Concert Review: Capitalizing on his Success

YUNDI plays Chopin at Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The pianist YUNDI in action.
Photo © 2014 EMI Classics.

The pianist YUNDI is a bona fide sensation, spreading the gospel of Chopin's music to appreciative audiences around the globe. (He is now referred to on posters and in program notes as YUNDI (sic) with each letter having equal importance to the others, recalling the time one Homer Simpson changed his legal name to MAX POWER.) On Wednesday night, Yundi (we're not going to capitalize his name each time, just use your imagination or download the post and edit it yourself) played an all-Chopin recital at Carnegie Hall, surveying that composer's complete Ballades and Preludes. This formidable pairing drew from his two recent recordings on DG. It is music that requires great versatility and skill on the part of the artist.

Opera Review: Wrestling with the Gods

The Canadian Opera Company presents Semele at BAM.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Temple maiden: Semele (Jane Archibald) awaits her lover in the Handel opera.
Photo provided by Brooklyn Academy of Music © 2015 Canadian Opera Company.

The rich history of China is a recurring leitmotif in the 500-year history of the Western art form of opera. On Friday night, the Canadian Opera Company gave the second performance of its production of Handel's Semele, designed and directed by the Chinese auteur Zhang Huan. This production's arrival in New York is the cornerstone opera offering of BAM's spring season, and a chance for this city to hear this excellent Toronto-based company in a rare American visit.

Chinese Bureaucracy

A short reflection on Puccini's birthday.

Your yuan at work: Eduardo Valdes (Pong) Joshua Hopkins (Ping) and Tony Stevenson (Pang)
in Act II of Turandot. Photo by Marty Sohl © 2009 The Metropolitan Opera.

Today we celebrate the 153rd birthday of composer Giacomo Puccini, the last of an iconic line of Italian opera composers. And I'm celebrating by focusing on an opera he never finished: (my first opera ever) Turandot.

It all started with Puccini for me. My parents took me to see Turandot at the New York City Opera when I was just nine years old. I don't remember everything about it, but I did like it enough to want to see La bohème a few weeks later. This was back when City Opera had their performances in the summer, so my parents had the time to take me.

Although Puccini's last opera, a blood-thirsty mixture of fairy-tale and Asian exoticism, is not the ideal starter opera, the story appealed to me. It was about riddles and solving problems, and the guy got the girl in the end. Of course, it's a little different when you're grown up, but I was hooked, and hooked early.

Two things stuck with me about that Turandot. First, the riddles. I spent hours poring over them in the libretto, trying to fathom why the answers were "fire," "blood," and "Turandot." The second was the three "masque" characters of Ping, Pang and Pong, who serve as a miniature Greek chorus, commenting on the action and presenting the face of Chinese government bureaucracy.

I know that everybody waits with baited breath for "In questa reggia," the Riddle Scene or the famous "Nessun dorma." But for me, Turandot is all about "Ho una casa nell'Honan", a moment of relative peace in the lives of three bureaucrats stuck in the middle of the Chinese court. Here, Ping (the Grand Chancellor), Pang (the General Purveyor) and Pong (the Chief Cook) long for the simple pleasures of country life.

This is their featured scene from Act II, Scene 1 of the Met's Franco Zeffirelli production, filmed on April 4, 1987. Brian Schexnayder is Ping. Alan Glassman is Pang. Anthony Lanciura is Pong. 

Enjoy.