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    Carnegie Hall Announces Its 2023-24 Season

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    We choose highlights from events featuring Mitsuko Uchida and Franz Welser-Möst as Perspectives artists, and the composer Tania León in residence.The threats facing democracy will be a central focus of Carnegie Hall’s coming season, the presenter announced on Tuesday, with a festival devoted to the flourishing cultural scene in Germany between the two world wars.From January to May, Carnegie will host “Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice,” an exploration of creative expression during the fragile democracy in Germany from 1919 to 1933. The festival will feature ensembles such as the Vienna Philharmonic and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s performing works by composers of the time, including Paul Hindemith and Kurt Weill.“We’re seeing the challenges to democracy more and more clearly, and it’s all the more reason we have to treasure it,” Clive Gillinson, Carnegie’s executive and artistic director, said in an interview. “We want people to ask questions and contemplate why democracy matters, and what the threats are in our day.”The 2023-24 season, which begins in October, will feature some 170 performances, beginning with two concerts by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of its outgoing music director, Riccardo Muti. The pianist Mitsuko Uchida and the conductor Franz Welser-Möst, the music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, will each organize a series of Perspectives concerts.The composer Tania León, who won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2021, will lead a season-long residency; in January, the Boston Symphony Orchestra will offer the New York premiere of a new piece by her.More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.Feeling the Buzz: “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” is back on Broadway. Its stars? An eclectic cast of dancers who are anything but machines.Here are a dozen highlights of the coming season, chosen by critics for The New York Times. JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZEnglish Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir, Oct. 25You can safely bet on a few things whenever the conductor John Eliot Gardiner comes to town: agile, historically informed performance; obsessively precise articulation; and virtually ideal readings of beloved repertoire. In early 2020, he led his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique in just about as good a Beethoven symphony cycle as you could imagine. And now he brings the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir to Carnegie for Bach’s Mass in B minor and, on Oct. 26, Handel’s “L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato.” JOSHUA BARONEThe mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre will appear at Weill Recital Hall with the lutenist Thomas Dunford.Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLea Desandre and Thomas Dunford, Nov. 2These two artists — Desandre, a clarinet-mellow mezzo-soprano who can burst with bright agility, and Dunford, an eloquent lutenist — are among the brightest lights of a young generation of early-music specialists. They join in Weill Recital Hall, ideally intimate for this repertory, for “Lettera Amorosa,” a program of love-focused Baroque works by Monteverdi, Frescobaldi and Handel, alongside names like Tarquinio Merula (his songs exquisite) and Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger (a specialist in music for lute). ZACHARY WOOLFEAmerican Composers Orchestra, Nov. 9This essential organization has brought music by George Lewis to Carnegie’s various spaces before — the most notable instance being his Virtual Concerto (for a “computer-driven” piano soloist) back in 2004. The orchestra will continue its productive relationship with the composer to perform one of his latest orchestral works. No title for the piece is available yet; the same goes for a few other new works on the bill (including those from the likes of Guillermo Klein and Augusta Read Thomas). We do have one title: “Out of whose womb came the ice,” by the up-and-coming composer Nina C. Young, whose premiere was co-commissioned by Carnegie. SETH COLTER WALLSStaatskapelle Berlin, Nov. 30When the Staatskapelle Berlin and its longtime music director, Daniel Barenboim, last appeared at Carnegie, in 2017, it was an epic nine-performance stand that paired Mozart piano concertos and Bruckner symphonies. A lot has happened since then; most recently, in January, Barenboim stepped down from the orchestra’s podium because of health problems. So their return will be poignant: just two nights, and the four symphonies of Brahms, a composer Barenboim performed as a pianist in this space in 1962. ZACHARY WOOLFEEnglish Concert, Dec. 10The British soprano Lucy Crowe’s expertise and imagination in Baroque music gives her the freedom to turn da capo arias into feats of feeling. That exhilarating sense of spontaneity uplifted the English Concert’s performance of Handel’s “Serse” at Carnegie last year, and it will be exciting to hear Crowe apply her gifts to more dramatic material when she takes the title role in “Rodelinda.” OUSSAMA ZAHRThe pianist Daniil Trifonov will appear on Carnegie’s main stage to perform Beethoven’s mighty “Hammerklavier” Sonata.Caitlin Ochs for The New York TimesDaniil Trifonov, Dec. 12Arguably the mightiest of the under-40 generation of superstar pianists meets the mightiest of repertoire in this recital, as Daniil Trifonov takes on Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata. It’s a banner year for youngish soloists in ambitious repertoire, in fact: Vikingur Olafsson plays the “Goldberg” Variations (Feb. 7); Beatrice Rana does the Liszt Sonata (Feb. 28); and Seong-Jin Cho journeys through the second book of the same composer’s “Années de Pèlerinage” (May 17). DAVID ALLENMet Orchestra, Feb. 1Yannick Nézet-Séguin has decided not to share next season. Rather than engage a guest conductor, he helms all three of the Met Orchestra’s concerts himself, embracing opportunities to bask in the tonal floodgates of Lise Davidsen’s soprano in Wagner’s “Wesendonck Lieder” and, later, the heavenliness of Lisette Oropesa’s Mozart arias (June 11), and the intense standoff of Bartók’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” with Elina Garanca and Christian Van Horn (June 14). OUSSAMA ZAHRYunchan Lim, Feb. 21This precociously mature pianist, still in his teens, played Liszt’s deliriously difficult “Transcendental Études” on the way to becoming the youngest-ever winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition last year. He’ll reprise the Liszt as part of his recital introduction on Carnegie’s main stage. By this point, another pianist, the spectacularly creative Igor Levit, needs no introduction at this point to this hall’s audience; on Jan. 20, he’ll play two symphony transcriptions (Liszt’s of Beethoven’s Third and Ronald Stevenson’s of Mahler’s 10th) alongside Hindemith’s Suite “1922,” raucous and very Roaring Twenties. ZACHARY WOOLFEVienna Philharmonic, March 1Most of the five concerts in Welser-Möst’s Perspectives series — Jan. 20 and 21 with the Cleveland Orchestra, March 1-3 with Vienna — are emblematic of his thoughtful, idiosyncratic, ultimately endearing approach to programming, but the March 1 performance looks especially constructive, full of connections and contrasts to draw: Hindemith’s Konzertmusik for Wind Orchestra, Strauss’s Symphonic Fantasy from “Die Frau Ohne Schatten,” Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra and, as if to bid farewell to a whole world of music, Ravel’s “La Valse.” DAVID ALLENJason Moran will return to Carnegie with a tribute to the pioneering jazz musician James Reese Europe.Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York TimesJason Moran, March 9In addition to being an elite improvising pianist, Jason Moran is a keen programmer; his Carnegie survey of Black American music from the Great Migration was a well-attended success. You can all but bank on the same when Moran brings his latest concert concept to Zankel Hall. This time, the focus will be on the music of the early 20th-century American original James Reese Europe. You might expect some of the same expert arrangements heard on Moran’s latest album, “From the Dancehall to the Battlefield.” But prepare also for some surprises; this restless innovator rarely does anything the same way twice. SETH COLTER WALLSEnsemble Modern, April 12Much of the festival “Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice” is more confusing than informative. This period in history produced so much excellent and overlooked music; why are we seeing Beethoven, Wagner and Mahler (among other head-scratchers)? At least there are engagements like that of Ensemble Modern, which will perform works including a lithe but still barbed smaller arrangement of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s “The Seven Deadly Sins,” led by HK Gruber, one of our greatest living Weill interpreters. The group returns April 13 as part of León’s residency, playing her “Indígena” and “Rítmicas” alongside pieces by Conlon Nancarrow and others. JOSHUA BARONEDanish String Quartet, April 18A highlight of Carnegie’s spring months in recent seasons has been the Danish String Quartet’s Doppelgänger project, which juxtaposes Schubert quartets with premieres. Coming this April: a new work by Anna Thorvaldsdottir. And, for the fourth installment next year, the group is adding the cellist Johannes Rostamo to perform Schubert’s endlessly moving, even sublime String Quintet in C, paired with a commission from Thomas Adès. JOSHUA BARONE More

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      How the Philharmonic’s New Home Sounds, From Any Seat

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      After a major renovation, the acoustics throughout David Geffen Hall are strikingly consistent — but complicated.Over the past week at David Geffen Hall, the New York Philharmonic’s overhauled home, I’ve listened from the new block of seating behind the orchestra — so close to the players that I could almost read the percussionist’s music. I’ve sat in the last row of the third tier, as far from the stage as you can get. And I’ve been in the critic’s usual spot on the main level.It was striking how acoustically similar these three experiences were. The new Geffen seems to have achieved a rare distinction in its engineering for sound: consistency. No seat in the hall — at least the vastly different ones I’ve had in numerous visits so far — is appreciably better or worse than any other.Last week, after a handful of opening events, I wrote that the hall — an acoustical and aesthetic problem since its opening in 1962 — had a mightily improved sound. And I maintain that things have gotten better. But as I’ve spent more time there, and as the Philharmonic has audibly begun to settle into it, my feelings about that “mightily” have become more complicated.Simply being in the new Geffen is more immediate and intimate than it was before this long-awaited, long-delayed transformation. The blond-wood hall now has 2,200 seats, 500 fewer than it did, and the stage has been pulled forward into the auditorium to allow for seating to be wrapped around it. The general impact on what used to be an enormous, dreary barn is a flood of warmth, even conviviality. Substantially expanded public spaces (and more bathroom stalls) haven’t hurt.This all has an effect on our perception of the acoustics, but with each successive concert I’ve begun to detect some subtle gaps between the more inviting visuals and the elusive sound of the hall.The Reopening of David Geffen HallThe New York Philharmonic’s notoriously jinxed auditorium at Lincoln Center has undergone a $550 million renovation.Reborn, Again: The renovation of the star-crossed hall aims to break its acoustic curse — and add a dash of glamour.‘Unfinished Business’: After a 17-year run in Los Angeles, Deborah Borda returned to the New York Philharmonic, which she led in the 1990s, to help usher it into its new home.San Juan Hill: Etienne Charles’s composition for the reopening of the hall honors the Afro-diasporic musical heritage of the neighborhood razed to build Lincoln Center.Expert Assessment: Right after the reopening our critic wrote that the renovation had a mightily improved sound. In the weeks that followed his feelings became more complicated.Geffen sounds clear, clean and straightforward; there’s nothing distorted or echoing, no weird balances or flabby resonances. But that cleanness can sometimes seem like coolness: an objective, almost clinical feeling, matched by the hard white light glaring on the orchestra. (Compare it with Carnegie Hall, in every respect a golden bubble bath.)This quality can make soft passages beautifully lucid at Geffen, and solos come off with precision, as if the hall were pointing an index finger at the players, one by one. In the first subscription program in the new space — a brassy set of pieces that made Christopher Martin, the principal trumpet, the performances’ assured star — the no-fat sound brought the audience to its feet at the superloud ending of Respighi’s “Pines of Rome.” The lack of sonic plumpness also helps make Geffen superb with amplification.But the Philharmonic’s second subscription program — led on Thursday by its music director, Jaap van Zweden — was mellower and more strings focused, featuring Debussy’s silky “Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune”; an American premiere by Caroline Shaw, featuring her vocal octet Roomful of Teeth; and Florence Price’s hearty, recently rediscovered Fourth Symphony.Here a certain lack of warmth and richness of blend — perhaps partly the Philharmonic’s sometimes blunt playing, and partly the room — detracted more from the music. Unlike in the first program, when the strings and woodwinds were occasionally swamped at full volume and density, they were plainly audible on Thursday. But those instruments — the violins and violas, for example, especially higher in their ranges — didn’t have ideal presence and color. Unlike in some halls, their sound doesn’t bloom even up in the third tier.So the Debussy was taut, but not sensual. Price’s Fourth was rhythmically agile and spirited, but lacked the robustness, the lushness — the sense of sonic, and thus spiritual, abundance — that the Philadelphia Orchestra brought to her First Symphony at Carnegie in February.At least these opening programs have been a fresh vision of what a major orchestra can and should play, with women and composers of color, past and present, looming just as large — if not more so — than the grand old masters. Even if that chestnut “Pines of Rome” provided the rousing finale of the first program, living composers dominated it. Marcos Balter’s new “Oyá” paired the Philharmonic with live-produced electronics (by Levy Lorenzo) and flashing lights (by Nicholas Houfek) to turn the hall into a heaving, pounding belly of a beast, darkly — and, over 15 minutes, tediously — evoking the Yoruba goddess of storms, death and rebirth.The Philharmonic’s first concerts this season have been dominated by living composers, including Caroline Shaw, front left, who performed with her ensemble Roomful of Teeth on Thursday.Chris LeeAnd the orchestra brought back Tania León’s “Stride,” which premiered at Geffen in 2020 and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize last year. Progressing with somber uncertainty but unfailing nobility, it’s a strong piece. And it’s good general practice to revive successful contemporary works, gradually folding them into the repertory rather than just generating premiere after premiere.Best was the first Philharmonic performances of an underrated 2003 masterpiece by John Adams, “My Father Knew Charles Ives,” which weaves Ivesian controlled chaos into autobiographical musical depictions of sublime mountain vistas on both the East and West coasts, along with tender suggestions of the scratchy radio foxtrots Adams’s parents might have heard as they were courting.On this week’s program, the Debussy standard is just 10 minutes long; the remaining hour of music consists of Shaw’s premiere and the Price symphony, which was written some 80 years ago but had its belated first performances in 2018.The Philharmonic hasn’t played Price’s music on a subscription program before. While her Fourth Symphony lacks the stirring hymn of her First’s slow movement and the inspired slyness of the Juba dance in her Third, it does have a sprawling yet stylishly developing first movement, a sensitive Andante, its own swinging Juba and a feisty finale. Shaw’s “Microfictions,” Vol. 3, is — like her contemporary classic “Partita for Eight Voices” — a combination of the angelic and quotidian, of singing, speech, breathing, pitch bending and wailing, though the piece lacks the inspired variety of “Partita.” The orchestral accompaniment is both playful, with lots of drizzly irregular pizzicato, and ominous.After the concert on Thursday, Roomful of Teeth moved to the hall’s new Sidewalk Studio — visible from the street at the corner of 65th and Broadway — for the first Nightcap program of the season: a set of six pieces, including several world and New York premieres, that showed off the group’s talent for dreamy floating harmonies and uncanny, even otherworldly, effects.The Sidewalk Studio is also being used for daytime chamber music performances under the rubric NY Phil @ Noon; last week, a shaky rendition of Mozart’s “Kegelstatt” Trio was outweighed by a polished, graceful take on Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet. The small space’s acoustics are lively, regardless of whether the music is amplified.Geffen still prompts some raised eyebrows when it comes to tastefulness. A David Smith sculpture has been shoved into a corner of the lobby and blocked by protective wire. Clearly wanting to echo the “sputnik” chandeliers that elegantly rise as the lights dim before performances at the Metropolitan Opera, the hall’s designers devised “fireflies”: flickering polyhedrons that do a tacky little up-and-down show before the orchestra tunes. The public spaces have grown in size, but are also now strewn awkwardly with furniture and stanchions.But some questionable décor hasn’t kept the space from being inviting. With a few minutes left until the concert on Thursday, laptops had been opened; wine was being sipped; newspapers were being read; friends were sitting, chatting, laughing. It was bustling but not even close to unpleasantly packed, like in the old days. It was a space that was, in the best sense, being used. More

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      Tania León Wins Music Pulitzer for ‘Stride’

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      The New York Philharmonic premiered the work, both solemn and celebratory, in February 2020.In the 1990s, the composer Tania León was named a new-music adviser to the New York Philharmonic. But the orchestra did not play any of her work back then.It made up for lost time in February 2020, when the Philharmonic premiered Ms. León’s “Stride,” a work both solemn and celebratory, as part of its Project 19 initiative, for which it commissioned 19 female composers to honor the centennial of the 19th Amendment, which barred the states from denying women the right to vote.On Friday “Stride” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music. It is a culminating honor in the career of a composer, now 78, who grew up in Cuba; found a footing writing percussive dance works in New York; created a series of memorable orchestral pieces shot through with intricate Latin rhythmic grooves; and became an outspoken advocate for cultural diversity in music. She has also been a pathbreaking conductor, and currently directs the wide-ranging festival Composers Now.Ms. León, who found out about the prize as she left her dentist’s office on Friday, said she started crying at the news. “My mother and my grandmother were maids when they were 8-year-olds,” she said in a phone interview. “My family had so much hope for me and the new generation, to give us an education, and when something major has happened in my life, that’s the first thing that comes to mind.”Inspired by the courage of the women in her family, and by the suffragist Susan B. Anthony, the 15-minute “Stride” isn’t purely optimistic. Forthright brass fanfares recur throughout the piece, a kind of periodic annunciation, and jazzy wind solos squiggle out of the orchestral textures, but a dark, unsettled energy always lurks.The composer Ellen Reid, who won the Pulitzer in 2019 and was part of the committee that awarded this year’s prize, said she had heard the Philharmonic perform “Stride” at Lincoln Center last year.“It was one of the last performances before the pandemic,” she said by phone. “Tania has a way of weaving together so many musical traditions with such joy. She’s just such a wonderful ambassador for music, and her love is infectious.”Explosive bells sound at the end of the piece: “Every time I think about it,” Ms. León said, “I want to hear even more — all the bells in the nation.” But a West African beat shuffles underneath — a reminder that Black women were initially excluded from the right that was granted by the 19th Amendment.“Under all these bells of celebration,” Ms. León said, “there is still a kind of struggle.”Struggle, and movement.“It’s very nice to be recognized,” she added. “But the biggest prize of my life is that I’ve been able to manifest a dream that started in a very small place, far from here, with people who are not here any more. That, for me, is what ‘Stride’ is about: moving forward.”Joshua Barone contributed reporting. More