Concert Review: Along the Comeback Trail

James Levine conducts the MET Orchestra.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

James Levine conducting the MET Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
Photo by Marty Sohl © 2013 The Metropolitan Opera.

New Yorkers love a comeback. At least those New Yorkers who follow the Metropolitan Opera, a company that has reinvigorated itself with the return to duties of music director James Levine. That was evident on Sunday afternoon as James Levine led the MET Orchestra in his first subscription concert of the season at Carnegie Hall. Rolling onstage in his custom-built wheelchair and getting locked into the elevated conductor's kiosk, Mr. Levine received a thunderous reception from the sold-out Stern Auditorium.

Concert Review: The Human Touch

Pierre-Laurent Aimard in recital at Carnegie Hall
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Piano man: Pierre Laurent-Aimard and friend.
Image © 2012 Universal Classics/Deutsche Grammophon. 

Go to enough piano recitals and you learn that the major artists working today on the concert circuit differ themselves by touch: the sound made from the particular combination of muscle movements in depressing the key of a black Steinway. Thursday night's Carnegie Hall recital, featuring French soloist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, was all about touch, with major works by Debussy and Schumann flanking a more modern composition by Heinz Holliger.

The performance opened with the second book of Preludes by Debussy. Before Debussy, a cycle of Preludes was the composer's opportunity to show his command of tonal organization, usually starting at the "home" key of C Major and moving around the different tonalities to create a homogeneous set of works that illustrated different colors of the instrument.

Debussy's Preludes break the mold, starting with the bitonal Brouillardsand engaging in a series of fascinating tone poems. Mr. Aimard shifted gears continuously, from the habañera rhythms of La Puerta del Vino to the hopping, deliberately awkward rhythms of General Levine. Ondine provided contrast again in its bold, swelling arpeggios, played with liquid ease and careful pedal-work.

Obituary: Elliott Carter (1908-2012)

Elliott Carter: 1908-2012.

The American composer was 103. 
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Elliott Carter died peacefully today.

His death comes a little more than a month before his birthday, December 11. A report on NPR.org stated that according to his assistant, the composer died at home, of natural causes.

Mr. Carter was at the cutting edge of composition and new music creation in a career that spanned from the 20th century into the new millenium. An iconoclast even in his later years,, he wa considered the dean of American composers, working out of his W. 12th St. apartment in the heart of Manhattan's Greenwich Village.

His early exposure to music came when he was 15, at a Boston Symphony Orchestra performance of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring--still a relatively new work. (Pierre Monteux conducted.)

Concert Review: An Excellent Adventure

Ludovic Morlot conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Ludovic Morlot conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra with pianist Richard Goode.
Photo by Stu Rosner © 2011 The Boston Symphony Orchestra.

On Tuesday night at Symphony Hall, the Boston Symphony Orchestra offered a program of four works that spanned three centuries and straddled four different genres of concert music. In what has become a pattern in this music director-less season, former BSO assistant Ludovic Morlot (now with the Seattle Symphony) conducted.

The journey began with Berlioz' Roman Carnival overture. Built from the "good parts" of the composer's failed opera Benvenuto Cellini, the work allowed Mr. Morlot to show his conductorial skills. He amassed Berlioz' vast forces, the searching solo for the English horn, chivvying strings and a blaze of brass. Given this performance, a BSO concert performance of the full opera (or at least an act of it) is an interesting idea.

Half the orchestra left, and a piano was moved in for Canadian soloist Richard Goode to play Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25. Mr. Goode played hunched over the keyboard, his shoulder crooked and his lips moving in time with his fingers as he played. Despite this eccentricity (which recalled the mannerisms of Glenn Gould) the soloist played with limpid, sweet tone, using almost no force with Mozart's solo part.

This made a contrast to the Beethovenian force used in the cadenzas, which were Mr. Goode's own. (Mozart's cadenzas are lost.) These interpolated solos in each of the three movements proved thrilling. Mr. Goode seemed more alert in these passages, moving with alacrity up and down the keyboard and expanding on each movement's musical ideas. 

The clock moved forward to the 21st century as the second half of the program, which focused on modern music. Elliott Carter's Flute Concerto had its U.S. premiere in Feb. 2008 at Symphony, with soloist Elizabeth Rowe. She reprised her performace, playing the challenging solos that explore almost all sonic aspects of the flute--with the exception of Jethro Tull-style flutter-tongueing. 

Carter starts with a simple theme and builds from it, backing the soloist with a proportionately small orchestra. Complicated percussion is also featured, with temple and wood blocks and even a metal pipe joining in. Sliding chords in the strings and angular figures for woodwinds and piano anchor the expressive flute part, alternately playful, mournful and stern.  

The repertory moved to the 20th century as the full orchestra returned to play the Suite from Béla Bartók's The Miraculous Mandarin. Despite its quaint-sounding title, this is pretty grim stuff. The Suite covers the first two-thirds of the sordid ballet, the tale of a prostitute, a gang of toughs and a spooky, otherworldly client who just won't die like he's supposed to.

Clarinetist William Hudgins represented the dancing prostitute with agile, eloquent soloing over the chugging strings The four-man BSO trombone section outdid themselves, playing the dark two-note theme of the Mandarin with power and menace. Mr. Morlot led a tautly controlled performance of this famous, jagged score. Like most good performances of the Suite, it left one wanting to hear the whole thing.