Concert Review: Notes from the Underground

The Attacca Quartet play Haydn in a crypt.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Members of the Attacca Quartet rehearse in the crypt of the Church of the Intercession.
Photo by Andrew Ousley.

The Church of the Intercession sits on the corner of West 155th and Broadaway, an imposing 100-hyear-old stone pile located across from the equally historic Trinity Church Cemetary. A fantasy of peaked Gothic arches and stone passageways, the church is now home to the Crypt Sessions, a recital series played deep beneath the earth in the church's crypt. On Thursday night, this unlikely venue hosted the Attacca Quartet, performing Haydn's Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross

Concert Review: The Shaper of Worlds

Mostly Mozart ends with Haydn's Creation.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

And lo he said, let there be light: Mostly Mozart music director Louis Langrée.
Photo © 2015 Mostly Mozart/Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

The 2015 Mostly Mozart Festival ended last week with two performances of Haydn's The Creation, that highly stylized oratorio built around the early events of the Book of Genesis. Haydn's work is one of beginnings and creation from the void, and was an apt choice to end a successful run by the oldest Lincoln Center event, one that has largely succeeded in reinventing itself and its image in the face of a challenging musical environment.