Concert Review: Senses Working Overtime

The New York Philharmonic presents Circle Map.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Clarinetist Kari Krikku (right) makes his escape during Kaija Saariaho's D'om le Vrai Sens.
Photo by Chris Lee for the New York Philharmonic.

The Park Avenue Armory hulks on the Upper East Side, its brick ramparts a brusque reminder of this country's long military history. In this century though, it is a space for the avant-garde in art, music and theater an ideal laboratory for unusual programs that require breadth of imagination as well as breadth of physical space.  Their latest offering is Circle Map, a 90-minute concert program focusing on the music of Finnish compoer Kaija Saariaho, one of the few women who have made an international reputation as a fearless explorer of the musical avant-garde.

Spring Breakdown 2016: The Recitals

We look at the best solo performance of the year so far.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Lisette Oropesa (right) in recital at the Park Avenue Armory.
Photo by Da Peng Nuo.

It takes nerve to go out on stage by yourself, or to take the stage with just your voice and a hopefully friendly pianist providing accompaniment. That's the premise of this look at five great recitals for piano and voice that Superconductor was witness to in the spring of 2016. Presented in just-about-chronological order.

Opera Review: The Glory of Infinite Resources

The Park Avenue Armory stages Louis Andriessen's De Materie.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A zeppelin watches its flock in Part IV of Louis Andriessen's De Materie.
Photo by Wonge Bergmann for the Park Avenue Armory © 2016 Park Avenue Armory.

The yawning black void of the Wade Thompson Drill Hall at the Park Avenue Armory is the largest theatrical space in the art music community of New York City. This week, that vast black slate is the playground of director Heiner Goebbels and the first North American stage production of De Materie, a sprawling two-hour work by the Dutch composer Louis Andriessen. Like some of the larger works by Hector Berlioz, De Materie falls somewhere between enormous symphony and fully staged opera. This work is both staggering in its achievement and bewildering in scope, an expression of what can be achieved when a composer's imagination meets a director's enormous budget.

Concert Review: Alone in the Dark

The experience of Goldberg at the Armory.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Marina Abramović re-invents the concert experience with Goldberg
at the Park Avenue Armory. Photo by James Ewing © 2015 Park  Avenue Armory.

Off came my wristwatch, a trusty concert-going companion of many years. My iPhone was turned off and put in my bag next to my iPad, also off. Bag and grey Marillion fleece jacket were put in locker No. 42 and I locked it and took the key. I stood in line with other concertgoers, some there for the music: Bach's Goldberg Variations, others for the auteur of our evening: performance and conceptual artist Marina Abramović . The bringing together of these forces is called Goldberg, and is Ms. Abramović's latest stage work.

Opera Review: Hell is Below Decks

The Lincoln Center Festival sends out The Passenger.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The final tableau of The Passenger showing the split-level set.
Photo by Stephanie Berger for the Lincoln Center Festival © 2014.

Mieczyslaw Weinberg was a minor 20th century composer, best remembered for his association with Dmitri Shostakovich, his large output of string quartets and symphonies, and for his film score to Vinnie-Pukh, a distinctly Russian take on the children's story Winnie The Pooh. The Passenger may be his crowning achievement, a searing, intense opera that finds a German diplomat's wife having to confront her past as an overseer in the S.S. assigned to the concentration camp Auschwitz.

Opera Review: She's Not Dead...Yet

Robert Wilson presents The Life and Death of Marina Abramović.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Marina Abramović sits. Antony sings (eventually) in The Life and Death of Marina Abramović.
Photo by Lucie Jansch for DeSingel © 2013 Robert Wilson/Watermill Institute.

The director Robert Wilson is known for his signature style: dark costumes, white Kabuki makeup and stylized movements in front of moving bars of light. Last night at the Park Avenue Armory, Mr. Wilson's style was placed in service of another uncompromising figure: performance artist Marina Abramović. Tuesday night was the second of a series of New York performances of The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, the collaboration between these two artists which premiered in Manchester in 2011.

Concert Review: The Cult of Light

The Park Avenue Armory presents Stockhausen's Oktophonie.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

This didn't actually happen on Saturday.
The late Karlheinz Stockhausen. © Stockhausen-Verlag

Karlheinz Stockhausen’s seven-part opera cycle Licht is regarded as one of the most important, possibly unperformable  monster works produced in the last decades of the composer’s life. Perhaps recognizing the difficulty of getting a seven-day 29-hour opera performed, Stockhausen made his work "modular", enabling sections of Licht to be broken out and played for an audience of less fortitude.