Concert Review: The All-Stars Chamber

Marc-André Hamelin joins the Juilliard String Quartet at the 92nd St. Y.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Juilliard String Quartet (right and left) were joined by Marc-André Hamelin (Center) on Friday night at the 92nd St. Y.
Photo interpolation by the author, who should really know better than to try things like this on deadline.

It's an incredible luxury to be able to do whatever the hell you want. On Friday night, pianist Marc-Andre Hámelin joined the Juilliard String Quartet for their appearance at the 92nd St. Y, adding himself to the second half of a concert program of chamber music. The Juilliard Quartet is just as storied (if not more so) than Mr. Hamelin, having existed in one form or another since its foundation by composer-critic Virgil Thomson in 1946.

Concert Review: Brothers From the Same Quartet

The Emerson String Quartet celebrates forty years.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

The members of the Emerson String Quartet, past and present: Philip Setzer, Paul Watkins
former cellist David Finckel, Eugene Drucker, Lawrence Dutton.
Original photo by Lisa Marie Mazzucco, © Sony Classical. Photoshop by the author.

The Emerson String Quartet is among the most storied of American Chamber music ensembles, having thrilled listeners for four decades with their clean, bright-edged sound and a preference for brisk and efficient music making. On Sunday afternoon, the Emersons played the second of two concerts at Alice Tully Hall this weekend. The occasion: to celebrate the beginning of the 2016-17 season of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and to celebrate four decades of music-making with the release of a mammoth 53-disc box chronicling the ensembles' complete recorded catalogue for Deutsche Grammophon.

Concert Review: The Prodigy and the Proletarian

The Belcea Quartet play Schubert and Shostakovich.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Belcea Quartet (Corina Belcea, Axel Schacher, violins,
Antoine Lederlin, cello, Krzysztof Chorzelski, viola) in concert. Photo courtesy Carnegie Hall.

Although they lived in very different times, there are some parallels between the composers Franz Peter Schubert and Dmitri Shostakovich. Both men composed from a very early age. They lived in troubled, though very different eras, and faced incredible odds. For Schubert, his demon was a protracted and fatal illness that claimed his life at 32. Shostakovich's enemies were depression and the unpredictable political environment of Soviet Russia, where one false move could have fatal consequences.

Concert Review: Golden State Warriors

The Carnegie Hall debut of the Calidore String Quartet
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Jeffrey Myers, Jeremy Berry, Estelle Choi and Ryan Meehan: the Calidore String Quartet.
Photo from the group's official website, calidorequartet.com

The arrival of a string quartet for its first performance at Carnegie Hall--here at the intimate upstairs Weill Recital Hall--is a momentous occasion, especially if that quartet is a group of talented and ambitious musicians. So it was on Tuesday night when the California-based Calidore String Quartet played a concert of works by Mozart, Hindemith and Mendelssohn at its first concert on W. 57th St.

Concert Review: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Brahms

The Emerson String Quartet (and friends) play Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

"We are laughing, and we are very good friends": The Emerson String Quartet.
(L.-R.: David Finckel, Philip Setzer, Eugene Drucker, Lawrence Dutton.) Photo by Lisa-Marie Mazzucco.  

In light of the damage done to New York and New Jersey by Hurricane Sandy, the closure of Carnegie Hall in late October and early November seems a relatively minor effect this catastrophic storm. However, the venue was closed not due to flood damage but from the danger poised by a dangling multi-ton crane boom,  that dangled from One57, the new luxury skyscraper being built on W. 57th St. (right across the street.)

On Monday night, Carnegie Hall opened its 2013 schedule with the first make-up concert of the year, featuring the sturdy Emerson String Quartet and special guests in an exploration of the chamber music of Johannes Brahms. The vast spaces of the Isaac Stern Auditorium became suddenly intimate, as the rapt audience focused on these complex pieces, striving to penetrate the inner thoughts of this notoriously private composer.

In the first half of the program, Philip Setzer played the "first" violin part. (He alternates with fellow violinist Eugene Drucker. (The Emerson men play standing except for cellist David Finckel, a policy they adopted in 2002.) The first thrill of the night came when the main theme coalesced in the first movement, led by Mr. Finckel's cello. The Andante came in at a quick walk, carrying the listener safely through its turbulent middle section.

Concert Review: Tribute to an Enigma

The Philharmonic pays homage to Henri Dutilleux.
by Paul Pelkonen

Yo-Yo Ma. Photo by Chris Lee © 2012 New York Philharmonic

On Tuesday night, the New York Philharmonic presented a special one-off concert celebrating the music of Henri Dutilleux, the 96-year old French composer who is the first ever recipient of the Marie-Josée Prize for New Music. As an added attraction, the concert featured an appearance by international cello star Yo-Yo Ma.

Concert Review: Vienna--in a Piercing Cry

The aron quartett at the Austrian Cultural Forum.
by Paul Pelkonen

The aron quartett in concert: Ludwig Müller, Barna Kobori, Georg Hamann and Christophe Pantillon.
Photo from aronquartett.at

On Wednesday night, the modern concert hall tucked into the second floor of the Austrian Cultural Foundation was host to the aron quartett, an enterprising ensemble of chamber musicians from Vienna. The occasion was a world premiere by Austrian composer Kurt Schwertsik. The packed house included the composer and his wife.

The concert opened with the String Quartet No. 2 in d minor by Erich Zeisl, another in a long line of composers who fled the Nazis, emigrated America and found success in Hollywood. Mr. Zeisl is best remembered for his film scores including The Postman Always Rings Twice--although he later abandoned Hollywood to teach music and return to what he thought of as "serious" composition.

Here, the aron quartett played his four movements with gritty earnest, with long melodic lines that unfolded from instrument to instrument. Plucked, scraped notes alternated with winding themes tossed from player to player in a performance that made a good case for more New York performances of this elegaic composer's catalogue.

Kurt Schwertsik is virtually unknown in this country, and that is America's loss. His music proved to be witty, tonal and elegant, with a slightly arch, elevated tone rooted in his Viennese origins. The skizzen und entwürfe ("sketches and drawings" consisted of many short movements strung together, creating taut little sound-worlds that came to a cadence, rambled to a close, and occasionally stopped mid-thought. Despite the abrupt endings to some of these little pieces, none felt unfinished.


The second half of the concert began with a short interview with Mr. Schwertsik, followed by the world premiere of the composer's Liedersammlung Op. 91, Nos. 3-6. These took the form of four short song-like pieces that paid homage to Mr. Schwertsik's compositional influences and musicians that earned his respect in the course of a long career. The short, elegant movements paid tribute to songwriter Burt Bacharach and jazz pianist Dave Brubeck. The most moving was the third lied an elegant tribute with heart-tugging melodic lines--a homage to Kurt Weill.

The concert ended with the best known composer on the bill: Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Compared to his early operas, songs and film scores, the Korngold string quartets linger in relative obscurity. Written in 1945 as part of the composer's bid to escape Hollywood (where he had thrived and won two Oscars) this was part of Korngold's post-war bid to regain recognition as a serious composer in the years following World War II.

This not the sweet melodist who conquered Europe with Die Tote Stadt and the hearts of Americans with his stirring score for The Adventures of Robin Hood. In the Third Quartet, Korngold is a much saddened, bitter man, though still firmly rooted in the Viennese tradition of Beethoven and Schubert. This whole work feels oddly covert, close in idiom to the middle quartets of Shostakovich, works that were safely locked away for many years to escape the eyes of Soviet censors.

This may be bitter fruit, but this is still Korngold, and music that sparkles with wit and allusion. A melodic figure in the first movement cleverly lifts from Mozart's Don Giovanni. The Andante weeps, its sad minor key dripping with beauty and longing. The harsh alarums of the scherzo recall Shostakovich but also look back to Beethoven's Grosse Fugue. This long movement sets the stage for the kinetic Finale, a whirling Rondo that played out as a sophisticated four-handed game dealt by experts.

The Superconductor Top Ten: A Schubertiade

Franz Schubert. Portrait by Wilhelm August Rieder 

Today marks the 214th birthday of Franz Peter Schubert, songwriter, symphonist, and composer par excellence. So to celebrate, here's a list of ten really good pieces by this brilliant composer, who died at the age of 31. No particular order.

1) Symphony in B Minor ("Unfinished")
From its tremolo opening to the noble theme, sung forth in the cellos, this two-movement torso features everything that makes a Schubert work great: powerful, innovative use of modulation, and above all melodies that at first soothe and ultimately end on a disquieting, unfinished note. Schubert sketched a third movement, and may have planned a fourth, but the Unfinished stands as a masterpiece.


2) Der Doppelganger
Many of Schubert's best songs are horror stories in miniature. Schubert's second-to-last lied explores psychological horror: the idea of having to confront your own duplicate--and your own madness.

3) Erlkönig
With its difficult, galloping piano part, this song about a father trying to save his child from a demonic figure (the "Erl King") is one of Schubert's most popular Lieder. The singer has to play four parts: the narrator, father the terrified child, and the wheedling, seductive Erl King. All this in four minutes.

4) Der Wanderer
This soul-searching ballad is one of the most famous Schubert songs, from its introspective opening recitative, to the introduction of a lilting, almost gleeful 6/8 figure in the second half that brings the work to a climax. It also served as the launch-point for the later "Wanderer Fantasy", one of the composer's famous piano works.


5) String Quartet No. 12: Quartettsatz
Schubert spent much of his brief career pushing the boundaries of form in chamber music. (Often he would do so by simply not finishing works.) This is the first movement from the never-completed String Quartet No. 12. It stands on its own, especially with its warm, harmonized second subject. Premiered after the composer's death.

6) String Quintet in C Major D. 956
The best "gateway" to the music of Schubert is this exquisite, melancholy quintet that (unusually) replaces the traditional second viola with a second 'cello--allowing the two low instruments to interweave and comment on each other's basslines as the violins duel in the upper register. Genius.

7) Der Winterreise
The most famous song cycle ever written. The hero, rejected by his lover, begins a trek into white oblivion, slowly going mad in the freezing dead of winter over the course of 24 songs. Winterreise broke fresh ground when it premiered, and its narrative never fails to chill one to the marrow.

8) Piano Sonata No. 6 in E Minor
Like many Schubert works, this piano sonata shifts moods as it develops. An up-tempo opening gives way to the suffering brooding beneath the surface. Schubert wrote 21 sonatas. His work does not have storm and fire of Beethoven or the dazzling virtuososity of Liszt. But it has endured through the emotional, melodic nature of the music which speaks to listeners 200 years later.


9) Nachtgesang im Walde
Written for four horns and a male chorus, this short part-song is one of Schubert's fine examples of secular choral writing. The opening evokes the mystery of the woods at night, and the later pages shift to celebratory hunting music. The combination of chorus, nature images and mysterious minor chords points the way forward to Mahler.

10) Impromptu No. 2 in E Flat
This work opens rolling wave of arpeggiated notes displays Schubert the consumnate pianist. It requires fluid legato playing and a dexterous technique. Once the main theme arrives, the swift passage becomes expert accompaniment to the noble main theme. Played by the right pianist, the effect of this demanding piece is breathtaking.

Happy Birthday, Beethoven!

Today marks the 240th birthday of composer Ludwig van Beethoven.

Happy 240th Birthday, Ludwig!

Beethoven is crucial to the importance of the development of Western music. His body of work stands at the crossroads between the 18th century and the 19th, between the codification of "classical" style and the Romantic period that followed.

The music of Beethoven is rooted in formal structures: sonata forms, dance movements, and rondos. But throughout the three periods of his career, those structures were used in new ways, to express power and emotion.

Beethoven established himself early as an uncompromising, virtuoso pianist. He was one of the first composers to freelance, establishing himself as an equal to the noble class and paving the way for how composers did business in the 19th century.  His early concertos and symphonies became popular with Vienna audiences, who took the German-born composer for one of their own.
But it was his Third Symphony, the Eroica, that broke fresh ground, revising and expanding the symphony in terms of size, shape and form.

The Eroica marks the beginning of Beethoven's fertile 'middle' period, which includes works like the Fifth Symphony, the 'Razumovsky' Quartets and his lone opera, Fidelio. The premiere of the 'Eroica' also coincides with the "Heilingstadt Testament", a letter written to the composer's brothers where he confessed his growing deafness and resolved to carry on creating music.


The last years of Beethoven's life were spent in silence, as his hearing had completely failed. But this period led to some of his most experimental work, pushing the boundaries of music into new directions. The final piano sonatas (including the Hammerklavier) date from this period. So does the massive Missa Solemnis, and the final string quartets, which include the difficult Grosse Fugue.

It was his final symphony, the Ninth, that would summate his career. The Ninth was longer than any other symphony written before it, with expanded movements that stormed the heavens and reflected on cosmic truths. In the final movement, Beethoven added the voice to the orchestra in a whol new way, using four vocal soloists and a massive choir to create the triumphant shout of the 'Ode to Joy.' The Ninth is more than just a symphony: it is the closest thing music lovers have to a national anthem.