Concert Review: Now We Can Play the Forbidden Music

Esa-Pekka Salonen and the MET Orchestra end the Carnegie Hall season.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

In flight: Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Photo by Nicolas Brodard © 2017 the Philharmonia Orchestra.

The Carnegie Hall subscription season ended Tuesday night with an epic concert featuring conductor-composer Esa-Pekka Salonen, the MET Orchestra and a heaping program of four works by Gustav Mahler and Jean Sibelius. These two composers remain touchstones of Mr. Salonen’s long and successful podium career. With bold repertory choices (including a Mahler piece that, unaccountably, may have had its Carnegie Hall premiere at his very concert!) and a starry pair of guests, this proved a revelatory and engrossing evening.

Concert Review: Of Strings and Broken Puppets

Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Conductor Andris Nelsons led the BSO at Carnegie Hall.
Photo courtesy the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra continued their three-night stand at Carnegie Hall Thursday night with a program featuring Beethoven's Violin Concerto bookended by watershed works from the pen of Dmitri Shostakovich. Mr. Nelsons' stamp on this orchestra is beginning to make itself heard: a painstaking attention to orchestral detail and an almost intimate podium style that makes himself and his baton part of the working ensemble and not merely its music director.

2014 In Review: The Five Best Recitals

We list the five best solo performances of the year that was.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Framegrab of mezzo Joyce DiDonato at the Gowanus Ballroom.
Image © 2014 Warner Brothers Classics.

As this very strange year recedes into our memory, we're kicking off our year-end best-of on Superconductor. Stay tuned this week for more best-of posts, including the best operas and best symphony concerts of a very strange calendar year.

 It's tough out there when you're by yourself. It's also hard when you have just a pianist accompanying you. So with that in mind here are the best solo recitals (instrumental and vocal) that I saw in 2014.

Concert Review: A Second Climb, up a Treacherous Peak

Christian Tetzlaff opens the 92nd St. Y season with Bach.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Christian Tetzlaff and friend. Photo by Giorgio Bertazzi from the artist's website.
Bach image added by the author.

A performance of all six solo violin works by Johann Sebastian Bach (the three Sonatas and three Partitas) are the musician's equivalent of a climb up K2 without oxygen or rope. On Tuesday night, German violinist Christian Tetzlaff took on this feat (for the second time in five years) at the Kaufmann Concert Hall, a staid but intimate auditorium that is ideal in acoustic and scale for this kind of performance. This performance also served as season opener for the prestigious Upper East Side venue, a fact celebrated with the distribution of free champagne to the audience at intermission.

Concert Review: Future to Past

The violinist Christian Tetzlaff at Mostly Mozart.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The violinist Christian Tetzlaff. Photo © 2014 by Klaus Rudolph.

The month-long Mostly Mozart festival at Lincoln Center is usually where listeners go to escape accidental exposure to any works that might have been written in the past 200 years. The festival's focus is, after all Mozart with occasional leavenings of Beethoven and Bach. So it was a surprise that Wednesday's concert opened with a piece by...Alfred Schnittke?

Concert Review: Double Reed Gonzo

Andris Nelsons conducts the New York Philharmonic.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Andris Nelsons. Photo by Marco Borggreve © 2012 AndrisNelsons.com

Before delving into today's review of the New York Philharmonic's concert of Thursday, February 7th, let us take a moment to consider...the oboe.

Image © Musicians Friend Catalogue.

Approximately two feet in length, this black double reed instrument is the softest and most difficult to play of all the woodwinds. Its unique, plaintive tone quality requires very fine breath control and the ability to blend expertly with other instruments and yet stand out as a solo voice when needed.

On Thursday night, New York Philharmonic principal oboist Liang Wang played a key role in all three works on the program. The concert, conducted by Latvian maestro Andris Nelsons, featured three works: Antonín Dvořák's orchestral fairy tale The Noon-Day Witch, Johannes Brahms' Violin Concerto, and finally Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra which gave Mr. Wang and most of his fellow musicians a turn in the limelight.

The program opened with the Dvořák, a work added to the orchestra's repertory by music director Alan Gilbert in 2011. Mr. Nelsons conducted with broad, bold strokes, capturing the rustic spirit of this music without resorting to vulgarity. Mr. Wang represented the playful voice of the child whose mischief comes to a terrible mortal end at the hands of the titular witch. Powerful playing from the brass marked the child's end, and the work was spurred to a massive rhythmic climax.