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      92NY’s New Season Includes Ian McEwan and Tom Stoppard

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      The fall season also features Ralph Fiennes, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Katie Couric and Ken Burns.Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Katie Couric and Ralph Fiennes are among the array of actors, authors and dancers who will feature in the 92nd Street Y, New York’s upcoming fall season.“It was very important coming out of Covid and coming now into the 2022-23 season to really make a statement that we’re back,” Seth Pinsky, the organization’s chief executive, said of the programming. (The cultural institution has an updated name this year and is known as 92NY, for short.) “Every night is going to be something different, something stimulating.”In a nod to T.S. Eliot, Fiennes will read “The Waste Land” (Dec. 5) on the very stage where Eliot read the poem in 1950. The reading will coincide with the centenary of the poem, which was published in December 1922.Slated early in the season is Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone, who will speak about his new book, “Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir,” in a conversation with his longtime friend Bruce Springsteen (Sept. 13).The following day, the filmmakers Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, Sarah Botstein and Daniel Mendelsohn will preview their forthcoming documentary series, “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” followed by a panel moderated by the journalist and podcast host Kara Swisher.The playwright Tom Stoppard, in what is believed to be his only New York talk of the season, takes the stage on Sept. 18 for a discussion about his new play, “Leopoldstadt,” with the German author and playwright Daniel Kehlmann.On Sept. 12, Couric, the journalist and author, will discuss her book “Going There,” with the New York Times investigative reporter Jodi Kantor. Also on the lineup are the Booker Prize winner Ian McEwan, who will read from his new novel, “Lessons” (Sept. 19); the Nigerian novelist Adichie reading from her new memoir, “Notes on Grief,” with the memoirist and CNN anchor Zain Asher (Sept. 11); and Joshua Cohen discussing his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Netanyahus” (Dec. 12).Last year, the Harkness Dance Center at the 92NY brought dance back to its stage. That tradition continues with the tap dancer Leonardo Sandoval and the composer Gregory Richardson (Dec. 22), and a celebration of the late dancer and choreographer Yuriko Kikuchi (Oct. 27), among other performances.The schedule will continue to be filled out with new events over the course of the season. The venue plans to continue requiring proof of vaccination for all attendees; masking requirements will be determined in the coming weeks.A full lineup can be found at 92ny.org. More

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      Two Pianists, Two Recitals, Two Deeply Personal Statements

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      Sara Davis Buechner and Conrad Tao both appeared in New York on Saturday.Before Franz Liszt, it was rare for pianists to do solo programs. But when Liszt was preparing to perform in London in 1840, an advertisement said that he would give “recitals on the pianoforte.”The word confused many. How do you “recite” a piano piece? But Liszt had chosen deliberately: His recitals would offer not just an arbitrary mixture of scores but also, as with literary readings, a program with larger thematic threads, musical resonances and even personal significance.His idea certainly caught on. Yet too many recitals today fall far short of the Lisztian ideal; they come across as just a string of performances of this and that.But on Saturday, not one but two adventurous pianists gave recitals that harkened back to the form’s origins, drawing out musical, social and deeply personal connections. In the afternoon, at Theaterlab, an intimate space for experimental fare in Manhattan, Sara Davis Buechner presented “Of Pigs and Pianos,” an 80-minute performance in which she played while relating the story of her often grueling but finally triumphant gender transition. In the evening, at the 92nd Street Y, Conrad Tao juxtaposed major works by Schumann and Beethoven with more recent scores by John Adams, Jason Eckardt and Fred Hersch, along with the premiere of an intense new piece by Tao and several improvisations.Improvisation “kept me in my life” during the pandemic, Conrad Tao told his audience at the 92nd Street Y.Joseph SinnottThough it had theatrical trappings — a simple set and projections of photographs — at its core, “Of Pigs and Pianos” was a recital, offering fine performances of nine varied and challenging works that poignantly defined moments in the journey of a courageous artist, now 62. Buechner’s story, though often wrenching, was rich with childhood fantasies, wistful longings and absurd turns that had the audience laughing along.The title, “Of Pigs and Pianos,” comes from her early years, when she was asked by her first piano teacher what she wanted to be when she grew up. “A pig farmer and a piano player,” Buechner answered.Buechner was born in the Chinese year of the pig, she said, adding that perhaps the way pigs dug in the mud prefigured her penchant as an adult pianist to champion overlooked repertory, including works by Turina, Busoni, Moszkowski and even the forgotten piano pieces of the operetta composer Rudolf Friml.She accompanied endearing stories of her childhood with elegant performances of Haydn and Mozart. Once, visiting a museum with her mother, Buechner was enthralled by a Rubens painting of a beautiful young noblewoman. “I’m going to look like her,” she told her mother, who promptly dragged her to an arms and armor exhibition.Buechner was unsparing in her description of becoming the “punching bag” at her elementary school, abuse that became so extreme that she was sent to a Quaker school. There she fell in love for the first time; Buechner said she wonders whether she was actually in love with this splendid young woman or she secretly wanted to be her.Music and piano became Buechner’s outlet — where she could be what she called her “true self.” As if to demonstrate, at the recital on Saturday she gave an exciting account of the teeming (and very difficult) first movement of Chopin’s Third Sonata. After tossing off the final chords, she proudly shouted: “I played that at my Juilliard audition! I was 16!”Indeed, Buechner had early success after success, including winning top prizes at major competitions and extensive tours. All the while, though, she struggled with her gender identity. On Saturday she shared stories of developing ulcers and contemplating suicide, and had the audience grimly laughing at her accounts of sessions with a series of hopeless psychiatrists.“Therapists are like piano teachers,” she said. “There are lots of them, and they are mostly bad.”Finally, in the late 1990s, Buechner began her transition to her true self, which included a botched surgery in Bangkok that later had to be corrected. In the process she lost friends, family, her manager and concert dates; her letters seeking teaching jobs were not even answered.Eventually she found her way to a new, more welcoming life teaching at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. From that point on, slowly and steadily, her international career was reborn. Today she teaches at Temple University in Philadelphia; the text for “Of Pigs and Pianos” comes from an autobiography she has written and hopes to have published. She ended the program with a melting rendition of a wistful Scarlatti sonata, which conveyed the place of satisfaction and peace at which she has arrived.In the evening, at the Y, speaking to the audience, Tao, 27, said that during the hard, lonely months of the pandemic, improvisation had become increasingly crucial to him, allowing him an immediate “response to an environment” — it “kept me in my life.”His recitals in recent years have been his own brand of Lisztian statements, like “American Rage,” a program (and a 2019 recording) of flinty works by Rzewski, Julia Wolfe and Copland, which Tao assembled, as a son of immigrant parents, to protest the hostility toward immigration and outsiders that was roiling America. Tao, who is gay, has pointedly played Copland’s steely piano works to reclaim this “gay, Commie Jew,” as he described Copland in an interview, from the perception that his music is solely about nostalgic Americana.He opened his program on Saturday by seguing from his own mercurial, rippling improvisation into Adams’s kaleidoscopic “China Gates.” An impish Eckardt piece led into a reflective Bach chorale prelude. Then another restless Tao improvisation set up a superb performance of Schumann’s “Kinderszenen,” followed, after intermission, by Fred Hersch’s “Pastorale” in homage to Schumann and Tao’s pummeling, thrilling “Keyed In.” A stirring and sensitive account of Beethoven’s late Sonata No. 31 ended the recital magnificently.As an encore, in honor of another composer Tao reveres, he played his own arrangement of “Sunday” from Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park with George.” Of all the tributes Sondheim has garnered since his death, none has moved me more. More

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      N.Y.C. Arts Organizations Awarded $51.4 Million Dollars in Grants

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      The Department of Cultural Affairs is awarding $51.4 million in grants to more than 1,000 nonprofit arts and cultural groups that are seeking to rebound from the pandemic.As New York City’s arts and culture sector seeks to rebound from the economic devastation wrought by the pandemic, the Department of Cultural Affairs announced on Thursday that it would award $51.4 million in grants to more than 1,000 nonprofit arts organizations.The grants, for the 2022 fiscal year, represent the largest-ever allocation for what is known as the Cultural Development Fund. Some of the grants will broadly increase funding for organizations that need a financial shot in the arm; other grants will offer more targeted support of disability arts, language access, arts education and more.Officials also said that a chunk of the money — about $5.1 million — is being sent to more than 650 groups working in underserved communities that were hard hit by the pandemic.“This improved funding will encourage artists, creators and producers across the city to continue to express their insights and stories on their own terms,” Vicki Been, the deputy mayor for housing and economic development, said in a statement.A survey of the effects of the coronavirus commissioned by the Department of Cultural Affairs in the spring of 2020 found that overall, about one in 10 arts organizations thought they would not survive the pandemic. Smaller organizations in particular were some of the hardest hit, according to the survey.Some of the grants, of less than $10,000, have been awarded to small theater companies, choirs and museums. And to further help ensure that modestly sized groups and even individual artists receive a share of the funding, almost $3 million will be given to five local arts councils serving each borough. Those councils, in turn, will distribute the money to local constituents, city officials said.But large organizations will also benefit. Some of the city’s most recognizable arts institutions like the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the 92nd Street Y are among the organizations that will receive some of the largest grants, in excess of $100,000 each.The grants — $45.5 million in mayoral funds and $5.9 million in City Council member items — are part of what officials said was a roughly $230 million annual budget for the Department of Cultural Affairs.“Culture is essential to healthy, vibrant neighborhoods, and there is no recovery for New York City without our cultural community,” Gonzalo Casals, the city’s cultural affairs commissioner, said.Sarah Bahr More

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      Review: Two Tenors. Many, Many High Notes.

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      Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres came together for a sky-scraping Rossini concert at the 92nd Street Y.Fans of N.F.L. RedZone — the TV channel that whips around the country each Sunday during football season to show you, it promises, “every touchdown from every game” — will have felt a familiar sensation on Wednesday at the 92nd Street Y.There, with the tenors Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres belting out Rossini as if their lives depended on it, the audience got what Brownlee called from the stage the “barnstormers” of the bel canto repertory — and only the barnstormers. Out the window were the plots, the characters, the sets. What was left was an operatic RedZone: the highest stakes, the highest notes — we’re talking up to E flat or F over C — over and over, in dizzying profusion.This was a lot of fun, particularly because Brownlee and Spyres are two of the finest, most sky-scraping bel canto tenors in the world today — though, while Brownlee has long been a Metropolitan Opera star, the astonishing Spyres has just occasionally appeared in New York.Their rousing recent duo album, “Amici e Rivali,” from which the Y program was adapted, posits them as the inheritors of two distinct Rossinian traditions. Brownlee, his tone slender and silvery, sounds (we imagine) something like Giovanni David; Spyres, with a voice beefier and more baritonal, though no less agile, evokes Andrea Nozzari, with whom David often faced off onstage in the early 19th century. (Having multiple leading tenor roles in a single opera was commonplace with this composer.)In concert as on the album, the main joys were the rarities, from the likes of the Crusades drama “Ricciardo e Zoraide” and the Tudor potboiler “Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra.” The duet “Donala a questo core” from “Ricciardo” was a thrilling combination of slow-burning lyrical verses and fiery shared coloratura.I wish that the Y program had followed “Amici e Rivali” and included more from “Ricciardo” and less from “The Barber of Seville.” The concert’s long opening sequence from that chestnut did prove that Spyres could handle the baritone role of Figaro, and his famous “Largo al factotum,” with tongue-twisting, very-low-to-very-high aplomb; not for nothing is his new solo album called “Baritenor.”But Brownlee wasn’t showed off best in Count Almaviva’s thanklessly glittering “Cessa di più resistere,” while a six-hand piano transcription of the “Barber” overture — with the evening’s game accompanist, Myra Huang, joined by Thomas Lausmann and Bryan Wagorn — seemed more fun for the players than the audience. (And other than to give these poor guys and their cords a rest, and to burden Huang still more, no one needed another overture transcription, of the one from “Guillaume Tell,” later on.)The two singers each got a stand-alone number from Rossini’s delightful song repertory, with Spyres particularly melting and burnished in the passionate “L’Esule.” And a closing suite from “Otello” — very different than Verdi’s version — found both in rich, fluent voice in the arias “Che ascolto?” (Brownlee) and “Ah! sì, per voi gia sento” (Spyres) and the explosive duet “Ah! vieni, nel tuo sangue.”I wish we had gotten a taste of the French Rossini, provided on the album through “Le Siège de Corinthe.” But that language did arrive in the form of an encore interloper by Donizetti: the unavoidable showpiece “Ah! mes amis” from “La Fille du Régiment,” with Brownlee and Spyres gleefully trading off the notorious, numerous high C’s.Lawrence Brownlee and Michael SpyresPerformed on Wednesday at the 92nd Street Y, Manhattan. More

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      Two New York Orchestras Return With Acts of Renewal

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      Classical music’s live performance comeback continued with concerts by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.How should classical music ensembles return to live performance after 18 months of pandemic closures and a nationwide reckoning with racial injustice?It’s a question that has loomed as programmers decide whether to open their seasons with statements of purpose. Recently, two major New York groups — the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra — returned with what appeared to be mostly standard fare that could come across as timid missed opportunities, yet offered exceptionally fine and committed music-making that felt like acts of renewal.At Carnegie Hall last Thursday, Bernard Labadie, the music director of St. Luke’s since 2018, warmly greeted the audience and explained that when he and the players started planning their program, “one word jumped out: joy.” This concert was all about having some fun, he added, and Handel’s “Water Music” is “the happiest music I know.”He led the orchestra in a lively, stylish account of the complete “Water Music,” 22 pieces lasting some 50 minutes. Handel wrote this score to provide entertainment for King George I and his entourage during a river trip in 1717 from Whitehall Palace in London to the borough of Chelsea. “Water Music” is best known for the various suites drawn from it — which, for me, more effectively show off the allures of the music and the rich intricacies Handel subtly folded into each piece. But, judging by their enthusiastic ovation, the audience seemed happy to go along for the entirety of Handel’s musical river ride.This Baroque program began with a vigorous account of the Prelude from Charpentier’s “Te Deum,” music that deftly mixes martial-like rigor and sparkling ebullience. Next came a Bach novelty, a “weird creature of my imagination,” as Labadie described it, titled “An imaginary Concerto for Violin.” During his busy years in Leipzig, Germany, Bach often recycled existing movements from instrumental pieces into large sacred scores, Labadie explained. So, with respect and plucky daring, Labadie fashioned a concerto from three Bach movements that feature a solo violin: two sinfonias sandwiching an adagio from the “Easter Oratorio.” The result was a sort-of concerto, with an industrious first movement, a mournful slow one and a fleet finale, made to order for the splendid violinist Benjamin Bowman, who played beautifully.The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra began its season with works by Mozart and Boulogne at the 92nd Street Y on Tuesday.Joe SinnottAt the 92nd Street Y on Tuesday, two Mozart staples dominated the program by Orpheus, which in 2022 celebrates its 50th anniversary as a proudly conductor-less ensemble. (The evening was also the start of the venue’s classical music season.) Opening the concert was a short work by the 18th-century composer and violinist Joseph Boulogne, whose life and musical achievements have been gaining renewed attention. The ensemble gave a vibrant account of the beguiling, three-movement Overture to “L’Amant Anonyme,” Boulogne’s only surviving opera.Then the distinguished pianist Richard Goode, who has collaborated with Orpheus since the mid-1970s, including recordings of Mozart concertos, appeared as the soloist in the Piano Concerto No. 25 in C, a majestic and virtuosic score. Goode was at his best, in a sensitive, crisply clear and supremely musical performance. The orchestra ended with an exciting account of Mozart’s “Linz” Symphony. With just 25 players in the Y’s intimate hall, the music came across grandly, but also with revealing detail.I wish someone from Orpheus had spoken, as Labadie had for St. Luke’s, about the ensemble’s reasons for choosing the works it had for this significant return. There were not even program notes available. Some artists prefer to let music speak for itself. But maybe this is a time when classical musicians need to speak directly about what they are playing, and why. More

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      10 Classical Concerts to Stream in May

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      A fast-rising young conductor, a 90th birthday celebration and a starry trio are among the highlights.With in-person performances not yet quite widespread, here are 10 highlights from the flood of online music content coming in May. (Times listed are Eastern.)Diderot String QuartetMay 2 at 4 p.m.; mb1800.org; available through July 15.The invaluable New York concert series Music Before 1800 is back with a series of streams, including this period-instrument group’s program of music written for the court of Catherine the Great. One of the pieces may well be familiar: Haydn’s Quartet in E flat, “the Joke.” The other will be a rarity, by Anton Ferdinand Titz. (The harpsichordist Aya Hamada’s recital follows on May 23.) ZACHARY WOOLFEKarl LarsonMay 6 at 8 p.m.; roulette.org; available indefinitely.Roulette, in Brooklyn, one of the best places to hear music in New York, is allowing limited audiences into its space for performances this spring. But those shows will still be livestreamed, too. No matter how you attend, any gig featuring Karl Larson, known as the pianist of the trio Bearthoven, is worth it. Here, he celebrates “Dark Days,” his new solo recording of music by Scott Wollschleger. Wollschleger’s generally soft dynamics may lull you into thinking he’s primarily meditative, but part of the fun involves staying alert for the alterations of attack and twists of mood that Larson highlights. SETH COLTER WALLSPhiladelphia OrchestraMay 6 at 8 p.m.; philorch.org; available through May 13.This program, led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and featuring the bass-baritone Davóne Tines, opens with a triptych. First is the propulsive “Shake the Heavens,” from John Adams’s “El Niño,” followed by “Vigil,” a subdued and affecting song in memory of Breonna Taylor, by Igee Dieudonné and Tines. (You can stream that now, from Lincoln Center at Home.) Then Tines gives a preview of Anthony Davis’s “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X,” which he will star in at Michigan Opera Theater next year. The second half of the concert features Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 in G minor, which fans of “Amadeus” will recognize immediately. JOSHUA BARONESusanna Malkki will conduct the Berlin Philharmonic in a streamed concert starting May 22.Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times92nd Street YMay 11 at 7:30 p.m.; 92y.org; available through May 18.Schubert’s “Der Hirt auf dem Felsen” (“The Shepherd on the Rock”), thought to be the last of his 600 songs, is an extraordinary piece for soprano, clarinet and piano. Susanna Phillips, a frequent presence at the Metropolitan Opera, will sing it in a recital livestreamed by the 92nd Street Y, joined by the clarinetist Anthony McGill and the pianist Myra Huang. The program also includes a premiere by James Lee III — a setting of a poem by Lou Ella Hickman written for this trio combination — a work by William Grant Still and Schubert’s popular “Arpeggione” Sonata, here adapted for clarinet and piano. ANTHONY TOMMASINIAlvin Lucier at 90May 13 at 8 p.m. through May 14 at midnight; issueprojectroom.org; available indefinitely.For the 90th birthday of this experimental-music icon, over seven dozen colleagues will join him for 28 hours of performances of “I Am Sitting in a Room,” his signature work, from 1969. The piece consists of a few sentences that are recorded as they’re spoken; the recording is then played and rerecorded, and the process continues as the clashing frequencies of the different recordings begin to dominate and the words become unintelligible. After a year of isolation, what could be a more poignant artistic celebration? ZACHARY WOOLFEConcertgebouw OrchestraMay 14 at 2 p.m.; concertgebouworkest.nl; available through May 21.The coronavirus pandemic has upended the orchestral world, including separating ensembles from their music directors, sometimes by thousands of miles. This has provided an opportunity for conductors closer to home to fill in, sometimes even multiple times. It’s a slightly different situation with this superb Amsterdam orchestra, which has been searching for a new podium leader for the past few years — but the opportunity is still there. After making his debut in September, Klaus Makela, a 25-year-old Finn recently appointed music director of the Orchestre de Paris, returned to the Concertgebouw in December and will now be back yet again, an almost unthinkable frequency in normal times. His program includes Messiaen’s “Les Offrandes Oubliées” and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10, with its grandly brooding opening. ZACHARY WOOLFEA concert by the cellist Seth Parker Woods, second from right, will stream starting May 25.James Holt/Seattle SymphonyJoshua Bell, Steven Isserlis and Evgeny KissinMay 21 at 8 p.m.; washingtonperformingarts.org; available through May 27.When three star performers come together, it is often the occasion for canonical standards. This violin-cello-piano recital, though, goes a more idiosyncratic route, attempting to evoke Jewish life in Eastern Europe before the world wars. Works by Solomon Rosowsky and Ernest Bloch conjure that scene, as will Kissin’s recitation of Yiddish poetry. Then the cataclysm of the Holocaust will be represented by Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2, written in 1944. ZACHARY WOOLFE‘Albert Herring’May 22 at 1 a.m.; mnopera.org; available through June 5.Britten’s chamber opera “Albert Herring” is like a wistfully comic alternative to his “Peter Grimes”; it’s the story of an awkward, shy, innocent boy who doesn’t fit in with the expectations of the people in his small market town in England, but goes on to be improbably crowned the town’s May King. This Minnesota Opera production, directed by Doug Scholz-Carlson, features the tenor David Portillo as Albert, with the insightful conductor Jane Glover leading Britten’s subtly complex, whimsical score. ANTHONY TOMMASINIBerlin PhilharmonicMay 22 at 1 p.m.; digitalconcerthall.com; available indefinitely.What will come of the premieres that were canceled during the pandemic? Thankfully, two by the composer Kaija Saariaho are happening sooner rather than later. The Aix Festival in France is planning to present her new opera “Innocence” in July, conducted by Susanna Malkki. And the Berlin Philharmonic is livestreaming the belated premiere of Saariaho’s 25-minute “Vista” — also led by Malkki, to whom the piece is dedicated. Filling out the program is “Bluebeard’s Castle,” the chilling Bartok one-act, of which Malkki recently released a wonderfully textured recording with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. JOSHUA BARONESeth Parker WoodsMay 25 at 7 p.m.; kaufmanmusiccenter.org; available through June 1.This cellist burst onto the scene with a 2016 recording that featured his stellar acoustic playing, often in works that also incorporated electronics. He’ll play one of those pieces — Pierre Alexandre Tremblay’s “asinglewordisnotenough3 (invariant)” — in this virtual concert for the Ecstatic Music series. The rest of the program, including a composition by Nathalie Joachim, emerges from Woods’s solo show, “Difficult Grace,” inspired in part by the Great Migration. SETH COLTER WALLS More