I’ve had such a busy semester with legal developments that I haven’t been posting about the concerts, opera and theater that I’ve been attending for the Fall 2014 season. A big stack of programs has accumulated, and sometime during the next few weeks I hope to catch up with some retrospective postings, since I’ve attended plenty of events that are worthy of comment.
But I decided to make an exception and post today about the … <Read More>
I’ve just returned from a weekend in the Cooperstown, New York, area, where I attended three of the four main stage presentations of this year’s edition of the Glimmerglass Opera Festival. Glimmerglass takes it name from Lake Glimmerglass in the Leatherstocking Tales of James Fennimore Cooper. Cooper, whose family gave its name to Cooperstown, was thinking of Otsego Lake when he created the fictional Lake Glimmerglass for his tales of Indians and settlers in colonial … <Read More>
I was at Carnegie Hall last night to hear the first performance in their “home hall” of this year’s version of the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America. David Robertson, music director of the St. Louis Symphony and the Sydney (Australia) Symphony, conducted an all-teen ensemble in music by Leonard Bernstein, Benjamin Britten, Samuel Adams, and Modest Mussorgsky. Robertson’s brother-in-law, violin virtuoso Gil Shaham, was soloist in the Britten concerto.
Last year … <Read More>
The vagaries of the NYP’s schedule limited this year’s edition of Summertime Classics to just two programs performed within the space of one week. Between the spring tour and the return of the NYC parks concerts, no more time could be spared. That was a pity, because this is a wonderful format for conductor Bramwell Tobey and those members of the Philharmonic (plus substitutes) who gathered to present two strong programs with great enthusiasm, albeit … <Read More>
I recently had the opportunity to attend performances of two new musicals playing in Broadway houses: Woody Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway” and Robert L. Freedman and Steven Lutvak’s “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder.” And a fine time was had by all.
I don’t think one would necessarily imagine that “Bullets Over Broadway,” a Woody Allen film of long ago, would readily translate to musical comedy, especially without the active participation of a composer … <Read More>
Last night I attended a performance by Houston Grand Opera forces of Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s “The Passenger,” which was imported north under the auspices of Lincoln Center Festival. The Armory’s huge space was a perfect setting for the enormous multi-stage set designed by Johan Engels for this production conceived by David Pountney and conducted by Patrick Summers. This was the second of three presentations of this production at the Armory.
Prior to the opera performance, we … <Read More>
Chelsea Opera presented two performances of Aaron Copland’s opera, “The Tender Land,” at St. Pete Church on West 20th Street in… of course… Chelsea (Manhattan). I attended the second performance, a matinee on June 14.
Copland collaborated with several people on this piece, but ultimately the librettist was identified as Horace Everett. It was written to be a television production, but when that fell through he adapted it for opera house presentation and the New … <Read More>
This afternoon I attended the last presentation of the season by Peoples’ Symphony Concerts, the remarkable solo and chamber music series presented at Town Hall (Sundays) and Washington Irving High School (Saturdays). This after we had the Tempest Trio, a relatively new ensemble formed by three distinguished soloists, Violinist Ilya Kaler, Cellist Amid Peled, and Pianist Alon Goldstein. They performed Beethoven’s Trio in Bb, Op. 11, Bernstein’s Trio, and Dvorak’s Trio No. 3, Op. 65, … <Read More>
I attended the matinee performance of City Center Encores!’ performance of Irma La Douce on May 10. I’ve been a fan of this series for many years, and I find that most of the productions are a pleasure to attend, but I was not particularly impressed by Imra La Douce. I don’t put this down to the production itself. They constructed a terrific set — more elaborate than usual for this series — and all … <Read More>
Actually, I’ve never been let down by any Music from Marlboro Ensemble presented by Peoples’ Symphony Concerts over the years, but the group that performed at Washington Irving High School on Saturday, April 26, 2014, was about the best I’ve heard. The core group was a string quartet made up of violinists Itamar Zorman and Robin Scott, violist Samuel Rhodes, and cellist Brook Speltz. The normal procedure at the Marlboro Music Festival summer program is … <Read More>