Concert Review: The Messiah Complex

Evgeny Kissin returns to Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The chosen one, at the controls. Evgeny Kissing at Carnegie Hall.
Photo by Steve J. Sherman.

"Oh my God," the woman said. "He's amazing! He's like the Chosen One!"

Everybody loves a good salvation story, which might be why the above was said about Evgeny Kissin at intermission (right next to my seat) at last night's Carnegie Hall concert.. The storied Russian pianist made his yearly visit to the historic venue with an intelligently constructed program, dovetailing neatly between the development of music for his instrument in the 19th and 20th centuries. As the recital was sold out, Carnegie Hall added seating on the Perelman Stage, both behind and to the left of the artist as he played.

Concert Review: And So His Watch is Winding Down

James Levine, Evgeny Kissin and the MET Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

James Levine in 2013, ensconced in his special motorized wheelchair on the stage of
Carnegie Hall. The Met's music director will step down this year after 40 years of service.
Photo by Marty Sohl © 2013 The Metropolitan Opera.

The concerts played at Carnegie Hall by the Metropolitan Opera's pit orchestra (billed for these occasions by the marketing department of that august institution as "The MET Orchestra") are the brainchild of music director James Levine. Lately though, they've seemed more like a burden, more weight added to the workload of a conductor whose career is drawing to its twilight. Mr. Levine is still a vital musical force, but he is retiring because of physical issues that have threatened and impaired his performances. (This was his first concert in the newly created post of Music Director Emeritus.)

Concert Review: This Used To Be Their Playground

The New York Philharmonic returns to Carnegie Hall for its 2015 gala.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Evgeny Kissin played the opening gala of Carnegie Hall.
Photo by Bette Marshall for Sony Classics.

Opening night at Carnegie Hall is a festive occasion each year. This year, the famed venue turns 125 years old, and celebrated that birthday with a program that looked back upon golden moments in its venerated history. The guests though were from up the street: the New York Philharmonic. America's oldest orchestra called the Carnegie stage home for 70 years before upping roots to Lincoln Center.

Superconductor Preview: CXXV is the Magic Number

With numbers on the brain, Carnegie Hall unveils 2015-2016.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Now that's a super conductor: The enormous Sir Simon Rattle is one of three Perspectives artists at Carnegie Hall in 2015-2016.
Photo © 2014 EMI Classics/Berlin Philharmonic. Photo of Carnegie Hall from Wikemedia Commons.
Photoshop by the author.

In the psyche of 21st century Homo sapiens, the number 25 seems to be particularly important. Maybe it's because it's one fourth of 100, that magic and strangely satisfying number. Maybe because it's a square of 5 as in 5 x 5 = 25. This year, Carnegie Hall is celebrating the cube of 5, with the unveiling of its 125th anniversary season.

Concert Review: Putting His Fingers to Work

Evgeny Kissin plays Schubert and Scriabin.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Evgeny Kissin. Photo by Sasha Gusov.

Since making his concert debut in Moscow at the age of 10 in 1981, the pianist Evgeni Kissin has astonished listeners with his prodigious technique, playing a wide repertory centered on the Romantic repertory. On Monday night, Mr. Kissin returned to the stage of Carnegie Hall with a program that bridged the beginning and end of that era, juxtaposing the mature music of Franz Schubert and with early works from Russian composer Alexander Scriabin.

The Superconductor Fall Preview: Carnegie Hall

2013-14 at the "Hall that Music Built."
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Ronald O. Perelman Stage in the Isaac Stern Auditorium in Carnegie Hall.
Photo from carnegiehall.org.

For serious concert-going, it's hard to do better than the 2013-14 schedule that Carnegie Hall has put forth this year. From the slate of piano recitals to the first New York appearances in decades of the Vienna State Opera, this is going to be a season to remember.

Concert Review: The Comeback

James Levine conducts the MET Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Metropolitan Opera Music Director James Levine leads the MET Orchestra
at Carnegie Hall in a concert on Sunday, May 19, 2013.
Photo by Marty Sohl © 2013 The Metropolitan Opera.

The roar was deafening.

James Levine, music director of the Metropolitan Opera, returned to conducting on Sunday afternoon at Carnegie Hall. As the maestro's motorized wheelchair rolled into Stern Auditorium, the capacity crowd stood up and cheered. It has been two years since Mr. Levine conducted his last performance with the Met, two years of cancellations, painful rehabilitation and uncertainty for the conductor and the opera company.

Concert Review: Winning the Bear

Evgeny Kissin plays Carnegie Hall.
by Ellen Fishbein

The pianist Evgeny Kissin returned to Carnegie Hall on Friday night.
Photo © EMI Classics.

On Friday night, pianist Evgeny Kissin presented a program at Carnegie Hall that was a thoughtful reflection on the passage of time. Sticking close to the standard repertory, the pianist tracked the development of piano music from Haydn through the works of Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt.

Concert Review: Serious Moonlight

Evgeny Kissin at Carnegie Hall.

Evgeni Kissin, holding the score of
Scriabin's 24 Preludes.

by Paul Pelkonen

Evgeny Kissin has been a fixture on the international concert scene for the past three decades, ever since the Russian pianist made his debut in the Soviet Union at the age of 12. This season's recital at Carnegie Hall (on Wednesday night) featured the artist's take on familiar sonatas by Beethoven and Chopin, bracketing Samuel Barber's brilliant entry in that genre.

Mr. Kissin opened the concert with a treat for his listeners, the Moonlight Sonata. The opening was played at a glacial speed, with audience members closing their eyes in rapt ecstasy at Beethoven's deceptively simple opening figures. The movement also provided occasion for disapproving murmurs and the occasional acid glare, as listeners chose to express their displeasure at their raptures being disturbed.

Mr. Kissin seemed to show more poetic enthusiasm for the two movements that followed, a lilting dance figure that shows Beethoven at his most light-hearted and the pell-mell finale, taken at a dangerous speed that would be ill-advised for a pianist of lesser gifts. 

If the Moonlight sonata caused raptures in the sold-out house, then Samuel Barber's crystalline, acerbic sonata set the listeners on edge. Barber's piece was two years in its creation, and was premiered in 1949 by Vladimir Horowitz. Although this is a largely tonal sonata, the ideas behind it descent from the Second Viennese School of Schoenberg and Webern. The work opens with an initial tone-row that serves as the seed from which the four movements bloom. 

Mr. Kissin played this challenging work with emotion and dexterity, guiding his audience through the complex dissonant Scherzo and the Adagio mesto, an emotional slow movement. The sonata ended with a complex, contrapuntal fugue. When the interweaving themes resolved themselves back into the opening tone-row, it was a triumphant moment for composer and soloist.

The soloist brought the same serious purpose to the Chopin that followed: the A flat Nocturne and the Sonata No. 3. The Nocturne was lush and sensual, played with warm tonal colors that cast the spell of stillness once more upon the audience. The smaller piece also served as an effective slow introduction to the grand gestures of Chopin's final Sonata. 

Chopin is revered as the composer whose output shattered the traditional classical ideal of the multi-movement work for solo keyboard. However, this last sonata is one of his most traditional and classical in structure, with four broad movements and the audible influence of Johann Sebastian Bach. Mr. Kissin played with a rich flow of notes, leaning on the sustain pedal to create glissando effects up and down the keyboard that dazzled the audience and nearly caused early outbursts of applause.

The encore featured more Chopin (the A minor Mazurka) and a Beethoven rarity: the Six Variations in D Major. This latter piece Beethoven allowed Mr. Kissin to display a vast spectra of pianistic colors, from playful dances to martial figures that stirred. The encore ended with one last playful March, from The Love of Three Oranges by Serge Prokofiev. Not even the powerful unison clapping from the packed house could draw the soloist back for a fourth.