Concert Review: Uncommon Ground

Sir Antonio Pappano visits the New York Philharmonic.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Sir Antonio Pappano.
Photo © Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.

For a generation of classical music lovers your humble scribe included) the juxtaposition of composers Camille Saint-Saëns and Benjamin Britten with the New York Philharmonic brings a smile of nostalgia. These two composers were featured on a classic 196- album conducted by Leonard Bernstein, which used Saint-Saëns’ The Carnival of the Animals and Britten’s The Young Persons’ Guide to the Orchestra to teach a generation the intonations of the various instruments that together make up the modern symphony.

Concert Review: Earth-Shattering Kabooms

Paavo Järvi conducts the New York Philharmonic.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Conductor Paavo Järvii led the New York Philharmonic this week.
Photo © Harrison  Parrott.

The New York Philharmonic is (finally) back from a galaxy far, far away. This week marked the orchestra’s second traditional program of the season, with guest conductor Paavo Järvi leading works by composer-in-residence Esa-Pekka Salonen alongside music by Rachmaninoff and Sibelius. For Mr. Järvi, son of a famed Estonian conductor and a maestro in his own right (currently with the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo) this was a concert that played squarely to his strengths.

Concert Review: Taming the Savage Beast

A scuffle mars Thursday's Mostly Mozart concert.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Conductor Louis Langrée led Thursday's Mostly Mozart concert at Alice Tully Hall.
Photo © 2014 Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

Normally, a review of a performance like last night's concert at Alice Tully Hall featuring the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra with guest pianist Leif Ove Andsnes would confine itself to the music that was played onstage. However, an incident in the house before the concert must be mentioned first. It happened during the introductory lecture by festival music director Louis Langrée. An ugly, violent moment, it may serve as a launch point to discuss the importance and necessity of the music of Mozart and Bach, civilized art that can tame the restless hearts of New Yorkers trapped in an extended wave of humidity and heat.

Concert Review: Hey Now, They're the All-Stars

The Brahms piano quartets at Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

(L.-R.) James Ehnes, Leif Ove Andsnes, Tabea Zimmerman and Clemens Hagen
play Brahms at this year's Isaac Stern Memorial Concert.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2016 Carnegie Hall.

Putting together a small  group of musicians to play one concert as a chamber ensemble presents considerable challenges, not just to individual talents of the artists involved but to their abilities to make something greater out of the sum of their individual parts. For this year's Isaac Stern Memorial Concert on the great stage of Carnegie Hall, pianist Leif Ove Andsnes assembled an all-star quartet, with violist Tabea Zimmerman, cellist Clemens Hagen and violinist Christian Tetzlaff. The program: a marathon of Johannes Brahms' three Piano Quartets, each massive in scope and capable of standing by itself as a monument to the late Isaac Stern.

Concert Review: The Topless Piano

The Beethoven Journey with Leif Ove Andsnes.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The pianist Leif Ove Andsnes (center) in rehearsal with members of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.
Photo by Holger Talinski © 2014 Mahler Chamber Orchestra.

There was a Beethoven marathon this week at Carnegie Hall. On Monday and Wednesday night, pianist Leif Ove Andsnes played and conducted all five concertos for solo piano and orchestra, with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. The pianist himself led the band from the keyboard, an arrangement that was used on the recordings drawn from this project and at all the earlier concerts on the band's current North American tour.

Concert Review: The Rite Stuff

Reposted from The Classical Review. 
by Paul J. Pelkonen

 Alan Gilbert conducts the New York Philharmonic in The Rite of Spring. Photo by Chris Lee.

The New York Philharmonic’s opening night marks the beginning of the classical music season at Lincoln Center. This year, Alan Gilbert opened the season not with a splashy gala or free concert, but with a regular subscription performance, featuring works by György Kurtag and Igor Stravinsky flanking Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto.

Click here for the full article, available on The Classical Review.

Concert Review: Soaring Through Lost Altitudes

Leif Ove Andsnes at Carnegie Hall.

Leif Ove Andsnes. Photo © EMI Classics

by Paul Pelkonen

This current season at Carnegie Hall celebrates the Hall's legacy of music making, 120 years presenting concerts at the corner of W. 57th and Seventh Avenue. On Wednesday night, Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes solidified his part in that legacy with an engaging program that spanned familiar composers of literature for his instrument.

The first half of this concert spanned three centuries of keyboard literature, from the classical experimentation of Haydn to the early 20th century works of Bartók and Debussy. Mr. Andsnes chose Haydn's C minor Sonata to start the evening.

Although he is one of the first important composers to write for the piano. Haydn's vast output is often ignored by soloists focused on the  heroics of Beethoven. Here, the soloist showed that the classicism of the 18th century could also express raw emotion. 

It was followed with Bartók's Op. 14 Suite. This is an early example of this composer, with the rhythms of the Hungarian countryside underpinning tonal experimentation and fearless playing from the soloist. The aural palette then shifted to bright, new colors for Debussy's Images, played in a shimmering kaleidoscope of sound.

The ways in which Chopin's piano writing can be interpreted are as diverse as the myriad forms which he invented for the instrument. And at first glance, a long Chopin recital, as offered in the second half of this concert, looks as if the various Waltzes and Ballades were chosen arbitrarily. 

But listening to Mr. Andsnes' cool, cerebral performance, an overall sense of structure emerged. The four Waltzes were played with a steady, pumping left hand and a delicate filigree in the right. Each work solves the problems of the dance rhythm through a different key and musical idea. Mr. Andsnes made each of these works flow naturally into the next.

That sense of structure continued into the second group of works: two Ballades flanking the late Nocturne in B. The Ballade form is a vehicle for heroic expression. Mr. Andsnes drove this work forward in a propulsive, yet engaging style. The more reflective Nocturne formed a slow central movement, the heart of a vast, pastiche sonata.

The concert ended with three encores. It started with a return to Chopin's waltzes, played with the same lyric grace and flow of musical expression as before. Mr. Andsnes then turned south for one of the Spanish Dances by Enrique Granados, which sounded a little like Liszt taking a holiday on the Costa Brava. He concluded with one of his strengths, an Etude-tableaux by Sergei Rachmaninoff. As the notes of this fellow virtuoso sounded in the arched confines of the Hall, one had a sense of this young Nordic artist taking his place among the great artists who call this vast, blonde-wood stage home.

Listen to a live-stream of the recital on WQXR.Org.

Contact the author: E-mail Superconductor editor Paul Pelkonen.

Concert Review: Beethoven's Heirs

Leif Ove Andsnes at Carnegie Hall

A fearless artist: Leif Ove Andsnes confronts the flood. Photo © EMI Classics.

The Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes took Carnegie Hall by storm this week, in a Thursday night recital that explored the relationship between Beethoven, Brahms and Schoenberg. The concert featured Mr. Andsnes signature style, a bold attack with the left hand and agile figurations with the right, combined with liberal use of the pedal to make the Steinway sing.

The concert opened with a charging "Waldstein" sonata, its opening ostinato taken at a rapid clip by Mr. Andsnes. He leant on the pedal for the legato runs up and down the keyboard, presenting a kaleidoscope of emotions for the listener to process. Suddenly, the movement would stop, and the second, soft singing theme would emerge, quietly at first and then with more confidence.

The hesitating introduction to the finale led into a rich, singing final movement with the famous, expansive theme proudly stated in the upper register. Mr. Andsnes balanced this famous movement expertly, racing along the keyboard as he drove the work into its final chords.

The four Ballades by Johannes Brahms followed. Mr. Andsnes showed how these early Brahms works, played together, form a sort of symphony for solo piano: four movements of a cohesive whole. He found the Romantic coloration in this music, whether in the first Ballade or the lyrical passages in the later movements of this "symphony."

Schoenberg's Six Little Piano Pieces last only seven minutes, but mere mention of this innovative 20th century composer is enough to scare concert-goers. Mr. Andsnes played with lyricism and a jazzy flair, bringing out the inner beauty of these little gems.

The concert climaxed with Beethoven's 32nd, and final piano sonata. Op. 111 is a challenging work. Like the Brahms ballades, this two-movement sonata packs enough musical ideas for an entire symphony. In fact, the works bears some points of similarity to Beethoven's Fifth in that genre, as the composer revisits the tonal conflict between the keys of C minor and C Major.

Mr. Andsnes brought a fiery approach to the first movement, conjuring up the stormy figures and near-fugal textures common to late Beethoven. The second movement was far more lyrical. The slow Arietta was played with quiet, poetic restraint. The transition to the Bach-like central section was handled smoothly. Mr. Andsnes saved his finest playing for the last third of the final movement, a series of descending figures: the sound of Beethoven at play. The last bars died away softly--the sound of transcendence and a kind of cosmic bliss.

Three encores followed. A welcome exploration of György Kurtág's "Scraps of a Colinda Melody--Faintly Recollected" featured a gossamer-like series of short, lifted keystrokes to make the two ends of the instrument talk to each other in easy dialogue. A rugged, cheerful performance of Chopin's a-flat waltz was next. The trio of treats concluded with Schumann's second Romance, played with deep profundity and understanding. Beethoven would have been proud.