Concert Review: A Composer in Rehab

Karyn Levitt offers a cabaret tribute to Hanns Eisler.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Karyn Levitt (center) in concert at the Metropolitan Room.
Photo by the author. 

The name of Hanns Eisler is shrouded, both by the mists of time and the fact that he is one of the few composers to have his work banned  by the Third Reich. Ten years later, he was booted out of the United States, thanks to the anti-Communist witch hunts of the House Un-American Activities Committee. New York soprano Karyn Levitt is out to correct those injustices and place Eisler back in the orbit of important 20 century composers. Her CD, Eric Bentley's Brecht-Eisler Song Book was the first step, but a more important one is to get the music of Eisler in front of a live audience.

Concert Review: Against the Gathering Darkness

Jeffrey Kahane returns to the New York Philharmonic.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The pianist Jeffrey Kahane returned to the New York Philharmonic this week.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2014 The New York Philharmonic.

In the years between the two World Wars, the last, dying gasps of tonal music and the rise in popularity of American jazz created a climate where composers engaged in fearless and sometimes furious experimentation. It was as if they knew disaster was coming, and that it was time to get all their good ideas down on paper before the world plunged back into darkness.

This week, the New York Philharmonic offered a carefully curated program of lesser-known major orchestral works from Maurice Ravel, Kurt Weill and George Gershwin. The program, conducted by Jeffery Kahane (who also served as piano soloist) searched for common ground between these three composers, offering listeners Ravel's flashy post-Impressionist virtuosity, Weill's  post-Mahlerian sturm und drang view of Wiemar Germany, and the jazzy sounds of Gershwin's New York.

Opera Review: Experimenting on their Audience

Gotham Chamber Opera opens Baden-Baden 1927.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Murder for breakfast. Tenor Matthew Tuell (seated at table)
 contemplates his actions as Maeve Höglund lies supine.
Photo © Richard Termine  from Hin und Züruck,
part of Baden-Baden 1927 presented by Gotham Chamber Opera.

The Gotham Chamber Opera opened its season Wednesday night with a bold experiment. Baden-Baden 1927, seen Wednesday night at the company's regular performing digs, the Gerald W. Lynch Theater reunites four short operas from the German arts festival which also lends the program its title. This was the first time these works have been performed together onstage in North America. It's just the kind of edgy programming that suits a company trying to ease itself into the seat once occupied by the late New York City Opera.

These four works (L'enlèvement d'Europe by Darius Milhaud, Die Prinzessin auf der Erbse by Ernst Toch, Hin und Zurück by Paul Hindemith and the Mahogonny-Songspiel by Kurt Weill) form a snapshot of Europe between the wars, a time of fearless theatrical and musical experimentation before the rise of Naziism labeled these innovations as entartete or "degenerate." Paul Curran's production presents these diminutive operas as exhibits in a debate on the nature of art. Each work was introduced by a member of the cast, putting the operas--or exhibits--in their historical and visual context. Like most exhibits of modern art, some of it worked and some of it didn't.