Last night the American Symphony Orchestra treated a regrettably small Carnegie Hall audience to a revival of music by Walter Piston (1894-1976), a member of that almost-lost generation of prominent American composers of tonal music at mid-20th-century.  Those who wrote tonal music, who delighted in lush orchestral textures, sumptuous harmonies, and long lyrical lines, did not fare well with critics in those bygone days when dodecaphonic, aleatoric, and utterly chaotic music were all the rage … <Read More>

When Maurizio Pollini cancelled his American tour due to illness, Carnegie Hall prevailed on Jeremy Denk, who recently gave a successful recital in Zankel Hall, to perform in Pollini's place on March 27 (last night).  I was a lucky beneficiary of this change in plans, for Denk's recital was absolutely brilliant from start to finish.  He programmed Charles Ives's Concord Sonata (Piano Sonata No. 2) in the first half, and J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations, BWV … <Read More>

From time to time over the years I have heard songs by Ricky Ian Gordon in the context of various recital discs of American music or from the stage during vocal recitals, and always found them to be worth hearing.  His music has a gentle, even wistful, quality at times, grasping the mood of a lyric and stretching it out over flowing piano accompaniments.  A while back I became aware of a recording by one … <Read More>

It almost felt a bit like the early days of the early music movement last night at Columbia University's Miller Theatre, where I heard the REBEL Baroque Ensemble zip their way through double concerti by J.S. Bach and Antonio Vivaldi.  And I mean, to a certain extent, the bad old days.  Tempi were swift, to the point of depriving the slower movements of any emotion or pathos, and making the fast movements evoke that old … <Read More>

I've been missing in action on this blog the last few days, as I had a writing deadline on Friday and spent much of the week deep in writing…  But I finished up the draft Friday afternoon and have a nice, busy culture weekend.

Yesterday afternoon, I attended a matinee performance of Donizetti's opera, The Elixir of Love (L'Elisir d'Amore) at NY City Opera.  This is an "updating" to mid-20th century America – most likely … <Read More>

Last night I attended the last of several performances by the New York Philharmonic of the second program in the "Hungarian Echoes" festival that is being "curated" by guest conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen.  During the first half of the program, they performed Ligeti's "Concert Rom

The NY Philharmonic is turning over the podium for several weeks to Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Finnish-born conductor who currently head the Philharmonic Orchestra of London and was previously music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  Salonen's assignment was to produce a mini-festival with a thematic link, thus "Hungarian Echoes" and a series of concerts linking the music of Haydn, Ligeti and Bartok.  The Haydn link here is a bit tenuous; we usually think of him … <Read More>

Last night, an ensemble of Curtis Institute students, performing under the name "Old City String Quartet," stole the hearts of an enthusiastic audience at Washington Irving High School in a fantastic concert presented by Peoples' Symphony Concerts.  These young students — violinists Bryan Lee and Joel Link, violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, and cellist Camden Shaw — have been playing together as an ensemble since 2008 and have already achieved significant recognition, having recently won … <Read More>

For several years the innovative contemporary music ensemble Alarm Will Sound has been refining a program that puts a spotlight on the musical developments of the late 1960s.  Perhaps the program is best explained through the brief note included in the program for last night's performance at Zankel Hall (the chamber music performance space at Carnegie Hall):  "Just over 40 years ago, the Beatles and composer Karlheinz Stockhausen arranged to meet in New York City … <Read More>