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      A Conductor Comes Into His Own in the Opera Pit

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      SANTA FE, N.M. — “I was skeptical,” James Gaffigan said while waiting for huevos rancheros during a recent lunch here, where his run conducting a taut “Tristan und Isolde” at Santa Fe Opera ends on Tuesday.Skepticism is not normally the emotion you hear expressed, or at least admitted, when interviewing conductors about their next big post. But Gaffigan, 43, is a congenial, quick-talking musician who is more honest and open than many of his peers. And the post in question — the one he was initially skeptical of — is at the Komische Oper Berlin, where he takes over as general music director next year.Already doing a similar job at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, Spain, where his first season included “Wozzeck” and a Romeo Castellucci staging of Mozart’s Requiem, it seemed absurd, he said, to take on a second opera house — especially if it was to be the Komische.Not exactly renowned for its conductors, with the small exception of Kirill Petrenko before he had really become Kirill Petrenko, the Komische has been a playground for directors since its founding by Walter Felsenstein in 1947. For the past decade, it has drawn acclaim under the virtuosic showmanship of Barrie Kosky, the outgoing intendant, who will continue to stage new productions at the house.“It’s been the Barrie show, and that’s why my first instinct was to say no, or I’m not sure,” Gaffigan said. “I thought that whatever I did in the pit, how I developed the orchestra, would be overshadowed.”Gaffigan rehearsing Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” in Santa Fe.Ramsay de Give for The New York TimesIt’s a hesitation that Philip Bröking, formerly an in-house director who has been promoted to co-intendant alongside the Komische’s former managing director, Susanne Moser, understands, though he makes no excuses for the house’s specific character.“Our choices, and I have to admit these were also my choices, of chief conductors haven’t been as successful as we expected,” Bröking said in an interview. “When Susanne and I got the job as intendants, we asked ourselves, ‘Where can we really improve?’ And we do know that the orchestra has a lot of potential.”But Gaffigan marveled at the orchestra’s flexibility while first conducting them in a streamed concert of Webern, Gulda and Mozart in April 2021, and he agreed to take responsibility for two new productions, four concerts and a number of revivals in each of his four contracted seasons. Kosky, he said, convinced him that a double appointment — one at a newly built Spanish house that concentrates on the standard repertoire, the other among company that is as comfortable in Nono as in Handel, as committed to musicals as to the canon — would be an opportunity, not a burden.“The more I thought about it, I realized they are the most versatile orchestra in town,” Gaffigan explained, adding that his first experience as an audience member at the Komische was a snowy, sold-out Tuesday night of Offenbach’s “Orphée aux Enfers” that showed him just how much its diverse audience trusts in what he called the “wackiness” of the house.“We already have the public behind us because of what Barrie has done, and if we build the musical level even higher, it won’t just be a Regie theater,” he said. “I want people to come for the full package, and I think it’s possible.”Even so, it’s a striking move. Gaffigan’s future had always seemed to lie on the symphony stage, not in the opera pit. Starting his career with junior posts at the Cleveland Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony, he then served as the chief conductor of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra for a decade, producing an eclectic list of recordings. He also became the principal guest of both the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and the Trondheim Symphony orchestras, tenures that end this season.Only a few years ago, Gaffigan was reputed to be on the shortlists of more than a few American ensembles searching for new music directors, and his enthusiasm, his keen interest in education and his flair for programming made him a strong candidate.Simon O’Neill, left, and Eric Owens in the Santa Fe production of “Tristan.”Curtis Brown/Santa Fe Opera“He’s certainly somebody who American orchestras have their eye on,” said Gary Ginstling, the incoming president and chief executive of the New York Philharmonic, who leads the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, where Gaffigan conducts Bernstein’s “Mass” to celebrate the Kennedy Center’s 50th anniversary in September. “I think he has a lot of options, and will continue to.”But although Gaffigan has been in the running for a number of American posts, he has decided to step out of the fray for the time being.“I would need it to be the right city in America, with the right vision,” he said. “I don’t want to do the complete Brahms symphonies. Who cares? It needs to be a forward-thinking institution. I don’t want to be repeating the same stuff over and over again, and right now, I don’t see it.”Tired of the old routines, of programs announced far in advance that run through an overture, a concerto and a symphony, Gaffigan is also bothered by orchestras that refuse to reckon with their whiteness.“I hate that something that I love so much is defined as something elitist,” said Gaffigan, a native Staten Islander and public school graduate. “It upsets me that I’m from a country that has so many different types of people, yet when I look into the audience, I only see one type. That hurts me, as an American. I don’t just say it to sound politically correct; it’s something I believe.”Gaffigan may see no good fit for him at home, or none that is open to him, but Bröking said that the conductor’s interest in music not traditionally explored by American ensembles made him a natural choice for the Komische Oper when it was searching for someone to replace its current music director, Ainars Rubikis.“The first phone call with James was in April 2020,” Bröking recalled. “What was very special about this telephone call was that he did not ask: ‘What can my repertoire be? Is it Verdi, is it Puccini, is it Wagner?’ These are the questions you usually get, because as a general music director, you would like to present yourself in the core repertoire, especially in Berlin. He was much more interested in the special situation of the Komische Oper, between the Staatsoper and the Deutsche Oper.”Audience members at Santa Fe, where Gaffigan has developed a reputation as collaborative partner.Ramsay de Give for The New York TimesWhat also appealed to the Komische is that Gaffigan, ambitious but far from egoistical, actually seems to practice what so many of his colleagues preach about a consciously collaborative style.“In Berlin, we have some experience with old, master conductors,” Bröking said wryly. “They do fantastic work, of course they do, but half of our orchestra are women, there are many young instrumentalists, and they don’t want to be treated as in former times. They want to communicate, they want to build something together, they want to be a team. This is what James is able to do well.”Gaffigan’s “Tristan” in Santa Fe sounded as though it had been carefully prepared, as indeed it had, with him listening to every historical recording he could find and even getting “crazy into poetics,” as he put it. But it was also evident that he was far less concerned with prosecuting his own interpretation of the drama, than in sustaining the staging that was in front of him.“He’s in service to the whole,” said Zack Winokur, who co-directed the “Tristan” with Lisenka Heijboer Castañón and is the artistic director of the avowedly egalitarian American Modern Opera Company. “It’s an unusual thing with conductors, that it’s not Machiavellian, that it didn’t feel manipulative,” Winokur said of the experience. “It felt actually supportive.”Tamara Wilson, the soprano who made a breakthrough debut as Isolde, agreed that Gaffigan’s style is unusual in the opera world, and happily so.“The first thing that he asked,” Wilson recalled of an early meeting on Zoom, “was, ‘How do you want to run rehearsals?’ For a singer, that’s unheard-of. That is never, ever how it goes. I had an immediate sense of relief, because I knew that this was going to be a collaboration, versus me being yelled at.”She added: “Even listening to the Santa Fe orchestra the first time, you could tell it wasn’t about just doing it and getting it right, making it correct — it was about making it special. And that’s what he does. He makes things special.” More

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      After 10 Years, Barrie Kosky Leaves His Opera House Dancing

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      To say goodbye to a transformative tenure at the Komische Oper in Berlin, this director staged an “All-Singing, All-Dancing Yiddish Revue.”BERLIN — It’s difficult to pinpoint the most outrageous moment of “Barrie Kosky’s All-Singing, All-Dancing Yiddish Revue,” which opened at the Komische Oper here on Friday. Is it the 1960s-era pilot and flight attendant in drag belting “My Way” (sorry, “Mayn Veg”) under a shower of golden confetti? The subtle camp of an imaginary Choir of Temple Beth Emmanuel singing with straight-faced sincerity? The “message from our sponsors” advertising “delectably light, always right, gefilte fish in jars”?But maybe the evening is less about those moments than about Kosky himself: the Australian-born director who has become an essential figure of the Berlin, not to mention European, opera scene, an erstwhile foreigner who speaks in a fluid blend of German, English and Yiddish and has risen to being addressed on Friday by Claudia Roth, Germany’s culture commissioner, as “lieber,” or dear, Barrie.So much of the “Revue” embodies the ethos of the house he has built during the decade of his leadership, which comes to an end this summer. Queer, Jewish, entertaining and executed at a high level, the show is a quintessential production of the Komische Oper, the city’s most reliably interesting and revelatory opera company.Under Kosky — a showman through and through, who operates with a young idealist’s belief in the power of theater and a brazen disregard for divisions between so-called high and low art — the Komische Oper has been the kind of place where you could see Schoenberg’s “Moses und Aron” one night and Mozart the next, followed by a Broadway musical, a Weimar-era operetta and, for good measure, something Baroque.Thankfully, that spirit will survive once he leaves and the house is jointly led by Susanne Moser and Philip Bröking. And, as Kosky said during a curtain call speech on Friday, the “Revue” is “kein Abschied”: no farewell. At 55, and more comfortable working as a freelancer than taking on a new house, he will remain at the Komische in an advisory role and direct one musical each of the next five seasons. His first? Jerry Herman’s “La Cage aux Folles,” given a grand treatment and sharing the calendar, in typical fashion, with Luigi Nono’s avant-garde, borderline strident “Intolleranza 1960.”“That must be the only time in history that the words ‘Nono’ and ‘Jerry Herman’ are in the same sentence,” Kosky said in a recent interview. “It’s even the same orchestra and the same chorus. My God, I mean, that’s just sensational.”Compare this atmosphere with those of the city’s two other major houses: the respectable but relatively stuffy Deutsche Oper and the Berlin State Opera, a company hopelessly wed to a core repertory heavy on Strauss and Wagner. The Komische, fittingly, attracts a varied audience that Kosky — true to my experience over the years — described as “five leather queens” next to “two tattooed lesbians” next to “grandpa and grandmother” next to “four Japanese tourists.”Kosky at the Komische Oper, the company he has run for 10 years, and where he will remain in an advisory role after he steps down this summer.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesKosky’s crowning achievement may be the degree to which he has elevated and restored operetta — a genre “stopped dead in its tracks” by the Third Reich, he said, and “Aryanized” in post-World War II performance — on the Berlin stage. He has either directed or invited guests to mount productions of long-neglected works including Paul Abraham’s “Ball im Savoy,” Oscar Straus’s “Die Perlen der Cleopatra” and Jaromir Weinberger’s “Frühlingsstürme,” which is considered the last operetta of the Weimar Republic.“These pieces were a fundamental, important part of the landscape of Berlin culture before 1933,” he said. “And we’re not just talking about Jewish composers. We’re talking about Jewish librettists, we’re talking about Jewish choreographers, we’re talking about Jewish singers.”It can be tricky to stage an operetta convincingly and compellingly; Kosky and his team have performed some dramaturgical surgery as part of their rescue missions. But above all, he has avoided linking his productions with history. Absent are Nazi intrusions or attempts at “setting the thing in Buchenwald, which a German director might probably do,” he said.“You know, it doesn’t work if you’re going to batter people,” Kosky added. “I feel the audiences have been enabled in the last 10 years to sit here and enjoy it without guilt. What I’ve tried to tell the German audiences, and the Berlin audiences, is, listen: The best way you can honor these people that your grandparents or parents killed or sent into exile is enjoy it.”So he has aimed for humor, charm and, of course, a little subversiveness. And operetta allows him to be “completely ludicrous,” as he said. “I can put in my Mel Brooks Barrie Kosky moments, and then I can be very heartbreakingly real the next moment, and it’s authentic to the pieces. I think most German directors don’t do that. They haven’t watched ‘The Muppet Show.’ I always say to people, if you want to understand my work, it’s basically a combination of the Muppets and Franz Kafka.”For now, Kosky plans to step away from operetta and make room for others: “I’ve opened the sweets shop, and I’ve said, ‘Look, guys, look at these delicious, fabulous things. And I’ve given you the keys. Take over the shop.’”Hence his future directing musicals, which after “La Cage” will include “Chicago” and “Sweeney Todd.” He is committed to opera projects throughout Europe in the coming years, but he would gladly take on Broadway as well. That, however, would entail getting a foothold where he has been woefully underrepresented. Productions by Kosky have traveled to Los Angeles and Houston; in September, his Komische “Fiddler on the Roof” will open at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. But aside from a co-directed, not-truly-his staging of “The Magic Flute” that appeared at the Mostly Mozart Festival in 2019, his work hasn’t found the audience it deserves in New York. (The Metropolitan Opera had planned to present his “Fiery Angel” in fall 2020, but it’s now in pandemic purgatory.)Dagmar Manzel, one of the house’s stars, in a sober turn from her comedic roles, such as the title character of “Die Perlen der Cleopatra.”Monika RittershausFirst, though, Kosky needs to finish the run, through July 10, of the “Revue,” an original creation he arrived at after not wanting his final production to be something expected, like an operetta, and after the pandemic upended his plans for a Stravinsky marathon. Few directors would, or could, dream up the result: a tribute to the Yiddish entertainment common at resorts in the Catskill Mountains during the mid-20th century.“The list of performers who were there — it’s like a who’s who of American culture, all going to this Jewish utopian, sort of summer kibbutz,” Kosky said, mentioning the likes of Joan Rivers, Danny Kaye and Brooks. “I mean, what was the Catskills if not a kibbutz without politics?”Paced like a playlist — with the accompanying ups, downs and, at times, lulls — the show features popular music arranged and conducted by Adam Benzwi (called Adam Benski from the stage) and follies-like choreography, with an eye for physical comedy, by Otto Pichler. Company members and guest stars appear in different guises, none more surprising than Dagmar Manzel in a rendingly sober turn from her riotous Cleopatra earlier last week.Throughout, Kosky — who also hosts the show through prerecorded introductions — is committed to the bit in a delicate balance of irony and camp. Both men and women sing in drag; borscht belt humor (“below the girdle”) abounds; and the performers assume personas on a Marvel Cinematic Universe scale. There’s the “mezzo from Minsk” Sylvie Sonitzki, a boy band of orthodox Jews, and don’t forget the temple choir. In an ending out of something like Verdi’s “Falstaff,” Kosky brings out everyone, an enormous ensemble backed by an enormous orchestra, for a spectacle that, joyous and celebratory, sends off the audience with a command: “Dance!”Kosky couldn’t have said goodbye any other way. More

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      10 Classical Concerts to Stream in March

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeWatch: ‘WandaVision’Travel: More SustainablyFreeze: Homemade TreatsCheck Out: Podcasters’ Favorite PodcastsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story10 Classical Concerts to Stream in MarchMitsuko Uchida, the Louisiana Philharmonic and a performance organized by Teju Cole are among the highlights.The pianist Mitsuko Uchida will stream a Schubert program this month through Cal Performances.Credit…Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesFeb. 25, 2021, 10:00 a.m. ETAs the live performing arts continue to struggle through the coronavirus pandemic, here are 10 highlights from the flood of online music content coming in March. (Times listed are Eastern.)‘Die Tote Stadt’Feb. 28 at 1 p.m.; operavision.eu; available through March 28.Korngold’s breakthrough opera has not been well served on DVD. Some productions emphasize the plot’s salaciousness at the expense of its musical beauty. For others, the problem is the reverse. If anyone can achieve the delicate balance of the two elements, it’s the experienced director Robert Carsen, whose production of the rapturous, late Romantic score — a precursor to Korngold’s influential Hollywood work — appeared at the Komische Oper in Berlin in 2018, and is streaming now. The soprano Sara Jakubiak stars, and has made something of a specialty of Korngold in recent years, including appearing in another recent Berlin staging, at the Deutsche Oper, of “Das Wunder der Heliane.” SETH COLTER WALLSTeju Cole and Orchestra of St. Luke’sMarch 3 at 6:30 p.m.; oslmusic.org; available until March 10.This ensemble, which has responded robustly and creatively to the constraints of streamed performance, begins a new words-and-music series, “Sounds and Stories,” with a program organized by the writer Teju Cole and hosted by the actor David Hyde Pierce. Cole will read selections from his work alongside visual elements and pieces by an eclectic array of composers: Caroline Shaw, Yvette Janine Jackson, Henryk Gorecki, Unsuk Chin, Kaija Saariaho and Hildegard von Bingen. Oh, and Beethoven. ZACHARY WOOLFEAnthony McGill will collaborate with the Catalyst Quartet on a performance presented by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Credit…Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesAnthony McGillMarch 9 at 7 p.m.; Facebook and YouTube; available indefinitely.“Cadence: The Sounds of Justice, the Sounds of a Movement,” presented by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has been organized by Anthony McGill, the New York Philharmonic’s principal clarinet and the latest winner of the Avery Fisher Prize. Inspired by the Great Migration and works in the museum’s collection, McGill is joined by the Catalyst Quartet, with whom he collaborated on the group’s album “Uncovered, Vol. 1: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.” They will play Coleridge-Taylor’s Clarinet Quintet in F sharp minor alongside Kerry James Marshall’s 2014 painting “Untitled (Studio),” and a premiere by Richard Danielpour, in front of Philip Guston’s “Stationary Figure” (1973). Closing the concert will be Adolphus Hailstork’s solo “Three Smiles for Tracey,” juxtaposed with Joel Shapiro’s sculpture “Untitled” (2000-01). JOSHUA BARONESteven BanksMarch 10 at 7:30 p.m.; Facebook and YouTube; available indefinitely.This adventurous saxophonist and composer presents his debut recital for the organization Young Concert Artists, which named him the winner of its prestigious international auditions competition in 2019. The program, with the pianist Xak Bjerken, includes premieres by Carlos Simon and Saad Haddad and Banks’s own new work “Come As You Are.” He will also perform Mozart’s Oboe Quartet in F (with members of the Zorá Quartet) and Schumann’s “Fantasiestücke” for Clarinet and Piano — both arranged for saxophone. And why not? The sax, after all, is a latter-day cousin of both those instruments. ANTHONY TOMMASINILouisiana Philharmonic OrchestraMarch 12 at 8 p.m.; lpomusic.com; available through September.There are two Copland works on this program: “Appalachian Spring” and the Clarinet Concerto. But the bigger news is the performance of Courtney Bryan’s violin concerto “Syzygy,” featuring Jennifer Koh as soloist. The Louisiana players have a longstanding connection with Bryan’s music; having performed her orchestral work “Rejoice,” they’ve also named this composer-pianist a “creative partner.” So they may well have a feel for her take on Americana, which often includes elements of spirituals and the blues. (Bryan’s “Blessed,” a commission for Opera Philadelphia’s online channel, is also streaming from Feb. 26.) SETH COLTER WALLSThe mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey performs Kurt Weill at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesKate LindseyMarch 14 at 2 p.m.; teatroallascala.org, as well as YouTube and Facebook; available through March 21.One of my favorite albums in recent years has been “Thousands of Miles,” a program mostly of Kurt Weill songs performed by the mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey and the pianist Baptiste Trotignon with cabaret-like cool; Lindsey brings to these works both the radiant lyricism of Teresa Stratas and the raw Sprechstimme of Lotte Lenya, two iconic Weill interpreters. That album is the basis for this recital with Trotignon at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, where Lindsey will also appear in March for a double bill of Weill’s “The Seven Deadly Sins” and “Mahagonny-Songspiel,” conducted by Riccardo Chailly and streaming on RaiPlay on March 18. JOSHUA BARONEMitsuko UchidaMarch 18 at 10 p.m.; calperformances.org; available through June 16.For Mitsuko Uchida, Schubert’s piano works have been a lifelong work in progress, which is why, years after she recorded the bulk of them, they are still well worth hearing anew — lately, in online recitals. From Wigmore Hall in London she recently streamed the Sonata in C (D. 840) for the Cleveland Orchestra. Next is this program for Cal Performances, featuring the forlorn yet tender Impromptu in A flat (D. 935); the famous Impromptu in C minor (D. 899), with its spare, enigmatic opening march embellished through chords and variations; and the Sonata in G (D. 894), a font of serenity that’s as good a spiritual balm as anything right now. JOSHUA BARONESarah CahillMarch 20 at 10:30 p.m.; YouTube; available indefinitely.A champion of American music and living composers, this pianist is also known as host of the popular program Revolutions Per Minutes on KALW in San Francisco. This recital, presented by the Community School of Music and Arts in Mountain View, Calif., is a celebration of the 19th Amendment, and includes works by female composers from the 18th century to the present day, among them Clara Schumann, Amy Beach, Margaret Bonds and Vitezslava Kapralova. ANTHONY TOMMASINICaramoor will stream a recital by the bass-baritone Dashon Burton, left.Credit…Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesDashon BurtonMarch 21 at 3 p.m.; caramoor.org; available until March 23.Known as a member of the contemporary vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth as much as for trumpeting performances in Handel’s “Messiah,” this burnished-tone bass-baritone appears in recital with the pianist David Fung under the auspices of Caramoor. The program includes Schumann’s “Dichterliebe” as well as spirituals and works by Dowland, Margaret Bonds, Florence Price and William Bolcom. ZACHARY WOOLFELouisville OrchestraMarch 27 at 7:30 p.m.; louisvilleorchestra.vhx.tv; available until May 23.The exuberance of this ensemble and its young music director, Teddy Abrams, is captured in its name for its streaming series: Louisville Orchestra Virtual Edition, or LOVE. Installments explore Classical and folk styles, and, on March 27, the legacy of Black traditions. Abrams conducts from the keyboard in Ravel’s jazz-influenced Piano Concerto in G, and the local rapper, activist, teacher and Louisville Metro Council member Jecorey Arthur performs. ZACHARY WOOLFEAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      10 Classical Concerts to Stream in January

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story10 Classical Concerts to Stream in JanuaryA Verdi opera from the Met and composers on the border of classical and pop are among the highlights.Luciano Pavarotti and Aprile Millo in Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera,” which will be streamed by the Metropolitan Opera.Credit…Met Opera ArchivesDec. 31, 2020, 8:00 a.m. ETAs the live performing arts still reel from the coronavirus pandemic, here are 10 highlights from the flood of online music content coming in January. (Times listed are Eastern.)‘Lonely House’Available now until Jan. 22; operavision.eu and on YouTube.This winter, Katharine Merhling was scheduled to reprise her Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady” at the Komische Oper in Berlin. The pandemic got in the way, but the company’s devoted audience need not spend the season without this singer’s gifts. This performance (first streamed live late in December) offers a fresh look at Kurt Weill, focusing on that composer’s years in Paris and New York. Devotees know many of these songs. But Ms. Mehrling’s energy — aided by Barrie Kosky, the Komische Oper’s artistic director, on piano — gives a saucy charge to a medley from the rarely staged “Lady in the Dark.” SETH COLTER WALLS‘Un Ballo in Maschera’Jan. 2 at 7:30 p.m.; metopera.org; available until Jan. 3 at 6:30 p.m.In case you missed it in August, this 1991 Metropolitan Opera performance of Verdi’s dark tale of love, betrayal, friendship and regicide returns to the company’s series of nightly streams from its archives. “Ballo” is part of a week centered on Luciano Pavarotti, Met star supreme, but is also a showcase for the passionate artistry of the soprano Aprile Millo, whose career burned bright in the 1980s and ’90s, a throwback to divas of yore. James Levine conducts a cast that also includes Leo Nucci, Florence Quivar and Harolyn Blackwell. ZACHARY WOOLFEThe soprano Julia Bullock’s recital will be streamed by Cal Perfomances.Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesJulia BullockJan. 14 at 10 p.m.; calperformances.org; available until April 14.Kurt Weill isn’t just coming from the Komische Oper. One of our most luminous singers has four Weill numbers of her own to offer in a recital for Cal Performances that swings, in characteristic Bullock style, from the classical canon to contemporary work by way of golden age musical theater. Pieces by William Grant Still and Margaret Bonds are at the core of a program that also includes songs by Wolf and Schumann (selections from “Dichterliebe”), a set from “The Sound of Music,” and material from John Adams’s recent opera “Girls of the Golden West,” composed with Ms. Bullock in mind. Laura Poe is the pianist. ZACHARY WOOLFEEve EgoyanJan. 16 at 5 p.m.; rcmusic.com; available until Jan. 23.This Canadian pianist, who specializes in contemporary music, will perform the premiere of her Seven Studies for Augmented Piano. This is a series of works she created for a Yamaha Disklavier — an acoustic piano with a computer interface, coupled with software that allows her “to augment and extend the sonic range of the piano,” as she writes in a program note. The program, part of the 21C Music Festival presented by the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, includes a short video exploring Ms. Egoyan’s creative process. ANTHONY TOMMASINIWild UpJan. 17 at 9:58 a.m.; patreon.com/wildup; available indefinitely.Artists from the Wild Up collective, including its conductor and artistic director, Christopher Rountree, are familiar to Los Angeles audiences. But for the group’s coming monthlong project, “Darkness Sounding,” listeners around the world are invited. Some concerts will be available as livestreams, then archived, through Wild Up’s Patreon page. At five dollars for the month, you can access shows like this one on Jan. 17, “simple lines/quiet music/silent songs,” featuring the pianist Richard Valitutto. A daylong “house concert,” it’s organized around largely soft, contemplative works by the likes of Ann Southam and Alvin Curran. SETH COLTER WALLS‘Soldier Songs’Jan. 22 at 8 p.m.; operaphila.org; available until May 31.David T. Little’s “Soldier Songs,” for baritone and small ensemble, was born of the American invasion of Iraq. But, based on interviews with veterans of five wars, it speaks to conflict more generally and abstractly. And like the most satisfying politically minded art, it’s rife with complication — not just in the score’s uninhibited blending of genres, but also in the treatment of its subject, defying stereotypes and hagiographies. “Soldier Songs” puts you off as it draws you in, and it will haunt audiences anew in a virtual production presented by Opera Philadelphia, directed by and starring the baritone Johnathan McCullough. JOSHUA BARONEThe baritone Christian Gerhaher, standing, and the pianist Gerold Huber performing in September at Wigmore Hall, which will stream their recital on Jan. 27.Credit…Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesChristian Gerhaher and Gerold HuberJan. 27 at 2:30 p.m.; wigmore-hall.org.uk; available until Feb. 26.As concerts have moved online during the pandemic, many have also gotten shorter. Thus “Schwanengesang,” the shattering collection of Schubert’s final songs, can more easily stand alone on a program — as it does in this Wigmore Hall stream from the baritone Christian Gerhaher and the pianist Gerold Huber, one of the great musical partnerships of our time. The duo also appear earlier in Wigmore’s richly scheduled January, presenting works by Schumann and Debussy (Jan. 25). Other hall highlights include the soprano Lise Davidsen, singing Grieg, Sibelius and more (Jan. 17), and the pianist Igor Levit, playing Hindemith, Schoenberg and Busoni (Jan. 29). JOSHUA BARONEBaltimore Symphony OrchestraJan. 27 at 8 p.m.; offstage.bsomusic.org; available until June 30.This ensemble has been offering a series of documentary-style, hourlong discussion and performance programs called BSO Sessions. “Twelve” looks at composers who have bridged contemporary classical music and pop. There will be performances of a suite by Jonny Greenwood, of Radiohead, from his score for the film “There Will Be Blood”; Bryce Dessner’s “Lachrimae”; and Caroline Shaw’s “Entr’acte.” Steve Hackman, a composer and arranger skilled at this crossover, discusses the music and the stylistic overlaps with musicians from the orchestra. Nicholas Hersh conducts. ANTHONY TOMMASINIThe pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason will appear with the Hallé Orchestra.Credit…Matt Crossick/PA Images, via Getty ImagesHallé OrchestraJan. 28 at 6 a.m.; halle.co.uk; available until April 28.This orchestra, which has been streaming performances filmed at its Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, England, has an intriguing program coming up featuring the pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason, the eldest of the seven young, gifted members of a British musical family that has been gaining international attention. She plays Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 on the program, conducted by Mark Elder, which opens with Richard Strauss’s Serenade for winds (written when its composer was 17) and ends with Sibelius’s Third Symphony. ANTHONY TOMMASINIPeter Evans EnsembleJan. 28 at 8 p.m.; roulette.org; available indefinitely.The trumpeter Peter Evans is a reliable source of thrilling virtuosity. That’s true when he’s working with the Wet Ink Ensemble or International Contemporary Ensemble, as well as when he’s leading his own groups. This quartet, with the electronics and percussion specialist Levy Lorenzo, the violinist and vocalist Mazz Swift and the pianist Ron Stabinsky, recently celebrated the release of a blazing album, “Horizons.” But this livestream won’t be a victory lap; it promises a fresh slate of compositions by Mr. Evans. SETH COLTER WALLSAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More