I was invited to attend the concert presented under the auspices of New Music Collective at Spectrum on April 18 by Glen Roven, composer-conductor-record producer extraordinaire. We became acquainted when Glen was commissioned to contribute a song to the 5 Boroughs Music Festival’s Songbook and I attended one of the presentations of that project. His GPR Records is making an important contribution to preserving and advancing American art song as performed by exciting young performers. … <Read More>
Music
Art Leonard’s Cultural Diary – March 22 through April 16, 2014
I’ve had a busy few weeks, both in terms of attending things and in terms of work having to get done, as a result of which there is a big pile-up of programs for me to write about, so herewith a diary of brief comments about the events I’ve attended from March 22 through April 16. I have omitted comment about the Jeremy Denk piano recital at Peoples’ Symphony Concerts, which I wrote about separately … <Read More>
Jeremy Denk Piano Recital at Peoples’ Symphony Concerts
Tonight Jeremy Denk presented an intriguing piano recital as part of the Arens Series of Peoples’ Symphony Concerts, presented at Washington Irving High School’s nicely-refurbished auditorium. Denk presented an eclectic program of Mozart, Ligeti, Byrd and Schumann.
As a long-time attender of Peoples’ Symphony programs, I feel like I’ve watched Denk grow up at the keyboard, since he has appeared several times over the years. Now a mature artist, he hasn’t lost that childlike wonder … <Read More>
March Musical Diary, Part II – Ending Spring Break with a Bang!!
New York Law School’s Spring Break period this year was March 8-16. I ended it with a real bang, attending concerts on five consecutive days (overlapping the beginning of classes): Thursday, March 13 – Vienna Philharmonic led by Andris Nelsons at Carnegie Hall; Friday, March 21 – Les Delices, Five Boroughs Music Festival, at the King Manor Museum in Jamaica, Queens; Saturday, March 14; Saturday, March 15 – New York Philharmonic led by Alan Gilbert … <Read More>
A Concert Diary for the First Half of March 2014 – Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, Peoples’s Symphony Concerts, Houston Symphony
The first two weeks of March have been quite busy, and again I’ve fallen behind in posting about my concert-going experiences. So here is a quick catch-up.
I had a double-header on Saturday, March 1, attending the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Prince Igor in the afternoon, and a piano recital by Alexandre Tharaud at Peoples’ Symphony Concerts in the evening.
The Met’s new production of Prince Igor, produced an designed by Dmitri Tcherniakov, takes a … <Read More>
Weekend Report: Massenet’s Werther at the Metropolitan Opera & Brahms’s Cello Sonatas at Carnegie Hall
I was mired in the 19th century for my musical weekend. On Saturday afternoon, I attended a performance of Jules Massenet’s opera, “Werther,” at the Metropolitan Opera, and on Sunday afternoon, the first Isaac Stern Memorial Concert at Carnegie Hall, a recital of music for cello and piano by Johannes Brahms, performed by Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax.
Massenet’s opera, inspired by Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, is not a first-rate piece in … <Read More>
Cultural Diary – January 27 2014 through February 9 2014: From Marc Andre Hamelin to Bill Finn
Didn’t expect to see those two names in the same headline? Well, I’m multicultural…. I’ve been so consumed with writing about legal developments that I now have a backlog of cultural events upon which to comment, so here goes:
On January 27, I attended a recital by the Canadian-American pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, the recital auditorium under the main stage. Hamelin likes to play unusual repertory, so the biggest single piece … <Read More>
Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio at Peoples’ Symphony Concerts
Tonight the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio presented an excellent concert at Peoples’ Symphony Concerts in the recently refurbished auditorium of Washington Irving High School, Irving Place, New York.
Joseph Kalichstein, Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson have been playing together as a trio in addition to their solo careers for many seasons, and they are among the finest of chamber ensembles. They play with great unanimity of spirit and deep affection for the music, which communicates itself to … <Read More>
My Musical Weekend: Ludwig van Beethoven and Salamone Rossi
Now, there’s an odd couple… But that was my musical weekend.
On Saturday night, I attended the all-Beethoven program by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. I had been privileged to attend a dress rehearsal for part of this program a week earlier at the DiMenna Center, hearing final sessions with piano soloist Nobuyuki Tsoji in the Emperor Concerto, as well as rehearsal of the Coriolan Overture and of their planned encore, the slow movement … <Read More>
Culture Beat – Prototype Opera Festival; Met Fledermaus; NY Philharmonic; Lincoln Center Theater “Domesticated”
I have been so busy with LGBT legal developments over the past month that I have neglected to blog about my various cultural expeditions, so I’m going to play catch-up here with a few brief comments about the events I’ve attended since mid-December.
On December 17, I saw Lincoln Center Theater’s production of “Domesticated,” a play by Bruce Norris which seems to have been inspired, at least in part, by the hit network TV show, … <Read More>