Concert Review: Perennials and Premieres

The New York Philharmonic plays Copeland, Rouse and Ravel.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

New York Philharmonic first chair flute Robert Langevin.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2014 The New York Philharmonic.

In terms of the long marathon that is the New York classical music season, this week;s set of concerts at the New York Philharmonic should have been nothing out of the ordinary. There were two New York premieres on the slate.  Guest conductor Leonard Slatkin was a familiar face. Thursday night's concert, the first of three this week at Avery Fisher Hall, was one of the more interesting programs of this young season, focusing entirely on music of the last century.

The Mastersingers of New York

or "The Big Score."
by Paul J. Pelkonen

My new (well, gently used!) score of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
Photo by the author.

Twenty years ago, I first encountered Wagner's Die Meistersinger. I had just graduated college. One day, Mom and I went to lunch in Greenwich Village, and visited Academy Records, which was still located on a shelf behind the register at Academy Books. My graduation present: that first recording of Wagner's Ring cycle (the Boulez, later traded in for the Haitink and still later for the Solti.) Since Mom was feeling generous that day, she also let me have an opera I knew next to nothing about at the time: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

Of Milestones and Practical Matters

or, the status of Superconductor at a million-and-a-half clicks.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Image from Monopoly © Parker Brothers.

It's been a pretty amazing run since a journalist sitting in a New Jersey hotel room on New Year's Eve 2009 decided to take this blog to a "semi-daily" format and run it like a regular (or decidedly irregular) classical music publication. Today, we broke 1,500,000 page views on Blogger. And this month, over 57,000 browsers have clicked and read our content, nearly double what our readership was just one year ago.

Successful? Sure. By the standards of this 21st century Internet economy, not bad. But it hasn't been easy. And frankly, we need your help.

Concert Review: The Struggle and the Reward

Alan Gilbert takes on the Bruckner Eighth.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Collaborators: Yefim Bronfman (at keyboard) and conductor Alan Gilbert.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2014 the New York Philharmonic.

The last completed work of a major composer has a special place in the music repertory. Last Friday night at the New York Philharmonic, Alan Gilbert led a program featuring the penultimate utterances of Béla Bartók and Anton Bruckner: the former's Piano Concerto No. 3 and the latter's Symphony No. 8.  If there is a common ground between these works, both came as the composers neared the end of their respective lives, battling illness and a lack of understanding from their respective musical communities.