Concert Review: Faith Without Pause

Bernard Labadie leads Bach's Mass in B minor.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Bernard Labadie leads Les Violons du Roy and La Chapelle de Quebec
in Bach's Mass in B minor. Photo by Melanie Burford.

Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass in B minor is more than church music. It is a towering setting of the Catholic liturgy that while never performed in full in the composer's lifetime, can elevate the listener no matter what faith they profess. Its glories were on full display in Carnegie Hall on Tuesday night. The performance (mounted without an intermission) was by the period ensemble Les Violins du Roy and La Chapelle de Quebec under the leadership of their founder Bernard Labadie.

Opera Review: Zapped!

Handel’s shocking Semele strikes Carnegie Hall.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Lightning rod: Brenda Rae as Semele at Carnegie Hall
Photo by Steve J. Sherman for Carnegie Hall.

One does not always think of Georg Friedrich Handel as a paragon of musical experimentation. On Sunday afternoon, the English Concert, (which is in the middle of presenting an annual cycle of Handel masterpieces at Carnegie Hall) struck down that thesis. This year’s entry is Semele, a hybridization of opera and oratorio. Unusual in that it uses the oratorio formula and an English text (by the poet William Congreve) to tell a mythological tale, Semele flopped in 1744. Today, this work is regarded as one of the composer’s boldest and most impressive achievements. 

Every Valley...Has Its Terrors

My first time performing Handel's Messiah.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Where's your Messiah now?

In the course of my professional career, both as the author of Superconductor and for other publications, I have written an awful lot of reviews. However, last night at the National Chorale's annual Messiah Sing-In at David Geffen Hall, the tables were turned: I found myself, along with the audience, as a choral performer, embedded among professional and vocational singers in a struggle with Handel's written work. So yesterday I did the smart thing: bought a copy of the Dover miniature score at Juilliard and sat in Starbucks, listening to a new BR Klassik recording of the oratorio and dog-earing the choral sections in the score: the sections which I would be participating in in the night's performance.

Concert Review: Salvation on Fifth Avenue

The St. Thomas Men and Boys Choir presents Handel's Messiah.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The St. Thomas Chois of Men and Boys, earlier this season performing Israel in Egypt.
Photo from St. Thomas Episcopal Church.

There are any number of ways for a chorus and orchestra to come together to perform Messiah, the 1741 oratorio that remains Handel's most popular contribution to the canon of Western classical music. For New Yorkers, one of the most satisfying and traditional Messiah experiences to be had is held each year at St. Thomas' Episcopal Church, which is home to one of the few choral schools still operating in the United States.

Concert Review: Never Break the Chain

Emanuelle Haïm debuts with the New York Philharmonic.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Conductor Emanuelle Haïm in flight.
Photo © Askonas Holt

Say the words "baroque music" and a couple of inevitable stereotypes spring to mind. One might be a covey of court musicians, tweetling elaborate fugues for the enjoyment of mincing nobles. Another might be period performance wonks gathered in rehearsal spaces, wrestling with "authentic" wooden instruments and catgut strings in a quest to discover what music sounded like three hundred years ago.

Concert Review: The Boys' Club

The St. Thomas Choir celebrates Handel's Messiah.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Enraged Musician. Engraving by William Hogarth from 1741,
the year of the premiere of Handel's Messiah.

Handel's Messiah is a ubiquitous event for New York music lovers, with as many as thirty different choruses and ensembles offering performances of this oratorio. On Tuesday night, New York Baroque Incorporated and the St. Thomas Choir of Men and Boys kicked off the Advent season  with the first of two performance this week at St. Thomas Church. Using period instruments, four soloists and an all-male chorus, this modest Messiah was as Handel himself might have heard it.

Concert Review: Symphony of a Thousand Years

Jordi Savall opens La Serenissima at Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The elegant and scholarly Jordi Savall and friend. Image by Molina Visuals.

A millennium is a long time, but not in the hands of Jordi Savall. Mr. Savall took the main stage of Carnegie Hall last Friday night, to lead the opening concert of the three week La Serenissima festival. This is a citywide celebration of the music, culture and rich history of Venice, Italy, curated by Mr. Savall, a musicologist, conductor and master of the viol, an 18th century instrument played between the knees.

Concert Review: Keeping the Faith

The Philharmonic resurrects Handel's Messiah.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Jane Glover.
Photo by Ken Howard for Chicago Music of the Baroque.

Ever since the twelve-year music directorship of the late Kurt Masur, the oratorio has resumed pride of place at the New York Philharmonic. That was confirmed last week when Jane Glover, the eminent British musicologist and conductor known to New Yorkers from her opera performances at Juilliard, made her debut with the orchestra conducting this year's run of Handel's Messiah.

Concert Review: The Heavy Weight of Faith

Sacred Music in a Sacred Space presents Bach's Mass in B minor.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

K. Scott Warren leads the Choir of St. Ignatius.
Photo by Joshua South Photograpy © 2015 Sacred Music in a Sacred Space.

Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass in B Minor was the composer's final great choral work, an enormous setting of the Catholic liturgy that was never performed complete in his lifetime. (In fact Europe waited until 1859 for the first performance under the leadership of Carl Friedrich Zelter, a key figure in the Bach revival of the 19th century.) Although its history is complex, its power in performance cannot be denied.

Concert Review: A Second Climb, up a Treacherous Peak

Christian Tetzlaff opens the 92nd St. Y season with Bach.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Christian Tetzlaff and friend. Photo by Giorgio Bertazzi from the artist's website.
Bach image added by the author.

A performance of all six solo violin works by Johann Sebastian Bach (the three Sonatas and three Partitas) are the musician's equivalent of a climb up K2 without oxygen or rope. On Tuesday night, German violinist Christian Tetzlaff took on this feat (for the second time in five years) at the Kaufmann Concert Hall, a staid but intimate auditorium that is ideal in acoustic and scale for this kind of performance. This performance also served as season opener for the prestigious Upper East Side venue, a fact celebrated with the distribution of free champagne to the audience at intermission.

Concert Review: An Act of Faith

The Oratorio Society of New York presents the St. Matthew Passion.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The stained glass Bach window in the Thomaskirche, Leipzig, Germany,
Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion is the composer’s mightiest creation, an unflinching account of the arrest, trial,and execution of Jesus as laid down in the first Gospel of the New Testament. First performed for Good Friday service in St. Thomas’ Church in Leipzig, it retains all of its emotional impact in the concert hall. A strong performance of this work is a declaration of faith, not necessarily in Christianity but in the perfect musical design that Bach uses throughout this sprawling work.

Concert Review: Martyred, Then Returned to Life

The English Concert presents Handel's Theodora.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A man and his harpsichord: English Concert conductor Harry Bickett.
Photo by Richard Haughton © 2013 The English Concert.

Sometimes a composer's best work escapes the notice of his public. Take, for example Handel's late oratorio Theodora which bombed with the London public after just three performances. On Sunday afternoon at Carnegie Hall, Harry Bickett and the period ensemble The English Concert made a case for Theodora as one of Handel's most compelling stage works.

Opera Review: As the Walls Close In, a King is Made

Les Arts Florissants bring David et Jonathas to BAM.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Jonathan (Ana Quintans, left) and David (Pascal Charbonneau)
greet the Israelites in a scene from David et Jonathas. 
Photo by Julieta Cervantes © 2013 BAM/Les Arts Florissants.

In 1979, the period performance group Les Arts Florissants took their name from an opera by French baroque composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier. This week at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the ensemble, under the baton of its founder William Christie, presented another Charpentier gem, the biblical drama David et Jonathas. Written in 1688 and designed to be played in alternating acts with Saul (a play written by a French Jesuit) this is an example of tragedie-biblique, where a sacred story is treated in the style of early French opera.

Opera Preview: Eliogabalo

Gotham Chamber Opera goes for baroque.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Medal of the Roman emperor  Heliogabalus.
Collection of The Louvre, Paris. 

In recent seasons, Gotham Chamber Opera has established itself as an advocate of lesser known operas of the classical period. With its new production of Eliogabalo, the final and most controversial opera from the pen of composer Francesco Cavalli, it stakes a claim to the music of the century before.

Concert Review: The Bridge of a Hundred Years

The New York Philharmonic opens The Bach Variations.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Bach man turned in overdrive: the conductor Masaaki Suzuki.
Image © BIS Classics/Naxos North American Distribution.

The New York Philharmonic is not the first ensemble one thinks of for the performance of sacred music by Johann Sebastian Bach. This month, the orchestra is working to correct that perception with The Bach Variations, a multi-disciplinary festival exploring multiple facets of that composer’s vast body of work.

For these first concerts, (seen Wednesday night at Avery Fisher Hall) the orchestra was joined by two vocal groups: the Tokyo-based Bach Collegium Japan and the Schola Cantorum from Yale University. All three groups performed under the leadership of Masaaki Suzuki,, a Japanese period performance specialist who is the music director of both choral groups. This was his first appearance with the Philharmonic. A quintet of vocal soloists including Indian soprano Sheherazade Panthaki, countertenor Iestyn Davies and tenor Nicholas Phan sang the leading parts as needed.

Your Daily Gingerbread II

Some more holiday cheer from Superconductor.

What every kid (and adult) really wants under their tree.
Image from Ren and Stimpy © John Kricfalusi/MTV Networks.

Bach's Christmas Oratorio. 

Brass Tacks: Historically Informed Performance

So what do they mean by "original instruments?"
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Natural horns (with replaceable "crooks" instead of valves)
are a key part of  historically informed performance.

The creation and composition of what we call "classical" music has gone on for half a millennium. In that time, both the music and the instruments it is played on have changed considerably. Iron-framed concert grand pianos, valved trumpets, metal flutes--all of these are comparitively recent inventions.


In 1954, a movement began in Europe encouraging the exploration and performance of Bach cantatas on "historically informed" instruments: that is, original or replica instruments of the 18th century and earlier. The idea was to recreate the sound of a a given piece of music at the time that it was written. The success of these initial Bach performances led to a whole slew of new baroque-style orchestras being formed.

It was the era of the big classical music label. Many of these new ensembles were given recording contracts, and the world soon saw an explosion of interest in baroque and Renaissance music. A handful of ittle known musicians: Nikolaus Harnoncourt, John Eliot Gardiner, Christopher Hogwood, Roger Norrington and William Christie became star conductors.

"Historically Informed Performance" (as it has come to be called) incorporates so-called "original" instruments. Wooden flutes replace metal ones. Oboes and bassoons have simplified key mechanisms. Keyboard soloists favor wood-framed, sometimes pedal-less "fortepianos" instead of the modern concert grand.

The Rosalyn Tureck Confession

What a missing CD cover taught me about Bach.
by Paul Pelkonen

The missing Rosalyn Tureck album cover. I still don't have it!

Today is the 327th birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach. To celebrate, it's time to take a look at some of the recordings of Rosalyn Tureck.

Born in Chicago in 1914, Dr. Tureck was a pianist who devoted extraordinary keyboard gifts to the interpretation of Bach. Her recordings of the Goldberg Variations, Keyboard Partitas and the two books of The Well-Tempered Clavier are touchstones, revered by collectors and by pianists like Glenn Gould. She died in New York at the age of 88.

I first encountered Ms. Tureck's playing in 1999, when Deutsche Grammophon sent me the 4-disc set of her recordings of the complete Well-Tempered Clavier. I well remember putting the first disc into the drive of my office tower computer, putting on the big noise-blocking headphones...and hating it.

The familiar C Major Prelude of Book I was taken at a maddening, slow pace, the notes seeming to sleep-walk out of the speakers in hissy mono sound. The whole piece was a minute slower than other recordings, like Chinese water torture.

I kept listening. Some of the later Preludes and Fugues were still slow to me. My inner Bach metronome was used to the "Gould" approach to tempo. I didn't really appreciate the beauty of her approach to this music. After writing a mumbling, middling review for the website I was working for, I put the recordings aside, going back to Glenn Gould and Andràs Schiff, another pianist who remains a favorite today.

Later, I wanted to get rid of that set, to send it out into the world of used CDs where music journalists often trade in their acquisitions for a bit of ready cash. But I didn't, mostly because the producer at that website had lost the front-cover label insert, making the set worthless to a dealer.

Reluctantly, I kept it. The set sat on my shelf for years, wedged between the big Sony Glenn Gould "Original Jackets" box and Mr. Schiff's orange box of Bach for Decca. It stayed silent in its case for over a decade. When I did "Project Upload" (moving many recordings of mine into hard drives and iPods) it was left out.

With the Bach birthday this week, I took out that Tureck boxed set, as well as recordings of the Partitas and Goldberg Variations that I'd acquired as part of the Great Pianists of the 20th Century series.

I uploaded all eight discs of Ms. Tureck's recordings that I had. I transferred them into my iPhone. Now, her approach to these short pieces not only felt right, but were extraordinary in their beauty. The piano works seemed thoughtful, beautifully paced and carefully measured. Ms. Tureck's playing hadn't changed.

I had grown up.