Festival Preview: The Met Live in HD Summer Festival 2018

The Met Live in HD festival Marx the spot with ten operas and a classic screwball comedy.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

That ain't peanuts: Groucho is open for business in a scene from A Night at the Opera
© 1935 Universal Pictures.

As a celebration of opera (and an opportunity for marketing the Metropolitan Opera to the city at large) you can't beat the Met's Live in HD Film Festival. This eleven-evening free event has become a hallmark of the Peter Gelb era at the Met. It allows the revisiting of old favorites or the experience, for the bold opera novice, of something entierey new.

Concert Review: Baton Man Returns

Alan Gilbert is back...to open the Bernstein's Philharmonic festival.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Alan Gilbert returned to the New York Philharmonic this week.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2017 The New York Philharmonic.

Of the clouds gathered lately over the New York Philharmonic, the darkest has surely been the departure of music director Alan Gilbert last season. Mr. Gilbert, the son of two orchestra members who was hailed as a breath of fresh air when he was hired, ended his time with the Philharmonic in June of 2017, after a relatively brief tenure of eight years. This week marked the conductor's first concerts with his old band since his exit. It was also the first program inBernstein's Philharmonic: a three-week festival celebrating the centennial of the orchestra's most famous and most beloved music director.

Concert Review: Magic In His Fingers

Daniil Trifonov opens the Philharmonic's Rachmaninoff festival.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

You gotta say yes to another excess: Daniil Trifonov.
Photo by Dario Acosta for Deutsche Grammophon/UMG 

Although he is just 24, Daniil Trifonov has established himself at the forefront of an impressive crop of pianists, young Steinway jockeys determined to return old-school virtuosity to the concert hall. On Wednesday night, Mr. Trifonov opened a three-week festival stand with the New York Philharmonic. The focus: the music of Russian composer and virtuoso Sergei Rachmaninoff, with three different conductors scheduled to take the podium in David Geffen Hall.

Concert Review: Soul Over Beethoven

Yefim Bronfman plays two of The Beethoven Concertos.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Ludwig van Beethoven (left) and Yefim Bronfman.
Beethoven portrait 1803 by Christian Hornemann. Mr. Bronfman photo by Dario Acosta.
Photo alteration by the author.

For the past two seasons, the New York Philharmonic has ended its long season with a festival, multiple weeks of concerts devoted to a single artistic focus. This year, that focus is the five piano concertos of Ludwig van Beethoven, played by  this year's artist-in-residence Yefim Bronfman and led by music director Alan Gilbert.

Festival Preview: Spring For Music 2014

Acclaimed Carnegie Hall festival starts its final run next month.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Spring for Music returns to Carnegie Hall next month.

May 5-10 at Carnegie Hall marks the curtain call for Spring For Music. For the past three years, the festival has packed Carnegie with enthusiastic, bandana-waving orchestra supporters from across North America, celebrating the appearance of their local ensembles boldly tackling obscure and sometimes new repertory. The low, subsidized ticket prices (all seats are just $25) have also attracted the budget-minded concert-goer and those curious about 20th and 21st century music.

Unfortunately, 2014 will be the festival's last bandana-waving dance.

This year, the final lineup of Spring For Music leads off with....

Opera Review: Things Are Going to Get Merry Here

Salzburg's new Die Meistersinger is just...dreamy.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Hammer time: Michael Volle is Hans Sachs in Salzburg.
Frame-grab from the live stream of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
Image and likeness © 2013 Salzburger Festspiele.

It is a small miracle of modern technology that blogs such as this one (given a limited budget for travel) can write about important new opera productions on another continent. It's true that the live opera house performance is always preferable to the recording, but in the case of this new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Salzburg Festival, the availability of a live stream is very welcome indeed, especially as this new production may be bound for the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in the near future.

Concert Review: Beethoven Takes Over

Opening night of Mostly Mozart, 2013.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet ponders the future of commuter rail.
Photo by Guy Vivien © 2011 Verbier Festival

Attending the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra's first subscription concert of the 2013 summer season, one would think that this venerable arts festival's main focus this year was on the works of Ludwig van Beethoven. Beethoven was everywhere on this program, with three major works by the thunderer from Bonn bracketing two smaller arias by Salzburg's favorite composer. This focus on Beethoven will continue throughout this year's Festival, as major artists engage with five of the symphonies over the course of the next month.

Concert Review: Trouble is his Business

Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Beethoven and Haydn at Mostly Mozart
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Trouble shooter: Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
Photo by Marco Borggreve © 2012 YannickNézet-Séguin.com

Fresh off his Thursday night triumph with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin turned to the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra to lead Haydn's "Nelson" Mass and another Beethoven symphony--in this case the Second.

Although Haydn an Beethoven knew each other and follow each other in the historical procession of great Vienna-based composers, these two works could be tied together by their common origin in a Europe beset by crisis and war. Beethoven's Symphony No. 2 (written in 1801) is filled with revolutionary spirit, an optimistic, yet dramatic pinnacle of Beethoven's early style. The Mass is much darker, the sound of Austro-Hungarian aristocracy fretting in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars.

Working with the larger Festival Orchestra, Mr. Nézet-Séguin led a Second Symphony that bristled with energy and good humor. After an appropriately slow, dramatic buildup, the rapid-fire main theme of the opening movement leapt out of the starting gate, driven hard by the young conductor. The slower second movement went at a fairly brisk pace, with lovely textures from the bassoons and horns.