Last night the American Symphony Orchestra made history – and paid tribute to an important figure in 20th century American music – by presenting a concert at Carnegie Hall entirely devoted to the music of George Crumb.  Mr. Crumb, who was born in 1929 in West Virginia, made a big splash on them musical scene in the 1960s and 1970s with such works as "Ancient Voices of Children," "Black Angels" (for amplified string quartet), and … <Read More>

I was delighted to see the announcement that Kevin Puts will receive the Pulitzer Prize in Music this year for his opera "Silent Night", which premiered at the Minnesota Opera last year.  Although I haven't seen or heard this opera, I have become very well acquainted with lots of music by Kevin Puts over the past few years, and I hope that this award will result in many more performances as well as incentivizing some … <Read More>

This afternoon, Jonathan Biss played a piano recital at Town Hall in Manhattan under the auspices of Peoples' Symphony Concerts.  This was the last concert of the season on PSC's Festival Series at Town Hall on Sunday afternoons.  This year's concerts were all dedicated to commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Marlboro Music Festival by featuring musicians who have participated in Marlboro.

Jonathan Biss began going to Marlboro as a teenager, and has returned in … <Read More>

This week conductor Jaap van Zweden made his debut with the New York Philharmonic, and pianist Yuja Wang, who has performed with the orchestra out of town in seasons past, made her Avery Fisher Hall subscription concert debut.  On the menu: Prokofiev 3rd Piano Concerto and Mahler 1st Symphony. I just heard the Saturday night performance.

Wang has chops!!  She can play this most challenging concerto with technique to spare, but is she ready to … <Read More>

This year, Peoples' Symphony Concerts is marking an important anniversary for the Marlboro Music Festival by devoting all three concert series to musicians who have participated in this important and stimulating summer program.  Sunday's program at Town Hall took this theme a step further than usual by dividing up the afternoon into two distinctly separate presentations.  The St. Lawrence String Quartet, originally billed as the performing group for the program, opened with Joseph Haydn's String … <Read More>

Although they didn't make much of it in their program notes, last night's concert by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall was a rare event.  Apart from the American Composers Orchestra, few of our major "classical" performing organizations present programs entirely consisting of compositions by American composers.  Last night we heard music by Leonard Bernstein (arranged by Paul Chihara), Chrise Thile, Clint Needham, and Aaron Copland.  And although the Copland was undoubtedly the sole … <Read More>

It is so very satisfying to attend to a true master at work.  And true mastery was definitely on display last night in Carnegie Hall as Yefim Bronfman presented a recital of sonatas by Joseph Haydn, Johannes Brahms and Sergei Prokofiev.

One could quibble, perhaps, with the stylistic presentation in the Haydn Sonata.  The fortepiano has become the instrument of choice for hearing Haydn's keyboard music among early music fans, but it plays well on … <Read More>

In what was claimed to most likely be the piece's first professional presentation on a "major stage" in the United States (Carnegie Hall), the American Symphony Orchestra presented a concert performance of Franz Schmidt's opera, "Notre Dame," on Sunday afternoon.  Leon Botstein conducted a very fine cast of Lori Guilbeau (Esmeralda), Stephen Powell (Archdeacon of Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris), Burak Bilgili (Quasimodo), Corey Bix (Phoebus), Robert Chafin (Gringoire), David Pershall (a fellow officer to Phoebus), and … <Read More>