirt, he joined the orchestra at Carnegie in Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1. It was one of those evenings — agonizingly, just one performance — that left you wondering whether the Philharmonic had found an artist to keep on speed dial for future seasons.Holding his own against the orchestra’s characteristic muscularity, Levit offered counterpoint in an expressive touch, an instinctual sense of shape and a gift for navigating the nuances of a piece that keeps one foot in the Classical era and the other in the Romanticism of its time.Like Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20, also in D minor, the Brahms begins with a long orchestral introduction before the soloist’s softly singing entrance — passion turning into a plea. The Philharmonic, led by Jaap van Zweden, its music director, sounded more aggressive than ardent, and crisp where another ensemble might have been grand.Van Zweden’s reading didn’t necessarily register as problematic until it was brought into relief by Levit’s arrival, which achieved more tension with less force. His solos were similar to sonatas in their intimacy and breadth of expression (a sensibility that reached its height with his encore, a sonorous yet serene “Nun Komm’ der Heiden Heiland,” transcribed by Busoni from Bach). At the keyboard he was capable of conjuring not only thunder, particularly in the climax of the first movement, but also the troubling calm that can precede it and, as in the Adagio, something like the gentle parting of clouds that follows.Where soloist and orchestra most aligned was in the Rondo finale; Levit stated the first theme briskly, precisely, and the Philharmonic responded in kind. More here than elsewhere, van Zweden allowed the score to speak for itself, to build naturally toward its joyous D major coda. The piano part wraps up several measures before the end, but Levit’s skill and stage presence had been well established by then — and the audience reacted, the moment he moved to bow, with a swift standing ovation.The Philharmonic would have its moment, too, after intermission, in Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra. And if this work activates instruments like lights on a switchboard, then there was not a dull bulb on Friday. With brasses clear and heroic; winds eloquent and full of personality; and strings speaking as a single unit, this was an ensemble in excellent form. In the fourth movement “Intermezzo interrotto,” especially, the players found a sensitivity absent in the Brahms: lush in its folk-like melody, animated in the nightmarishly parodic interruption and, in the return of the folk tune, movingly soft, with Dvorakian wistfulness.As he did in Brahms’s Rondo, van Zweden led the Bartok Finale with a restraint that, after simply getting through the virtuosity of the breakneck pace and fugal writing, made way for an organic accumulation toward a lingeringly resonant final chord. It was a glimpse of an approach he doesn’t take often — but that would be welcome, like any appearance by Levit, with the Philharmonic going forward.New York PhilharmonicPerformed on Friday at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan. More

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      Fun Things to Do in N.Y.C. This May 2022

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      Looking for something to do in New York? Go see the Asian Comedy Fest at Stand Up NY and Caveat or the British singer Nilüfer Yanya at Webster Hall. Take the kids to Our First Art Fair, as part of NADA New York. Or you can still catch “Hangmen” on Broadway and the Jacques-Louis David blockbuster at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Comedy | Music | Kids | Film | Dance | Theater | ArtComedyJes Tom, above at Union Hall in Brooklyn in February, will be among the performers in this weekend’s Asian Comedy Fest.JT AndersonAsian Comedy FestFriday at 6, 8 and 10 p.m. at Stand Up NY, 236 West 78th Street, Manhattan; standupny.com. Saturday at 6, 8 and 10 p.m. at Caveat, 21A Clinton Street, Manhattan; caveat.nycFor the third straight year, Ed Pokropski, a writer and producer at NBCUniversal, and the producer and comedian Kate Moran have assembled dozens of performers for this festival, and like last year, they’re right on time to celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. The six shows will feature Julia Shiplett, Michael Cruz Kayne, Usama Siddiquee, Karen Chee with the puppeteer Kathleen Kim, the podcasters from “Feeling Asian,” and Yuhua Hamasaki from “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Friday’s 8 p.m. lineup includes perhaps the festival’s buzziest performer: Jes Tom, a nonbinary trans comedian who co-stars in the new Hulu rom-com “Crush.” (Tom will also headline their own show on May 14 at the Bell House.) Tickets start at $25 per show ($65 for an all-night pass) and are available at asiancomedyfest.com. SEAN L. McCARTHYMusicDarius Jones, above at the Winter Jazzfest in 2018, has programmed this year’s MATA Festival, which concludes at National Sawdust this weekend.Jacob Blickenstaff for The New York TimesClassical MusicMATA FestivalFriday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at National Sawdust, 80 North Sixth Street, Brooklyn; live.nationalsawdust.org.This year’s iteration of the annual contemporary music blowout known as the MATA Festival has been programmed by the composer and alto saxophonist Darius Jones. For the festival’s final two nights, Jones has put together a set of works by younger artists on Friday and one of his own on Saturday. Friday’s concert will feature notable artists like Travis Laplante, who is scheduled to play his solo tenor saxophone opus “The Obvious Place.” And Saturday’s performance will offer the world premiere of Jones’s piece “Colored School No. 3,” which references a Brooklyn building once used as a segregated school for Black children into the early 20th century. Tickets for each night are $25. SETH COLTER WALLSNilüfer Yanya will headline at Webster Hall on Saturday.Adama Jalloh for The New York TimesPop & RockNilüfer YanyaSaturday at 7:30 p.m. at Webster Hall, 25 East 11th Street, Manhattan; websterhall.com.Though as a teenager she was tapped to be in a girl group assembled by Louis Tomlinson of One Direction, Nilüfer Yanya chose a self-determined path over the prospect of pop stardom. The British singer’s debut album, from 2019, contained notes of jazz and indie pop but leaned predominantly into alt-rock, showcasing the guitar chops she had honed since picking up the instrument at age 12. Yanya’s sophomore effort, released in March, follows suit but pares her sound down to essential components: wafty melodies, crisp beats, circuitous guitar work reminiscent of Radiohead. Ironically titled “Painless,” the album is spiked with thorns, its lyrics tackling the complicated, damaging side effects of desire. On Saturday, Yanya heads a bill that also features two other singer-guitarists: Ada Lea and Tasha. Tickets start at $25 and are available at axs.com. OLIVIA HORNKidsOur First Art Fair at Pier 36, sponsored by the New Art Dealers Alliance and the Children’s Museum of the Arts, will feature works by children 12 and under. Above, a display from an after-school class at the museum in 2019.Children’s Museum of the ArtsOur First Art FairThursday from 4 to 8 p.m.; Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at NADA New York, Pier 36, 299 South Street, Manhattan; newartdealers.org.Learn More About the Metropolitan Museum of Art$125 Million Donation: The largest capital gift in the Met’s history will help reinvigorate a long-delayed rebuild of the Modern wing.Recent Exhibits: Our critics reviewed exhibits featuring the drawings of the French Revolution’s chief propagandist and new work by the sculptor Charles Ray.Behind the Scenes: A documentary goes inside the Met to chronicle one of the most challenging years of its history.A Guide to the Met: From the must-see galleries to the lesser-known treasures, here’s how to make the most of your visit.While the New Art Dealers Alliance has always catered to the business’s youngest members, it would be hard to find exhibitors younger than some appearing at this year’s NADA New York exposition. They’re the entrepreneurs 12 and under participating in Our First Art Fair, presented by the alliance and the Children’s Museum of the Arts. Here, youngsters display and price their creations, receiving all proceeds. Little artists who missed the April submission deadline can still contribute by completing a required form and delivering it, along their work, to the fair. On Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m., museum educators will also attend, providing art supplies and helping with last-minute entries. What doesn’t sell goes to the museum’s permanent collection — no small distinction. NADA passes start at $40; they’re free for children. LAUREL GRAEBERFilmThuy An Luu and Frédéric Andrei in Jean-Jacques Beineix’s “Diva,” which is screening at Film Forum starting on Friday.Rialto Pictures‘Diva’Ongoing at Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, Manhattan; filmforum.org.You’ve seen Brian De Palma’s “Blow Out”? “Diva” is the other major film of 1981 (released in the United States in 1982) that involves a protagonist with a hot-potato audio recording, or technically two: Jules (Frédéric Andrei), a postman and opera fan, secretly records a star vocalist, Cynthia Hawkins (the real-life soprano Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez), who makes a point of only singing live, at a performance in Paris. Soon after, he unwittingly comes into possession of another tape that could expose an international drug-and-sex-trafficking operation.But the crazy convolutions of the plot are hardly the point. “Diva,” directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix, who died in January, is perhaps the film most identified with a trend in France that became known as the cinéma du look, movies for which visual style and attitude left the prevailing impressions. In a print showing at Film Forum, the shades of blue are dazzling, and an elaborate chase through the Paris Metro is pretty exciting, too. BEN KENIGSBERGDanceValerie Levine of Ice Theater of New York performing “Arctic Memory” by Jody Sperling on Governors Island in February.Josef PinlacIce Theater of New YorkFriday and Saturday at 7 p.m.; Monday at 6:30 p.m. at Sky Rink, 61 Chelsea Piers, Manhattan; chelseapiers.com.After pivoting to pavement during the pandemic, Ice Theater of New York returns to its true milieu, which is also a fitting place to reflect on climate change. As part of its home season, the company will present the premiere of the choreographer Jody Sperling’s “Of Water and Ice,” which draws on her research in the Arctic and is set to music by D.J. Spooky. It will be joined on the program by 10 other works, many of them also new, with soundtracks ranging from Philip Glass to Rachmaninoff to Madonna. Don’t expect a string of Nathan Chen-like acrobatic feats, though; the company, founded in 1984, is rooted in the art of ice dancing, which combines the ethos of concert dance with the speed, momentum and strength of ice skating. Two of the form’s best-known practitioners, the British champions Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, will be honored at Monday’s gala performance. Tickets start at $25 and are available at icetheatre.org. BRIAN SCHAEFERTheaterDavid Threlfall, center, with, from left, Richard Hollis, Ryan Pope, John Horton and Alfie Allen in Martin McDonagh’s dark comedy “Hangmen” at the Golden Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesCritic’s Pick‘Hangmen’Through June 18 at the Golden Theater, Manhattan; hangmenbroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes.In Martin McDonagh’s Olivier Award winner, set in the 1960s, a menacing mod from London (Alfie Allen of “Game of Thrones”) walks into a grim northern English pub run by a former hangman (David Threlfall). Pitch-black comedy ensues. Directed by Matthew Dunster, this production was a prepandemic hit downtown. Read the review.‘Plaza Suite’Through June 26 at the Hudson Theater, Manhattan; plazasuitebroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes.Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker revel in physical comedy as they play two married couples and a pair of long-ago sweethearts in the first Broadway revival of Neil Simon’s trio of one-act farces, a smash at its premiere in 1968. John Benjamin Hickey directs. (Onstage at the Hudson Theater. Limited run ends July 1.) Read the review.Critic’s Pick‘American Buffalo’Through July 10 at Circle in the Square, Manhattan; americanbuffalonyc.com. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.Laurence Fishburne, Sam Rockwell and Darren Criss team up for David Mamet’s verbally explosive tragicomedy, set in a Chicago junk shop where an inept pair of small-time criminals and their hapless young flunky plot the theft of a rare nickel. Neil Pepe directs. Read the review.Hugh Jackman as Harold Hill in the Broadway revival of “The Music Man” at the Winter Garden Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times‘The Music Man’At the Winter Garden Theater, Manhattan; musicmanonbroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes.Hugh Jackman, a.k.a. Wolverine, returns to the stage as the charlatan Harold Hill opposite Sutton Foster as Marian the librarian in Jerry Zaks’s widely anticipated revival of Meredith Willson’s classic musical comedy. It’s a hot ticket, and one of Broadway’s more stratospherically priced shows. (Onstage at the Winter Garden Theater.)Read the review.Art & Museums“The Oath of the Tennis Court” (1791), a presentation drawing in “Jacques-Louis David: Radical Draftsman” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, depicts a foundational event of the French Revolution.RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NYCritic’s PickJacques-Louis David: Radical DraftsmanThrough May 15 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan; 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org.“Radical Draftsman,” a momentous and deadly serious exhibition, assembles more than 80 works on paper by this prime mover of French Neo-Classicism, from his youthful Roman studies to his uncompromising Jacobin years, into jail and then Napoleon’s cabinet, and through to his final exile in Brussels. It’s a scholarly feat, with loans from two dozen institutions, and never-before-seen discoveries from private collections. It will enthrall specialists who want to map how David built his robust canvases out of preparatory sketches and drapery studies. But for the public, this show has a more direct importance. This show forces us — and right on time — to think hard about the real power of pictures (and picture makers), and the price of political and cultural certainty. What is beautiful, and what is virtuous? And when virtue embraces terror, what is beauty really for? Read the review.Critic’s PickJonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always RunningThrough June 5 at the Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan; 212-423-3200, thejewishmuseum.org.A Lithuanian refugee who landed in New York City in 1949, Jonas Mekas became a founder of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, Film Culture magazine and Anthology Film Archives. He also made scores of collagelike “diary” films. “The Camera Was Always Running” is Mekas’s first U.S. museum survey, and its curator, Kelly Taxter, approached the daunting task by mounting a high-speed retrospective projected on a dozen free-standing screens.Most of the films in the exhibition are broken up into simultaneously projected pieces, so that the full program of 11 takes just three hours. Many are diary films — abstract kaleidoscopic records of Mekas, his brother Adolfas, also a filmmaker, and the SoHo bohemians and Lithuanian transplants of their circle. Since the point of all this, even more than documenting the variety of Mekas’s life in particular, is to capture the magical incongruity of life in general, Taxter’s inspired staging may even make the works more effective. Read the review.Painted fabric hangings behind the sculpture “The Wake and Resurrection of the Bicentennial Negro,” 1976. This entire installation originated as part of a performance piece.Faith Ringgold/ARS, NY, DACS, London and ACA Galleries; Simbarashe Cha for The New York TimesCritic’s PickFaith Ringgold: American PeopleThrough June 5 at the New Museum, 235 Bowery, Manhattan; 212-219-1222, newmuseum.org.Ringgold’s first local retrospective in almost 40 years features the Harlem-born artist’s figures, craft techniques and storytelling in inventive combinations. And it makes clear that what consigned Ringgold to an outlier track half a century ago puts her front and center now. The show begins with a group of brooding, broadly stroked figure paintings from the 1960s called “American People Series.” All the pictures are about hierarchies of power; women are barely even present. Ringgold referred to this early, wary work as “super realist.”In the ’80s, an elaboration on the painted quilt form, called “story quilts,” brought Ringgold attention both inside and outside the art world. It is the vehicle for Ringgold’s most formally complex and buoyant painting project, “The French Connection.” Overall, it feels, in tone, like a far cry from the “American People” pictures, but there’s politics at work in the French paintings, too. Read the review. More

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      Review: A Cellist Accompanied by His Sister. Or Vice Versa?

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      Isata and Sheku Kanneh-Mason were true musical partners in concert at Zankel Hall.If someone asked you what kind of concert you went to at Zankel Hall on Wednesday evening, you’d probably call it a cello recital. That’s the shorthand for performances by prominent young string soloists; the usual thought is they are the main event. We would traditionally say that they were simply “accompanied” by a pianist.But on Wednesday that pianist was Isata Kanneh-Mason. She played beautifully: her touch patrician in a Beethoven sonata; dreamy in one by Shostakovich; suave in one by Frank Bridge; and alert without being anxious in one by Britten. Calmly commanding throughout, she was also unfailingly subtle. You could even say she was accompanied by her younger brother, the cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason.I’m joking, of course, but that the Kanneh-Masons are siblings makes it easier to see them as equal partners, and to see the lie in the common notion that the keyboardist is the bit player in someone else’s show. The sonata repertoire is often difficult enough on the piano that the accompanist label seems inadequate. This truly felt like a concert of duets.Both of these musicians have been rising in recent years: first Sheku, 23, following his internationally televised appearance at the royal wedding in 2018; and more recently Isata, 25, with a pair of excellent, quietly innovative albums. They appeared together in 2019 at Carnegie Hall’s smallest space, and returned on Wednesday to Zankel, the middle-size hall, whose 600 seats were sold out. (Is the biggest, Stern Auditorium, to come?)The program was nicely constructed. Bridge was Britten’s teacher; and Britten and Shostakovich are linked, as the Kanneh-Masons said in a recent interview with The New York Times, through the advocacy of the great cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.Rostropovich also played Karen Khachaturian’s lively sonata, which the Kanneh-Masons are doing at some stops on their present tour. I wish they had presented it at Zankel instead of Beethoven’s Cello Sonata No. 4 in C, an intrusion — however pleasant — from the early 19th century in what otherwise would have been four pieces written over just 50 years in the 20th. As an opening here, it was restrained to the point of weightlessness.In some ways, the first half of the concert felt like a preparation for the second, with the Shostakovich, after the Beethoven, also floating by with lots of smoothly threadlike, wispy cello playing — though in the Largo, Sheku’s even keel paid off in some arresting harshness, and Isata was icily lucid in the second movement.After intermission, in the rarely performed, richly wistful Bridge sonata, these musicians didn’t lose their restraint but gained tension as more extravagant emotion kept spilling past the reserve. The second movement climaxed in the piano’s softly conclusive, consoling line, setting off a spiral of light calligraphy in the cello — a passage of superbly unified playing.And Britten’s sonata was a match for the Kanneh-Masons’ self-possession, in the gnomic interplay of the first movement — nearly silent undulating in the cello as the pianist seems to wander, searching for him — and the caroming yet controlled pizzicato of the second. A sense of togetherness, of shared sensibility, permeated the whole piece, as it did the whole concert, down to the understated yet feeling encore, their arrangement, inspired by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s, of the spiritual “Deep River.”Isata and Sheku Kanneh-MasonPerformed on Wednesday at Zankel Hall, Manhattan. More

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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love the Horn

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      Listen to music that shows off the golden, mellow sunshine of “the cello of the brass section.”In the past we’ve chosen the five minutes or so we would play to make our friends fall in love with classical music, piano, opera, cello, Mozart, 21st-century composers, violin, Baroque music, sopranos, Beethoven, flute, string quartets, tenors, Brahms, choral music, percussion, symphonies, Stravinsky, trumpet, Maria Callas, Bach, the organ, mezzo-sopranos, music for dance, Wagner and Renaissance music.Now we want to convince those curious friends to love the golden, mellow sunshine of the horn. We hope you find lots here to discover and enjoy; leave your favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Sarah Willis, Berlin Philharmonic hornistThe French horn is so versatile. Heroic, romantic, scary, mysterious — you name it, the horn can play that part. And it’s a sociable instrument: We love to play together. In the third movement of Richard Strauss’s Horn Concerto No. 2, the horn is a virtuosic and passionate hero, which the horns in the orchestra join at the end of the movement for a final fanfare. These last moments always lift my heart and make me proud to be a horn player.Strauss’s Horn Concerto No. 2Norbert Hauptmann, horn; Berlin Philharmonic; Herbert von Karajan, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)◆ ◆ ◆Akshaya Avril Tucker, composerGive me a long, quiet note on the horn and I feel like I’ve entered a place of timelessness. It’s an incredibly soothing, supportive sound — the best sonic cuddle buddy. In orchestration classes, I’ve heard the horn referred to as “glue”; it cushions and supports its neighbors in the orchestra like no other instrument. Jonathan Dove’s “Susanna in the Rain,” from his “Figures in the Garden,” is utter comfort. A small ensemble of woodwinds provides a gentle pitter-patter of rain, while the horn — first one, then two — soars above. When I listen on the drought-stricken West Coast to these yearning melodies, they sound like a nourishing downpour.Dove’s “Susanna in the Rain”Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; Antony Pay, conductor (Warner)◆ ◆ ◆Paquito D’Rivera, saxophonist and composerThe French horn — a rather exotic instrument in the history of jazz — has among its most creative practitioners Willie Ruff, John Graas, David Amram, Gunther Schuller, John Clark and Chris Komer; I just composed a piece for Komer and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. But we always have to mention Julius Watkins, considered by many the father of the modern jazz French horn, and a good example of his masterful work — transcribed by the Brazilian hornist-composer Victor Prado — is this interesting improvised solo on “Phantom’s Blues,” recorded with the Quincy Jones Orchestra in 1960.“Phantom’s Blues”Julius Watkins, horn; Quincy Jones Orchestra◆ ◆ ◆Franz Welser-Möst, Cleveland Orchestra conductorThe horn has this beautiful, warm, singing sound, which resembles the middle register of the human voice; that is why it is so easy to connect to. The horn is sort of the cello of the brass section. The violins, trumpet and flute are in a high register, and not many people can sing that high, while the register in which the horn plays is accessible to anybody.I chose the opening of the third movement of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, simply because people usually think of the horn as a hunting instrument. The horn here represents the crying out of the human soul, sort of lost in the ocean of an overwhelming world. In this section, the horn is an individual human voice surrounded by a crazy, dancing universe of other instruments. Mahler was a contemporary of Sigmund Freud, so his music is always about the psyche — of an individual and of humanity.Mahler’s Fifth SymphonyVienna Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)◆ ◆ ◆Zachary Woolfe, Times classical music criticBrahms’s mother died early in 1865; later that year, he wrote a trio for violin, piano and horn, an instrument he had learned as a child. The result — for which he specified the affably rustic, if difficult to control, valveless horn, rather than the newer valved variety — is by turns serene, agitated, mournful and joyful, with the horn throughout evoking walks in nature and an ineffable nostalgia.Brahms’s Horn TrioMyron Bloom, horn; Rudolf Serkin, piano; Michael Tree, violin (Sony)◆ ◆ ◆Seth Colter Walls, Times writerThe horn, with its mellow colors, doesn’t always conjure pure relaxation; it can be regal even in passages of tranquillity. The composer William Bolcom uses this simultaneously lyrical and potent quality during stretches of his Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano, created in response to Brahms’s famous trio. But in the final movement — which he has described as a “resolute march of resistance,” written in the wake of the 2016 election — Bolcom lets the instrument strut, with some raucous pressurized notes, drawing it closer to its more jazz-associated cousins in the brass section.Bolcom’s Horn TrioSteven Gross, horn; Philip Ficsor; violin; Constantine Finehouse, piano (Naxos)◆ ◆ ◆Kevin Newton, Imani Winds hornist“Ecos oníricos de la Basílica de San Marcos” was written for me by the Argentine composer José Manuel Serrano. The piece, for a soloist and prerecorded horns, transforms the sound of the horn into ghostly echoes in a cathedral, requiring the player to access a wide range of textures and microtones.For me, the horn has always been an extension of the voice. My childhood was filled with many a long car ride in which my mother would teach me to sing harmony, as well as choir rehearsals and weekend mornings at the piano working out hymns or whatever else of her songbooks I could get my hands on. When I first heard the horn, I wished that my voice could produce those sounds, and a love for the instrument was born. Its flexibility has freed me from the limitations of my own voice, and this piece is a wonderful space to explore that freedom.Serrano’s “Ecos oníricos de la Basílica de San Marcos”Kevin Newton◆ ◆ ◆Mei-Ann Chen, Chicago Sinfonietta conductorI knew Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s granddaughter, Katy Korngold Hubbard, before I knew his music. Once, driving in the rain, I had to pull over to the side of the road because I was so incredibly moved by the sublime music on the radio. I didn’t know the composer. The last movement of the mystery work — it turned out to be Korngold’s “Much Ado About Nothing” Suite — was so joyful and witty, featuring the horns prominently, that I was transported to a different world. I became a huge Korngold fan. This rarely performed work should be better known.Korngold’s “Much Ado About Nothing” SuiteOrchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg; Marc Albrecht, conductor (Pentatone)◆ ◆ ◆Bernard Labadie, Orchestra of St. Luke’s conductorDeep in the German psyche, the horn is closely associated with the forest — not only in relation to hunting but also to the romantic idea of night, moonlight and starry skies. No piece of music epitomizes this connection like Schubert’s “Nachtgesang im Walde” (“Nighttime Song in the Forest”), written for a four-part men’s choir and four horns. This highly unusual formation explains why this little masterpiece is a rare guest on concert stages. And yet what fabulous music this is, with Schubert’s unmistakable mixture of harmonic magic and deep connection with text. Never has the sound of the horn felt so simultaneously grounded and ethereal.Schubert’s “Nachtgesang im Walde”Monteverdi Choir; John Eliot Gardiner, conductor (Philips)◆ ◆ ◆Mark Almond, San Francisco Symphony hornistConductors and fellow musicians never seem to mind how loudly you can blow the horn, but they really, really care about how softly you can play; in fact, your career depends on it. As the natural harmonics of the instrument are very close together in the high register, playing pianissimo in that range requires laser focus and surgical precision. Next time you’re at the symphony, imagine the hornists as darts players, having to throw bull’s-eyes every 20 seconds for 45 minutes. Then imagine the conductor standing next to the dart board, silently urging the player to throw each dart as gently as possible, but still demanding that the bull’s-eye be hit every time.The flip side: It’s incredibly liberating to play pieces in which you can just let it rip and go for it, as loudly as (tastefully) possible, like in this exciting recording of Haydn’s “Hornsignal” Symphony, performed by the natural horn players — no valves! — of the Concentus Musicus Wien.Haydn’s “Hornsignal” SymphonyConcentus Musicus Wien; Nikolaus Harnoncourt, conductor (Warner)◆ ◆ ◆David Allen, Times writerDeep into Strauss’s last opera, “Capriccio,” comes one of the most magical moments that ever flowed from his pen. A countess has to choose between the love of a poet and a composer — between the primacy of words and music. She never quite makes a selection, but before the final scene, in which she wrestles with her fate, Strauss makes his own feelings clear. As evening falls and the moon lights the scene, a horn glows in the dusk.It’s a profoundly moving interlude, and this is a profoundly moving account, a tribute from one horn player of distinction, Alan Civil, to a colleague who was arguably the greatest of them all: Dennis Brain, the principal horn of the Philharmonia Orchestra, who was killed in a car crash in 1957, two days before the sessions for this first recording of the work.Strauss’s “Capriccio”Philharmonia Orchestra; Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor (Warner)◆ ◆ ◆ More

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      A Sister and Brother Choose Repertoire by Feeling and Listening

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      The young British phenoms Isata and Sheku Kanneh-Mason are performing a duo recital of cello sonatas, including by Shostakovich and Frank Bridge, at Carnegie Hall.Are Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason those rarest of things: young superstars who might actually live up to their hype?It certainly appears that way. The pair are two of seven British brothers and sisters, all musicians, who shot to fame when Sheku, a cellist, won the BBC Young Musician Award in 2016. Sheku’s exposure, in particular, has been extravagant since his star turn in the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in 2018. But listen to more than the breathless reporting of their streaming numbers and you find musicians who, while still in the early stages of their careers, already have serious, distinctive things to say.Sheku, 23, made his New York Philharmonic debut in November, playing Dvorak’s Cello Concerto, a performance that revealed him to be a “charismatic protagonist and a generous collaborator,” as Joshua Barone put it in The New York Times. Isata, 25 and a pianist, has recorded two outstanding solo albums, one filled with works by Clara Schumann, the other cleverly moving between composers including Samuel Barber, Amy Beach, George Gershwin and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.After an acclaimed appearance together at Weill Recital Hall in December 2019, they are returning for a duo recital at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday, part of a long, busy tour that continues in Boston and Atlanta before a European leg.Speaking from Kansas City, Mo., they talked about their program of cello sonatas by Frank Bridge, Britten, Shostakovich and either Khachaturian or Beethoven, depending on the stop. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.You each have your own concerns as artists, so how do you go about compiling a program when you play together on a tour like this?SHEKU The main criteria is music that we’ve heard or want to discover, that we enjoy and maybe have something to say with, and we want to spend time working on and perform many, many times. Also it’s always interesting to pick repertoire that perhaps is new to some of the audiences we perform for. The Bridge Sonata is an example: It’s music that I really love and think is special, and has been new to a lot of audiences.ISATA Sometimes when we present pieces that aren’t so well known, you have to go through the difficulty of getting presenters to accept them and trust that the audiences will like them. We’ve found on this tour that the audiences like these pieces; they really respond to the music. That just shows that all good music can be communicated, whether it’s something popular or not.Sheku, what appeals to you about Frank Bridge’s sonata, which is a rarity compared even to the Britten and Shostakovich?SHEKU It’s an incredibly beautiful and at times heartbreaking piece of music. The sonata was split in terms of when it was composed, the first movement from before World War I and the second from toward the end of the war. Bridge was certainly affected by what happened, you can hear that. The first movement ends quite peacefully, and then the second starts in a completely different world. It’s like a lament, with some dark, harsh moments as well. It ends with the first movement’s theme, and when it does it’s quite like the Elgar Cello Concerto, it’s nostalgic, almost desperate. Although it ends on a nice major chord, it doesn’t feel resolved. It’s a really fascinating piece.Did you intend the works to speak to each other, to draw connections?SHEKU The program that we constructed with Khachaturian and Shostakovich, the Bridge and Britten, there are very clear connections between the pieces: Britten and Bridge having the student-teacher relationship, Britten and Shostakovich …ISATA Through Rostropovich.SHEKU Exactly. Those connections are very strong. When I discovered the Khachaturian Sonata, it was because I was listening to an album that has Rostropovich performing the Shostakovich with Shostakovich, and the second half of the album is Rostropovich playing the Khachaturian with Khachaturian.And the Beethoven is there because some presenters think he is easier to promote than Khachaturian?SHEKU It’s great music as well, I get it.ISATA It is great music, and we were playing it before anyway. But yeah, it was originally because it’s more accessible than the Khachaturian.Are these works that you have lived with for a long time?ISATA The Bridge and the Britten we first played about a year ago. The Shostakovich we played a couple of movements of during childhood — actually we played the whole thing when we were about 18. We put it away for a few years and then came back to it.The Shostakovich was written in 1934, after the premiere of “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” but before his political denunciation in 1936. How would you describe the sonata?SHEKU He wrote it during a period of separation from his wife, but I don’t think the piece is about that necessarily. It has quite Classical elements in terms of the form of the whole sonata, the style of each movement, how the phrases are constructed, but harmonically, rhythmically and the colors he chooses to use are very distinctive of Shostakovich. The third movement is where he pours all of his heart and sorrow and soul. The outer movements are quite playful and quirky. He had a good sense of humor.This is Isata Kanneh-Mason’s favorite page in the Shostakovich Cello Sonata, from the final movement.SikorskiDo you have a favorite page in the score?ISATA I actually could pick one! It would be in the fourth movement, about six pages before the end. The music dies down, there’s this moment of silence — and then the piano explodes with these semiquavers, with an E flat minor chord in the left hand. It’s just so Shostakovich to have such a dramatic mood change. When I was younger this passage always terrified me, because I was like, Oh, I’m going to mess up the semiquavers, but now, after many years of practicing, I’m usually just excited to shock the audience with this outburst.A favorite passage from Shostakovich’s Cello SonataMstislav Rostropovich, cello; Dmitri Shostakovich, piano (Warner)You’ve both shown an interest in expanding the diversity of the music your audiences hear, whether Clara Schumann or music rooted in spirituals, but that’s not been the case with your Carnegie dates together. Is there scope for doing more of that in your chamber music programs, or is it harder in some areas than in others?ISATA There is great repertoire in the chamber music world of female composers, of Black composers, but that will come to us naturally, the way any piece of music does — through listening and through feeling compelled to play them, rather than ticking boxes.SHEKU What is potentially a shame is that a lot of the pressure to perform repertoire by female composers is placed on women, and a lot of the pressure to perform music by Black composers is placed on Black musicians. You don’t often see a white performer performing music by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, for example. So us just being Black performers is, I don’t know, enough of a difference. More

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      Carnegie Hall Will Host Concert in Support of Ukraine

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      Carnegie Hall said on Tuesday that it would host a concert in support of Ukraine later this month, to show solidarity with the Ukrainian people, express opposition to the Russian invasion and raise relief funds.The benefit, “Concert for Ukraine,” is to take place on May 23 at 8 p.m., and will feature more than a dozen artists and ensembles, including the Russian-born pianist Evgeny Kissin, the violinist Itzhak Perlman, the jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant and the singer Michael Feinstein.The Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York, an amateur ensemble that specializes in secular and sacred music from Ukraine, will also perform.“Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it has been heartbreaking to witness the devastation that has been wrought there over the last two months,” Clive Gillinson, Carnegie’s executive and artistic director, said in a statement. “In this time of crisis, it is important to remember that there are active ways that we can all play a part in helping those who are suffering and under attack.”Several benefits have been held by New York arts groups in support of Ukraine since the start of the invasion. In March, the Metropolitan Opera staged a concert featuring Ukraine’s national anthem and a piece by the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov, among others.Carnegie’s leaders have used the hall’s platform to defend Ukraine. Last week, in announcing its 2022-23 season, the hall said it would host the Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine in February. The ensemble will play Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, featuring the Ukrainian American pianist Stanislav Khristenko, Brahms’s “Tragic Overture” and Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony, as part of a tour led by the Ukrainian American conductor Theodore Kuchar.“This is a turning point in history,” Gillinson said in announcing the season. “It’s really, really important that a dictator does not win. We felt we needed to very overtly support Ukraine.”Carnegie was among the first cultural institutions to fire artists with ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia after his order to invade Ukraine. In February, the hall canceled appearances by the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, a longtime supporter of Putin, and the Russian pianist Denis Matsuev, who also has ties to Putin.At the same time, Gillinson has warned that arts groups should not discriminate against Russian performers on the basis of nationality and should be careful to avoid penalizing performers who are reluctant to publicize their views on the war.The benefit will feature a number of opera stars, including the soprano Angel Blue and the mezzo-sopranos Denyce Graves and Isabel Leonard; the violinist Midori; the mandolinist Chris Thile; the Broadway singers Jessica Vosk and Adrienne Warren; and musicians from Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, a group of young artists.Carnegie said proceeds would go to Direct Relief, a humanitarian aid group that supports relief efforts in Ukraine. More

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      Review: Thomas Adès Charts a Journey Through Hell and Heaven

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      At the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the composer’s “Dante” is an extreme rarity in orchestral music: a new evening-length work.LOS ANGELES — Step into Walt Disney Concert Hall here this weekend, and you’ll find one of the rarest creatures in classical music: a new evening-length work.Premieres are most often relegated to the realm of curtain raisers. At best, composers can hope for the post-intermission pride of place almost always reserved for classic symphonies. A full program, though? Practically unheard-of.But the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the most adventurous of America’s major orchestras, is a reliable exception. And on Thursday it gave the U.S. premiere of Thomas Adès’s “Dante,” a more than 90-minute journey through hell and the spheres of heaven, a musical analogue to “The Divine Comedy” that, in its expansive yet discrete sound worlds, rises to meet its source material.“Dante” got its start here three years ago, when the first section — “Inferno,” a love letter to Liszt, whom Adès has referred to as “my Virgil” — was one of many substantial premieres celebrating the Philharmonic’s centennial. The full work landed in London last fall as “The Dante Project,” an ambitious commission by the Royal Ballet, choreographed by Wayne McGregor and featuring designs by the artist Tacita Dean.Not all ballet music belongs in the concert hall; there’s a reason the stage scores of Adolphe Adam or Léo Delibes are rarely programmed. Although Tchaikovsky’s “The Sleeping Beauty” is his most appropriately balletic music, orchestras more readily take up the symphonic drama of “Swan Lake” or “The Nutcracker,” a consummate tone poem that — like Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” and his other early works — is satisfyingly evocative in any context.Put “Dante” in the pantheon of great ballet scores that stand alone — thrive, even — outside the pit and the proscenium. As seen in a streamed video from the Royal Ballet, it nearly overpowered the contributions by McGregor and Dean. But at Disney Hall, under the enthusiastic and commanding baton of Gustavo Dudamel, the music’s tempos were freer; the dense textures, more clearly defined; the mastery of craft, impossible to miss.Dudamel led “Dante” enthusiastically, and with command.Alex Welsh for The New York TimesAdès’s work here is something of a modern answer to Liszt’s “Dante” Symphony — another work that traces the trilogy of “The Divine Comedy” with a choral finale — though there is more varied inspiration (and more Liszt) throughout. In that sense, it is typical Adès: referential, if not reverential, and slippery. Before you realize you’ve spotted an allusion, it’s gone. And it might not have even been real; that is the strange magic of his music, which manages to feel at once fresh and familiar.It’s no surprise that “Dante” was met with prolonged, fervent standing ovations on Thursday. Adès is by no means an avant-gardist, and this work, for all its sophistication, is entirely approachable — legibly fun, vivid and, by the end, glorious. With the exception of recorded song deployed in “Purgatorio,” he writes with virtually the same means as a composer of a century ago: a happy reminder of how alive and well the orchestra can be as a medium and instrument.In “Inferno,” he follows the path of Dante’s text — beginning, in the section “Abandon Hope,” with piercing darkness and a downward plunge reminiscent of the “Dante” Symphony. But although Liszt haunts “Inferno,” the craft is Adès’s: hallmarks like full-bodied, divisi strings; excess at both ends of the dynamic spectrum; and meter that changes by the measure.From there, the circles of hell serve as ready-made divertissements, characterful episodes that conjure, however obliquely, the poetic justice delivered to Dante’s sinners. There are sections of sensuality and sludgy stasis; strings that chatter and murmur with mischief; and martial horrors similar to, well, hellfire. Chromatic runs, up and down on unsteady ground, recall Liszt’s “Bagatelle Sans Tonalité.” Does Adès also nod to “E sempre lava!” from Puccini’s “Tosca”? Maybe Tchaikovsky and the Dies Irae, too? You can never be sure.Liszt reappears, more explicitly, in the climactic “Thieves” section, a cacophonous dance that would seem parodic if it didn’t so affectionately resemble the “Grand Galop Chromatique.” Here, liberated from any choreographic constraints, Dudamel gradually pressed the tempo in a desperate race that had the audience applauding mid-performance; and how could they not?With a running time of about 45 minutes, “Inferno” takes up roughly half of the “Dante” score, but doesn’t loom over the distinctive personalities of “Purgatorio” and “Paradiso,” which came after an intermission.Those two are more abstractly inspired by Dante. “Purgatorio” doesn’t follow the text canto by canto so much as echo its predawn mood and preoccupation with song. Adès employs an ancient Jewish prayer for early morning from Syria, now preserved in a recording from the Ades Synagogue in Jerusalem. After an opening without pitch — waves of wind blown through instruments, or bowed on the bridge in the strings — the cantor’s singing, amplified from the stage, enters, and occasionally overtakes the orchestra.At one point, like the inverted world of purgatory, the amplification moves up to the ceiling, from focused to spatial. And its sounds guide the orchestral writing; trumpets herald a “Heavenly Procession” with a tune that is quickly revealed to be a transcription. Because the prayer ends at dawn, the music does, too, with the luminous, Pearly Gates grandeur of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony.And so Adès arrives at “Paradiso,” a glassy upward spiral in constant motion. Even as it descends, it does so with a weightless shimmer, and never for long. You wouldn’t think a composer could sustain a slow ascent for some 25 minutes, and the conceit appears to wear thin until its spell takes hold — a step outside time, cosmic and courting a hypnotic daze. When the climb reaches an untenable height, the orchestration teeming and begging for harmonic resolution, an offstage choir (the Los Angeles Master Chorale) provides it with a halo of heavenly consonance.From this celestial perspective, the scattered chaos of “Inferno” is a distant memory. Everything in between has been a journey indeed — a range difficult to fathom for a single work. That, perhaps, is the real achievement of “Dante”: Like the poetry of “The Divine Comedy,” it seems to contain the entirety of life itself.Los Angeles PhilharmonicThis program repeats through Saturday at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles; laphil.com. More