Concert Review: Treachery, Faith and the Great River

The Cleveland Orchestra sails into Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

White tie and tails: Franz Welser-Möst.
Photo by Michael Pöhn for IMG Artists

The River Danube flows through southeastern Europe for 1,780 miles, from its source in Germany down into the Black Sea. It has captured the imagination of composers for centuries, who have used its waters as the inspiration for their art. On Tuesday night at Carnegie Hall, the Cleveland Orchestra and its music director Franz Welser-Möst gave the first New York performance of Stromab by the young Austrian composer Johannes Maria Staud alongside the autumnal and always challenging Symphony No. 9 by Gustav Mahler.

Concert Review: A Valediction, Forbidding Mourning

Bernard Haitink conducts Mahler’s Ninth Symphony.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The great Bernard Haitink at the controls of the New York Philharmonic.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2014 The New York Philharmonic.

At 87 years old, Bernard Haitink is a dean among active conductors still appearing on the podiums of the world's great concert halls. He still works regularly with the London Symphony Orchestra and he visits the New York Philharmonic in David Geffen Hall every other year. On Tuesday night, Mr. Haitink led the fourth and final performance this season of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 9. As the audience sat, rapt for almost an hour and a half, one wondered if this was the Dutch conductor's last New York performance of this touchstone work.

Ring! Ring! It's Rossini Calling!

Cell phone follies at La Scala recital.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Gioachino Rossini and his little digital friend.

Anybody who goes to classial music concerts or opera performances knows that the modern, digital age has introduced the annoyance of cellular ring tones as unwanted accompaniment to the music of Mozart, Beethoven and Rossini. But on Sunday night, opera star Joyce DiDonato found a new way of coping with the digital menace.

Mahler, Displaced

New York Philharmonic Nixes Ninth.
by Paul Pelkonen

Image from PC World Magazine. Apple, the iPhone and the Apple logo are all © Apple.

The New York Philharmonic announced today that the program for this year's free Memorial Day Concert at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine has been changed.

The new program features a pairing of Debussy's La Mer with Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony. Both works were integral parts of recent New York Philharmonic concerts, both at Avery Fisher Hall and during the orchestra's recent tour of California.

These replace a planned performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 9. Music director Alan Gilbert is still scheduled to conduct.