Concert Review: Steppe-ing Up Their Game

A new conductor lands at the New York Philharmonic.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The conductor Tughan Sokhiev.
Photo courtesy the Orchestra Nationale du Capitole de Toulouse.

Prior to this week, the  Russian conductor Tughan Sokhiev was an unknown quantity at the New York Philharmonic. Currently music director of the Bolshoi Theater and the Orchestre Nationale du Capitole de Toulouse, he made his debut on the podium at David Geffen Hall, armed with a triptych of works from his native land by Borodin, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky.

Concert Review: The Children of the Revolution

The NYO2 in concert at Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

All hands: The dapper Gil Shaham shows the tools of his trade.
He played Carnegie Hall with the NYO2 on Tuesday night.

The orchestra training initiative undertaken five years ago by Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute has been an unqualified success. On Tuesday night, as the National Youth Orchestra of the United States took the stage in a theater in China, it was the turn of NYO2, the supplementary training orchestra featuring performers from the age of 14-17 to take on the task of performing at Carnegie Hall.

Concert Review: Who You Gonna Call? Dust-Busters!

The Israel Philharmonic ends its Carnegie Hall run.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic in flight. Photo © 2014 Israel Philharmonic Orchestra

There is a long history between conductor Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Mr. Mehta has enjoyed thirty years at the helm of this Tel Aviv-based ensemble, which continues to serve as a much-loved international musical ambassador for their home country. On Thursday night, Mr. Mehta and his players offered their third and final program at Carnegie Hall this week: an evening of overture, concerto and symphony played in the traditional order. It was not exactly a thrilling experience.

Superconductor 2016 Summer Festival Preview II: Caramoor

The elegant estate in Katonah, NY has a full slate planned.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Baton out of nowhere: Gil Shaham in concert at Caramoor. The violinist will
close out the 2016 festival season Aug. 7. Photo © Caramoor Music Festival.

The Superconductor survey of the upcoming summer festival schedule moves just north of the city to Caramoor, an elegant, sprawling estate with shady, graveled walks, rolling grassy lawns and its own hedge maze. Caramoor also boasts a strong schedule of classical concerts, and the annual Bel Canto at Caramoor concert performances in the Venetian Theater are a magnet for Gotham opera-goers.

Concert Review: Providence, Prokofiev and Pirates

The San Francisco Symphony at Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Michael Tilson Thomas.
Photo © 2013 San Francisco Symphony.

Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra closed their two-night 2014 stand at Carnegie Hall on Thursday night. The evening offered pretty much everything this ensemble does well. There was new music. There was a surprisingly gentle 20th century concerto. And there was an almost obligatory Big Work: the unexpurgated score of Maurice Ravel's ballet Daphnis et Chloë.

Concert Review: The 57th St. Experiment

The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

David Bowman (Keir Dullea) listens to music by György Ligeti.
Image from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey
© 1968 MGM/Turner Entertainment.

This week's Sunday matinee concert at Carnegie Hall was the last formal program of the spring 2014 season at the historic venue. The last of three consecutive concerts featuring the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Mariss Jansons, it was also something of an experiment: examining the development of modern music in central Europe by moving steadily backwards in time.

Concert Review: From Atonality to Whipped Cream

The Vienna Philharmonic bids farewell to the City of Dreams.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Handy dandy: Diana Damrau takes over podium duties from Zubin Mehta (left) as
Vienna: City of Dreams comes to a riotous end at Carnegie Hall.
Photo by Steve J. Sherman © 2014 courtesy Carnegie Hall.

The Vienna Philharmonic drew the curtain on Carnegie Hall's three-week Vienna: City of Dreams festival with a massive Sunday night concert featuring a sweeping survey of that city's disparate musical history. Spanning from the choral music of Mozart to the 20th century experiments of Webern and Korngold, the orchestra players showed their affinity for dance music, opera, operetta, orchestral music, and even atonality in a sprawling program that at least, never proved dull. The inspired choice for leading this program: former New York Philharmonic music director Zubin Mehta, a beloved figure in this city.

Concert Review: New Sounds from the Old School

Steven Stucky's Symphony has its New York premiere.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The composer Steven Stucky. His new Symphony had its New York premiere last night. 
Photo by Nicola Kountopes© 2005 Cornell University/University Photography.

Yesterday, the New York Philharmonic announced a two-year plan, (starting in 2017) to renovate Avery Fisher Hall, rebuilding the venue's auditorium while leaving the façade intact. That news (see, I got it in!) threatened to overshadow the fact that last night marked the first New York performance of Steven Stucky's Symphony, a work co-commissioned by the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics.

Although it bears no number, this is technically Mr. Stucky's fifth--with the earlier works written in his twenties and currently withdrawn from publication. He requires a large orchestra to produce conventional, tonal sounds. Symphony is twenty minutes, consisting of four continuous movements. The sections have cool English titles instead of traditional movement names.

Introduction and Hymn featured impressive playing from the Philharmonic wind soloists, as their single melodic lines coalesced to form paragraphs of musical thought, answered by soft, solemn brass chords from the horns and trombones. Alan Gilbert let the theme develop, his extravagent gestures creating an arch of sound that would do a late Romantic proud.

Concert Review: The Fiddle in the Bullpen

Gil Shaham steps in with the Cleveland Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
by Paul Pelkonen 

Off the bench: violinist Gil Shaham.
Photo by Boyd Hagen.

There was nothing conventional about Wednesday night's concert by the Cleveland Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, the first of two appearances by this venerable American ensemble this week. 

To start with, there was a last minute program change.

The e-mail came at 10am from the Carnegie Hall press office. The pianist Yefim Bronfman was ill. His replacement would be violinist Gil Shaham. The music would still be Brahms: the Violin Concerto. 

When you factor in a lack of rehearsal time and the impromptu nature of the first half the eveningm this was still a compelling performance. Mr. Shaham was  at home in this music, grooving on the sounds made by the first violins when he wasn't playing, and spinning sweet melodies over the rich orchestral texture. The violinist brought athleticism and musicianship to the vast musical arches of the opening movement, supported firmly by Mr. Welser-Möst.

Concert Review: An End to Modernity

David Zinman winds up The Modern Beethoven.
by Paul Pelkonen

David Zinman demonstrates baton technique. Photo by Chris Lee.
© 2012 The New York Philharmonic.

This is the last week of The Modern Beethoven, the New York Philharmonic's spring festival pairing six of the composer's symphonies with unfamiliar concertos from the 20th century. This festival is the brain-child of David Zinman, the Bronx-born conductor whose uncompromising approach to music-making strips years of aural varnish from Beethoven's familiar scores.

The concert opened with a boisterous, no-frills reading of Beethoven's First Symphony. Mr. Zinman created a fresh musical statement from this early example of the composer's style, choosing energetic, but not hurried tempos. The orchestra responded, playing with great clarity and refinement.

The "modern" work on the program was the most interesting yet: the first Philharmonic performances of Karl Amadeus Hartmann's 1939 Concerto funèbre for violin and orchestra with soloist Gil Shaham. Despite a few Webern-esque squawks in the opening bars, this 20-minute concerto, played in one continuous movement, proved appealing, and yes, tonal.

A German composer who was profoundly unsympathetic to the Nazis, Hartmann wrote this piece as the storm clouds of World War Two gathered. Musically, this concerto forms a bridge between the diaphanous fabrics of Wagner's Parsifal (which it quotes, repeatedly) and the war symphonies of Shostakovich. Hartmann also incorporates Czech and Russian folk songs, expressing sympathy those countries, soon to be attacked by the Nazi war machine.

Mr. Shaham played with a keening, dry tone from the opening, a chorale based on a Hussite hymn from what is now the Czech Republic. The soloist was all business, making his instrument sob with grief in the slow section of the work, scratching out minor chords of rage like a speed-metal riffer in the Allegro. The finale featured a second chorale, evoking the fate of Russia as it stood in the path of the Nazi war machine. It came to a quiet close, then regenerated for a powerful coda, ending with loud, brash chords.

The concert ended with a Beethoven heavyweight: the 50-minute Eroica Symphony. Mr. Zinman's approach to this familiar score is to bring out details in the music that may have gone unheard before. The first movement had great detail, especially a theme in the low strings that later becomes the basis of the finale. The funeral march was philosophical, but not dragging in tone.

The infusion of energy common to this conductor's podium style occurred in the third movement, a boisterous scherzo that allowed the Philharmonic's woodwinds and brass their turn in the spotlight.Although the horns, led by principal Philip Myers did not sound their best here, the playing had a rude energy that made up for dodgy intonation.

Best of all was the finale, that famous theme and variations where the composer treats the sections and sub-sections of the ensemble as players in an oversized piece of chamber music. As the theme was tossed between the player, Mr. Zinman occasionally beckoned for more volume, or made an hermetic slashing pattern with his baton. The result: an invigorating performance of this famous symphony, and a fitting close to three weeks of The Modern Beethoven.

Concert Review: The Redemption of Gil Shaham

Gil Shaham in the park

The Walton Concerto, with the New York Philharmonic

It is not often that one gets to hear the same soloist play the same concerto in the course of a month, with a different orchestra and conductor. Friday's matinee performance by the New York Philharmonic featured Gil Shaham playing William Walton's lone Violin Concerto, a 20th century composition which blends post-Romanticism and jazz influences to create one of the composer's most enduring works.

Here, Mr. Shaham played with firm, robust tone, soaring where he previously skittered, and racing through the complex solo passages with robust tone and an intimate warmth. The intonation problems and reediness that plagued last month's Philadelphia Orchestra concert had disappeared. The soloist was smoothly accompanied by conductor Ludovic Morlot.

Mr. Morlot is a French conductor on the rise, with a brisk style that brought out clarity and depth throughout the complex textures of the orchestra. These qualities extended to the rest of the program, which explored the deep connection between the Russian compositions of Modest Mussorgsky and the music of Maurice Ravel

The concert opened with the prelude to Mussorgsky's unfinished opera Khovanschinha, a brief, evocative tone poem also known as "Dawn over the Moscow River." Khovanschinha tells the story of the rise of Tsar Peter the Great by showing the effect of Russia's political struggles across all levels of society.

This performance used Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestration, and Mr. Morlot brought out the shimmering, impressionistic textures in strings and woodwinds, firmly supported by the Philharmonic horns. If it seemed a little light in weight for such a serious piece, the fault may lie with Rimsky, who made a posthumous effort to "brighten" his friend's often gloomy music.

The second half of the program started with Ravel's Pavane pour un Infante Defunte, played at a brisk pace, as if Mr. Morlot wanted to get the funeral proceedings over quickly. It was followed by that composer's orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, a work that always brings out the best in this orchestra.

Pictures was originally a piano composition, ad Mr. Morlot's leading of the piece brought out some of the work's original, rugged qualities through Ravel's elaborate orchestration. Fine playing from a number of Philharmonic soloists, including tubist Alan Baer, the trumpets and horns, and of course the woodwinds, made for an invigorating stroll through Mussorgsky's imaginary gallery. The final Great Gate of Kiev was played with power and authority, in a resonant affirmation of Mussorgsky's genius.