Carnegie Hall’s Arvo Pärt festival began with the Estonian Festival Orchestra, violin soloists Midori and Hans Christian Aavik and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir. (Photo credit Fadi Kheir)
In listening to a three-hour concert of music by Arvo Pärt, the brilliance of the Estonian composer’s craft becomes clear. His use of percussion is a masterclass in orchestration, announcing the beginning of a piece with a chime, punctuating string passages with a ding or a gong, and clamorous timpani rolls in rare fortissimo moments.
This all-Pärt concert on October 23 was the first program in a season-long celebration of the 90-year old composer at Carnegie Hall. Pärt holds the Composer’s Chair at Carnegie this season (that’s the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair, to you). The occasion was also the American debut of the Estonian Festival Orchestra, founded in 2011 by Paavo Järvi, who conducted this performance.
Much of Pärt’s music is deceptively simple: descending scales, modest melodies repeated over and over, block chords and spare orchestration. He is a master of form as well, building a clear emotional arc in every composition, playing on extreme dynamic markings. This was deftly demonstrated by the Estonians, with pianissimo passages that were barely perceptible and subtle shades of softness, holding thunderous fortes for special moments. Another effective technique is his unabashed use of silence – in such a patient way that there is no compulsion to jump in and fill the void.
Only one work on this program reminded me why I have avoided listening to Pärt’s music for many years. The second movement of Tabula Rasa, one of the longest works on the program, was an exercise in restraint. Slow and repetitious without forward motion, it ultimately was tedious and boring. The way this music stopped time seemed to resonate with many in the audience, just not me. Besides that, the performance, which featured two violin soloists – veteran Midori and young upstart Hans Christian Aavik – was a remarkable and compelling work.
Some of the other works performed this evening surprised me with their varied sounds and compelling forward motion, both melodically and harmonically. This was not how I thought of Pärt’s compositional style.
The last piece on the program, Credo, was by far the most interesting and varied. Interspersing JS Bach’s Prelude No. 1 on solo piano (played by Nico Muhly) between Pärt-ian passages, some bellicose, some tender, was exciting.
The Estonians also brought along the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, who performed Adams Lament with the orchestra before being joined by the Trinity Choir for Credo. The combined choirs showed off their special sound in the encore, Pärt’s Estonian Lullaby.
WQXR-FM broadcast the concert on its Carnegie Hall Live series, and it is available for on demand listening at WQXR.org.
Carnegie Hall’s celebration of Arvo Pärt continues throughout the season. Upcoming events, beginning with tonight’s Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir are listed at this link.
The NY Philharmonic Celebrates Boulez’s Centenary
Works by Bartók, Boulez, Debussy, and Stravinsky
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano
New York Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor
Saturday, October 4, 2025
Saturday, October 11, 2025
NEW YORK – In October, Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted the New York Philharmonic for two consecutive weeks. Both programs celebrated the centenary of the composer and conductor Pierre Boulez (1925-2016), who was Music Director of the New York Philharmonic from 1971-1977. Boulez was a key figure of the post-WWII avant-garde and a proponent of serial music, then in its early stages. By the 1970s, Boulez was an internationally renowned conductor of a wide range of repertoire, and his time with the NY Phil was distinguished by a high level of music-making. Still, his advocacy for increasing the number of contemporary works presented was not welcome in all corners. Balancing the programming of repertory staples with that of twentieth and twenty-first century music remains a much-debated topic at the NY Phil, both within the organization and among its listeners. This is true of most American orchestras, and had more than a bit to do with Salonen’s recent decision to end his directorship of the San Francisco Symphony. Thus, it was heartening to see Boulez’s music received so well by the audiences at well-attended concerts on October 4th and 11th.
Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was the other composer on the first concert, and it was a simpatico pairing. Boulez admired Debussy and frequently performed his music. In the concert’s first half, works by the two composers alternated. Debussy was represented by movements from the orchestral version of Images, which shared a point of inception with the programmed Boulez pieces: they are transcriptions of piano pieces. In the 1940s, Boulez wrote twelve piano miniatures called Notations, each twelve measures long but varied in tempo and character to create a group of pieces that helped prove his avant-garde bona fides. In succeeding decades, Boulez returned to some of them and remade them for orchestra. Three of these, in both their original and orchestrated forms, were performed. Pierre-Laurent Aimard played the movements from Notations in authoritative fashion, scrupulously observing the tempos conceived for their solo renditions. Frequently the orchestral version has been written to be played a bit more slowly, for the purposes of resonance and ensemble coordination; the latter at times is formidably challenging. It is to the NY Phil’s credit that their playing took into account the disparate nature of all the music in the first half, rendering each inflection, some quite nuanced, with sensitivity. Salonen abetted this effort with a clear approach that embodied the scores in a manner not dissimilar to Boulez’s conducting style.
Aimard would later be the piano soloist in Fantasie, an infrequently performed early piece by Debussy, started during his Prix de Rome days and only published posthumously. It is not one of Debussy’s finest pieces, and its spate of revisions shows seams in a number of places, sounding like a grand tour of the stylistic evolution throughout his career. The piano part is virtuosic, sometimes stepping into the spotlight and at others blending in with the orchestra in a demonstration of esprit de corps. If anyone can make Fantasie at all compelling it is Aimard, who distinguished himself with fleet-fingered runs and thoughtful turns of phrase.
Debussy’s La Mer, his beloved orchestral work, was the program’s finale. Water’s motion, environs, and the denizens dependent upon it are frequent touchstones for the composer, nowhere more so than here, although the grotto scene from his opera Pelleas et Melisande is a strong contender. The piece has had a somewhat quixotic afterlife as a shorthand trope for the sea in many films, from documentaries to Hollywood blockbusters. The real thing still trumps all of them. The NY Philharmonic played it pristinely under Salonen’s direction.
Photo: Brandon Patoc.
The concert on October 11th featured two more composers in Boulez’s orbit: Béla Bartók (1881-1945) and Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971). The latter was represented by his Octet for Winds, a piece firmly rooted in the neoclassical tradition that pits a woodwind quartet of flute, clarinet, and two bassoons against two trumpets and two trombones. The music is filled with contrapuntal assertions and responses between winds and brass. This heterodox ensemble is difficult to balance and wasn’t perfect in this respect here, and the position of the group didn’t seem to be in an acoustically ideal spot onstage. Still, the interplay between performers was impressive.
Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra is among the masterpieces of the past century. Like the octet, it is filled with counterpoint, including some of the fugal variety. Both Stravinsky and Bartók were able to navigate the delicate balance between music of the past and innovation. In addition to baroque music, Bartók references folk music from Eastern Europe. There is also a jocular trope on a theme by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), poking fun at his Russian counterpart for toeing the cultural lines drawn by Stalin. Not the first concerto for orchestra, in which each section gets an opportunity to be highlighted, it remains the best yet composed. The NY Phil, especially with the dynamic gestures of Salonen, played it like few other orchestras can dream to match.
In the performance’s second half, a more extensive work than Notations was presented. Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna was composed in 1975, while Boulez was still conducting the NY Phil. Maderna was a close associate, and his death from lung cancer at 53 was a difficult loss to contemplate. Although its use of gongs and chorale-like chords in the brass is evocative of ceremony, Rituel does not explicitly reference any religious traditions. Rather, it is a postmodern, secular type of valediction, in which spatial deployment envelops the audience in a solemn, eloquent meditation on grief. With a cohort onstage, other members of the orchestra were arrayed throughout the hall, their parts reverberating in well-coordinated fashion. There is a plethora of percussion instruments, with the players deployed in an additive fashion, with each of Rituel’s eight sections supplying more percussionists. This was also true of the other players in the other sections of the orchestra, supporting a long, powerful crescendo, one that then subsides in a gradual denouement.
The LA Dance Project was on hand for Rituel, performing onstage in front of, and sometimes between, members of the orchestra. It featured six dancers, two principals who wore black and four others in various shades of color. The choreography captured both fluid musical lines and percussive gestures, representing the stages of grief encountered after a loss in a dance that was modern in character and well-executed. Given Maderna’s death after an illness, the physicalization of violence, with both symbolic crucifixion and stabbing, seemed in places more like Sacre du Printemps than the demeanor of Rituel. Still, it added a layer of emotionality to a compelling use of the entirety of Geffen Hall. One hopes that more spatial music is on offer in the future, and that Salonen remains a frequent visitor to New York to perform with the orchestra.
“11,000 Strings” by Georg Friedrich Haas at Park Ave Armory in NYC (credit: Stephanie Berger)
At first glance, it seems like a stunt: 50 pianos and pianists, plus 25 other instrumentalists, all arranged in a circle around the perimeter of the vast Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. They were there to perform 11,000 Strings, a 66 minute composition by Georg Friedrich Haas, commissioned and performed by the Austrian new music ensemble Klangforum Wien. Performances began September 30 and run through October 7, 2025 (I attended on October 2).
At the onset, I was ready to condemn this work as B.S., a party trick, but it’s definitely more than that. Each of the 50 pianos were tuned differently from one another, in 50 steps of microtones. The carefully constructed piece began quietly, on a major chord. One would think it would be difficult to create dynamics any softer than forte, but this performance exhibited a great range of dynamic and timbral nuances.
Almost from the start I recognized that this was a visceral experience for me, similar to the way out-of-tune chords can sometimes invoke a queasy feeling. But this was not nausea. Instead, it was a pleasant vibration deep in my chest, bringing a sense of anticipation and occasionally excitement.
The overall aural effect was cinematic and evoked visual images like a swarm of cicadas, the spookiness of a horror film, mysterious anticipation and thunderous cacophony. As the piece wore on, I caught a glimpse of the digital readout in front of one of the pianists: 21:38. I was discouraged to realize that it indicated 21 minutes elapsed, therefore 45 more to go. At that moment, I was ready for a coda, a fermata and a big finish.
The fact that the Armory could create so much buzz around this avant-garde novelty piece and attract thousands to come experience it is impressive. It does seem like a lot of effort for an hour of music. You won’t leave the venue humming a tune, that’s for sure. But the molecules in your body may be permanently rearranged.
2025 Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood – July 24 – July 28, 2025
Tanglewood Music Center in the cool green Berkshires of Massachusetts (credit Aram Boghosian)
Every summer since 1964, the Tanglewood Music Center presents its Festival of Contemporary Music. According to Tanglewood’s materials:
The Festival of Contemporary Music (FCM) is one of the world’s premier showcases for works from the current musical landscape and landmark pieces from the new music vanguard of the 20th century. FCM affords Tanglewood Music Center Fellows the opportunity to explore unfamiliar repertoire and experience the value of direct collaboration with living composers.
Over the four FCM concerts (of the total of six) I heard carefully honed performances by the Tanglewood Fellows, Fromme players and the Mexican percussion quartet Tambuco.
Gabriela Ortiz is the director of FCM this year, the latest in the many high notes that the Mexican composer is enjoying. In the past season, she was composer in residence at Carnegie Hall, Curtis Institute, and Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León; her commissioned works were premiered at New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, and she won three Grammy awards.
Ortiz’s FCM programming traced the lineage of Mexican composers from Chavez to Lavista to Ortiz herself and to her student Diana Syrse, showed off the versatile talents of the Mexico-based percussion ensemble Tambuco and the incredible capacity of the Tanglewood Fellows to learn and perfect carefully honed performances of a mountain of new music.
Two beefs: Each program ran at least 25% longer than its stated duration. Each was densely programmed, and the ultralong set changes between each piece (often involving dozens of percussion instruments) were not accounted for in the production schedule. Nor were the often-lengthy introductions by Ortiz.
And, rather than presenting a spectrum of works by a range of composers, Ortiz programmed a great deal of her own music with a smattering of other works to provide context. This was in contrast to previous years in which a broader survey of music was presented.
Ortiz’s music is high-quality and thoughtful, employing interesting sounds and techniques, rhythms and sonorities, often telling a story in vivid colors and gestures. But pretty much every piece wore out its welcome, going on long after I felt it should have ended, without bringing in new ideas or furthering the experience of the piece.
A member of Tambuco playing the marimbula at Tanglewood’s Festival of Contemporary Music 2025 (credit Gail Wein)
Which brought to mind a question that nags me from time to time – why don’t composers have editors? Authors of books have them. Journalists have them. But no one seems to be telling a composer, “Draw a double bar already, would ya?” Come to think of it, it may be the test of time that serves this purpose. There’s a lot of music written over the past 500 years that is justly neglected. Conversely, there’s good reason that many war horses in the canon have endured. It’s collective taste making, standing the test of time.
The program on July 25, “Mexico, Cuba, the U.S., and One Hundred Years of Percussion” featured, predictably, a barrage of percussion, and in every piece at least one unusual instrument was on stage. In Ortiz’s Rio de las Mariposas for two harps and steel drum, the disparate instruments blended surprisingly well. The glass harmonica gave Mario Lavista’s Musicas de Cristal a soundscape all its own. The soft slow music was enhanced by the ambient rustle of trees outside Ozawa Hall. Amadeo Roldán’s Rítmica V and Rítmica VI included a cascade of diverse instruments, the most unusual of which was a marimbula, a cross between a giant mbira (African thumb piano) and a cajón (a wooden box which the percussionist slaps with their hand). Hearing the mechanical sirens in Edgard Varese’s landmark Ionisation, was the peak of a memorable performance of that iconic 20th century work.
On July 26, the program “Music of Migration and Exile” included music by Ortiz and the Mexican-American composer Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon. This program, as all the others that I heard at the FCM, were marked by truly spectacular performances by the fellows. All around they play like much more seasoned pros, and with an enthusiasm and bravado that more experienced hands sometimes lack.
Zohn-Muldoon’s Suite from Comala is an extract of a larger work based on Pedro Páramo, a classic Mexican novella by Juan Rulfo. Zohn-Muldoon added guitar to this score for Pierrot ensemble plus percussion and guitar. The combination worked especially well in this alluring work, as the guitar sometimes aligned with the strings, and at other times with the percussion.
In addition to the programs I detailed above, the festival highlighted the talents of the American composers Ellen Reid and Gabriela Smith. It was great to hear some concert music from Mexico that doesn’t often get to U.S. stages. And there’s nothing like getting to revel in the sounds of contemporary concert music for four days, especially in the picturesque environs of the Tanglewood Music Center.
Thomas Wilkins conducts TMC Orchestra. Photo: Hilary Scott (courtesy of BSO).
2025 Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music
Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra
July 28, 2025
LENOX – This year’s Festival of Contemporary Music was curated by composer Gabriela Ortiz. Born in Mexico City, Ortiz is one of the most prominent Latinx figures in twenty-first century classical music. Among other honors, she is composer-in-residence at Carnegie Hall and the Curtis Institute. Revolucióndiamantina, a recording of her music by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, won three GRAMMY Awards in 2025. This year, FCM has spotlighted music from Mexico, as well as that of women composers. After four chamber ensemble programs, including one consisting entirely of music for percussion, the festival concluded with a concert performed by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, conducted by Thomas Wilkins and two fellows, Yiran Zhao and Leonard Weiss (Zhao is a former student of mine, so I will limit my remarks to saying that her teacher was proud). TMC is a student orchestra, but their talent and hard work abetted a high level of playing throughout. All of the concert’s music was written in the twenty-first century by living composers.
Bioluminescence Chaconne (2019), by Gabriella Smith (b. 1991), is built around overlapping ostinatos. String tremolandos are prominent in the beginning, and glissandos take on an increasingly important role. The piece has a gradual buildup to a powerful central section with brash tutti and stretches of syncopated percussion, followed by a return to its opening demeanor to conclude. Smith is a violinist, and it shows in the deft deployment of strings here. She has cited Bach’s D minor Chaconne as a touchstone, but its form repeats in a more symmetrical fashion than the shape of Bioluminescence Chaconne. The first word of the title may be more telling, as Smith has suggested that her experiences scuba diving, accompanying a team of researchers, was an inspiration for the piece. The piece works well, so well that next year the Boston Symphony Orchestra is playing it too.
Ellen Reid (b. 1983) won the Pulitzer Prize in 2019, and her piece When the World as You’ve Known It Doesn’t Exist (2019) was commissioned and premiered by the New York Philharmonic. In addition to a large orchestra, it features three sopranos in wide ranging wordless parts encompassing animated and sustained passages. Zoe McCormick, Kerrigan Bigelow, and Sarah Davis sang skilfully, blending well together and with the orchestra. Like Smith, Reid uses ostinatos, and these are contrasted with aching pitch slides and clusters. When the World… is likely her most dissonant piece, with both major and minor seconds featuring prominently in the motivic and harmonic material. Weiss brought out dynamic contrasts and imbued the legato sections with a strong sense of line.
Reid wrote When the World… for the NY Phil’s Project 19, which celebrated a centenary of women’s suffrage in the United States. Her program note suggests that it doesn’t directly reflect this issue, and is instead focused on an emotional artistic journey, delineated in stages not dissimilar to those frequently found in grieving, moving from questioning to anger to acceptance.
Ortiz had two pieces on the program, one concluding the first half and the other played after intermission. Guest flutist Alejandro Escuer was the soloist on Altar de Viento (“Altar of the Wind,” 2015), a concerto specifically written for him. Escuer’s proficiency with extended techniques is comprehensive, and Ortiz makes good use of them in the piece. Escuer’s approach is also attuned to rhythm, and he even moves a bit during interludes where he isn’t playing, underlining the dance rhythms so often present in Altar de Viento. Indeed, the percussion section once again got a workout, playing traditional dances and new music gestures with equal aplomb. The rest of the orchestra was game to groove as well, and Wilkins led them through myriad metric shifts with suavity and clarity.
Hominum, Concerto for Orchestra (2017), is an imposing half-hour long piece. One of Ortiz’s finest, it was premiered in 2017 by another exemplary student ensemble, the Juilliard Orchestra. There’s nothing about the concerto that suggests it was sculpted with emerging artists in mind, as it is quite challenging. Composers who write a concerto for orchestra usually provide each cohort of the ensemble with music that spotlights their capacities and instruments’ essential characteristics. Ortiz revels in exploring the many textures that an orchestra can achieve in the twenty-first century. The virtuosity that talented musicians possess is explored as well. Hominum is at turns vivacious, brash, reflective, and powerful, and served as a rousing closer for FCM.
Midsummer Musicfest at Kaufmann Concert Hall, 92nd Street Y
July 9, 2025
NEW YORK – July often finds New York-based musicians playing in summer festivals well outside the city. The 92nd Street Y’s Midsummer MusicFest enticed a small handful of luminaries back to town to play chamber music at the venue’s Kaufmann Concert Hall. Violinist Joshua Bell, cellist Steven Isserlis, and pianist Jeremy Denk have joined forces before, but not for a while in New York. In 2024, to commemorate the one hundredth year of his passing, they toured programs of music by the French composer Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924). They revisited these works at the Y on Wednesday, July 9 and Saturday, July 12.
As Isserlis pointed out in remarks from the stage, Fauré isn’t usually mentioned in the same breath as Debussy and Ravel, but he probably should be. The likely reason is that relatively little of his music was large-scale, and of these only the orchestral arrangement of the Pavane and the Requiem are regularly programmed. On the other hand, his songs and chamber music are a rich repertoire demonstrating abundant compositional gifts; memorable melodies, vivid harmonies, and consummate craftsmanship. Isserlis’s case for Fauré was eloquent, and the playing by the trio, joined by violinist Irène Duval and violist Blythe Teh Engstroem, even more so.
One of the most challenging aspects of playing Fauré’s music is the issue of tempo, namely how much rubato one should use. Reports of the composer’s frequent performances as a pianist suggest that he preferred steady tempos, with flexibility where indicated, seldom admitting extravagances. This became even more true in his late performances, where profound hearing loss meant that coordination with collaborators became all the more important.
In their renditions of the Violin Sonata No. 1 in A Major, Opus 13, Bell and Denk proved that one can be amply expressive without excessive rubato. Their version of the sonata presented its many beautiful tunes and intricate phrasing with both detailed attention and luminous warmth. Its soaring first theme is tempting to exaggerate in the aforementioned manner. Bell instead played expressively, never overdoing it. The audience at the Y couldn’t restrain themselves from bursting into applause after the conclusion of the first movement, enthusiasm trumping any worries about a faux pas. Fauré was ambidextrous, and even when they are not virtuosic, his piano parts can prove challenging. Denk enjoys a good challenge, and he inhabits Fauré’s music with estimable suavity. The sense of ensemble reminded one that these are avid chamber musicians who, by long association, are attuned to one another with razor focus. The second and third movements were no less impressive, and the applause after the entire work’s conclusion was no less resounding.
Isserlis joined Denk for a duo version of the Barcarolle in F-sharp Minor, Opus 66. The cellist has performed Fauré’s Cello Sonata with Denk, but on this evening he contented himself with arrangements of some of the composer’s best-loved piano pieces, their melodies underscored by the addition of cello. In the second half, he also performed the Sicilienne, Opus 78, and Berceuse, Opus 16. The pieces recast in this way underscore memorable melodies, and elsewhere resonant bass notes are doubled and thereby amplified. Denk made sure that the piano, despite inherently different attack and decay profiles from the cello, was in sync with the string instrument, making for a beautiful blended sound.
Photo: Michael Priest.
Duval and Teh Engstroem performed with the trio in the Piano Quintet No. 1 in D minor, Opus 89. The resulting group had a simpatico interaction, its opening allegro movement’s interlacing lines being given particular attention, and throughout a buoyant sense of phrasing. D minor is often used in funereal contexts, the Mozart Requiem and Bach’s D minor Toccata for solo violin to name two. Even in its lyrical slow movement, Fauré’s Piano Quintet never seems to plumb dolorous depths. Instead, the piece feels like a dramatic journey that seldom loses hope for a destination. The concluding third movement was an ample payoff. Instead of ending in minor, it is in D major, with its main theme principally scalar in design. There are little modal inflections around the edges, imparting an impressionist ambience. The performance itself was effusive and unerring, with pinpoint execution of complexly overlapping entrances, thoughtfully nuanced dynamics, and rousing tutti passages. Its close was triumphal in character.
There may not be many hits among Fauré’s orchestral works, but the quintet is chamber music writ large. It is an ambitious piece cast in three sizable movements that clocks in at around a half hour in duration. The composer took great pains to create the version that audiences hear today, starting it around 1887 and taking nearly twenty years to finalize the score. He wrote a second in C minor, completed in 1921, and they both have set a high standard for the genre. The Y’s Midsummer Musicfest fete of Fauré did well by him, and one hopes that it doesn’t take an anniversary year for further championing of this fine composer.
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Music Director and Conductor
Angel Blue, Soprano
Carnegie Hall, April 18, 2025
Published on Sequenza 21
By Christian Carey
NEW YORK – Virtually since its inception, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Met Orchestra for short, has given concerts alongside its main role accompanying operas. For over a hundred years, this has allowed the ensemble to stretch itself, performing vocal works, unstaged or semi-staged operas, repertoire staples, and several premieres. Yannick Nézet-Séguin has relished the opportunity to work with the musicians in this capacity. On Wednesday night, the Met Orchestra premiered a suite from Fire Up in My Bones, an opera staged at the Met by Terence Blanchard. They also performed pieces by Carnegie Hall’s current Debs Composer Chair Gabriela Ortiz, Leonard Bernstein, and Antonin Dvořák.
Ortiz’s piece, Antrópolis (2018, revised 2019), was an ebullient opener, recalling the various nightclubs the composer had frequented during her youthful years in Mexico City. The piece is a showcase for percussion, with varied dance rhythms, ranging from mambo and rumba to incipient techno, articulated by timpani soloist Parker Lee and the rest of the percussion cohort.
Symphony No. 1, “Jeremiah,” (1942), was written when Bernstein was twenty-three. Its directness of expression betrays a bit of naivete that makes it somewhat less compelling than his musical theater pieces of the forties. Still, the orchestration demonstrates an impressive grasp of mid-twentieth century music, both the Americana style of Aaron Copland and Roy Harris, and the neoclassical music of Stravinsky, who seems to loom large over the piece. Mahler, a composer for whom Bernstein, throughout his career, advocated strongly, serves as another touchstone, particularly in the inclusion of a soprano soloist in the final movement of Jeremiah. The texts are taken from the Hebrew Bible book “The Lamentations of Jeremiah,” selected to analogize the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem with the plight of Jewish people in Europe under the Nazi regime.
Soprano Angel Blue, standing on a platform in the midst of the orchestra, declaimed the music with an authoritative demeanor that underscored its mournful message, singing with flawless legato and rich tone. Here and elsewhere, Nézet-Séguin was a commanding presence, underscoring the rhythmic vitality of the piece’s earlier mixed meter sections only to build it to a stirring climax by the symphony’s conclusion.
Terence Blanchard’s opera Fire Up in My Bones was staged with jazz musicians, including Blanchard, participating. He created a suite of music from the opera with the Met Orchestra’s forces, sans additional musicians, in mind. Apart from an interlude depicting the sounds of a chicken processing plant, which includes syncopated percussion in playful fashion, Blanchard instead presents the opera’s powerful thematic material depicting human struggle. Charles M. Blow’s memoir, in which, among other experiences, he discusses being abused as a child and coming to terms with his homosexuality, is a compelling story, and the arias from Fire Up in My Bones provide it with the gravitas it deserves. The suite presents selections from these set pieces in sweeping melodies that are romantic in scope. The harmony sits astride Mahlerian late tonality and a fluid use of jazz vocabulary, ending on a charged chord rife with dissonant extensions. Blanchard’s scoring is fluent in a variety of idioms, and even if the suite only tells part of Fire Up in My Bones’s musical story, it is replete with well-paced dramatic contrasts.
The concert concluded with one of the most beloved pieces by Dvořák, his Symphony No. 9, “From the New World.” It was written in 1893, during his extended visit to the United States. Dvořák advocated for composers from the United States to explore their own nation’s folk music, mining it for material, just as he did with vernacular Czech music. Viewing the music of native Americans and spirituals as the most consummately authentic folk music in the US, he recommended that their works be collected and employed by the predominantly white male students who were his composition pupils in New York. One can argue about the authenticity of this practice through a contemporary lens, but it certainly made an impression on US composers of that generation and successive ones.
Musicologists love debating the derivation of the materials Dvořák used in the New World Symphony. He insisted that there were no direct quotations in the piece. Apart from the rhythm of a tom-tom drum, that is likely the case, although its most famous tune, the achingly beautiful theme from its second movement, was later used to create a spiritual-styled song. Much of the music sounds like it could just as easily have been written while Dvořák was in Europe. Whatever the pedigree of its sources, the Ninth Symphony is a fantastic piece and the Met Orchestra performed it gloriously.
Nézet-Séguin approached the piece in energetic fashion, allowing it to speak for itself mostly in tempo rather than using too much rubato. This returned a sense of balance to the phrasal and rhythmic construction of a piece that can, upon occasion, seem schmaltzy in its presentation. The sections of the aforementioned second movement that called for pliable moments seemed all the more noteworthy as a result. This was abetted by superlative playing from the winds and brass, particularly Pedro R. Díaz, who performed the English horn solo in eloquently beautiful fashion. The strings had many moments to shine as well, playing the theme of the scherzo, marked molto vivace, with rhythmically incisive élan. The blend in tutti sections was impressive as well.
While there were no pains to overstate it, the program was nicely tied together by the Symphony “From the New World.” Each composer in their own way explored the cultural and musical traditions that resonated with them. Ortiz’s Latin dance, Bernstein’s Jewish liturgical references and tropes on folk music, and Blanchard’s jazz chords, however different they sounded, came from a place of deep cultural resonance for each respective composer. Thus, the Met Orchestra’s concert was both diverse in its offerings and well curated. A memorable evening of music.
NEW YORK – Alisa Weilerstein is a supremely gifted cellist, and it is hard to imagine being anything less than riveted by her playing. At Zankel Hall last Tuesday, she made decisions for her Fragments project that seemed to be needlessly distracting.
There are six Fragments programs all told, each based on one of the Bach Suites, joined by new pieces commissioned for the project. Fragments 3 featured the third cello suite alongside pieces by Joseph Hallman, Thomas Larcher, Jeffrey Mumford, and Carlos Simon. A design team helped to bring Weilerstein’s concept to life. The set, by Seth Reiser was elegantly simple, a multi-sided screen behind Weilerstein, and costume designer Molly Irelan did a fine job creating a chic yet downtown look for the cellist. The effective lighting, also by Reiser, included various spotlights as well as a moving magic lamp that accompanied moments of intensity. Director Elkanah Pulitzer did not seem to overtly interfere with Weilerstein’s usual performing demeanor. Perhaps ordering and pacing were part of her remit.
The fragmenting of the pieces themselves is where things got challenging for listeners. Instead of presenting each of them in toto, individual movements of all of the pieces, Bach included, were excerpted out of order. In addition, audience members weren’t given a listing of the ordering of these sections, having to wait until after the concert to download a program, using a QR code found in the booklet. In remarks that were printed for consumption beforehand, Weilerstein exhorted the audience to “just listen.” This, by the way, is every reviewer’s nightmare – playing “name that tune” with pieces that you have never yet heard.
It is laudable that so many new works for solo cello have come from this project. However, one feels for the composers, who, instead of being given a bow, were represented by the fragmenting of their pieces into a mix without metadata. It can be said with confidence that all four of the commissioned composers know cello writing authoritatively, including a catalog of extended techniques that featured Weilerstein’s adventurous streak and admirable facility to excellent advantage. Indeed, Simon and Hallmark seemed to invigorate their writing with extra doses of well-integrated 21st century virtuosity.
It was a bit disorienting to hear the Allemande, the second movement of Bach’s suite, appear as the penultimate fragment. Out of order though its movements may have been, the performance of the Bach suite was engaging, played with consummate care and thoughtful phrasing. Most of the program relied on the juxtaposition of old and new music. Only Mumford, with a few ostinatos in an otherwise dazzlingly modernist endeavor, provided a hat tip to Bach. Weilerstein finished the recital with the third movement of Thomas Larcher’s now here, which culminated with a rocket-fueled flourish, dazzling lamplight included.
Photo: Richard Termine
In the bygone times of analog mixtapes, curation seemed a prerequisite. Playlisting mixes has now become the way that many people usually listen on digital platforms, often passively and without worrying about the aforementioned metadata. When it comes to music consumption, an encroaching facelessness of content seems to be what’s trending. Revising the recital is a welcome endeavor, and annotating program booklets needn’t be an ossified affair. When engaged, just listening is fine, and may be preferable to constantly rifling through the program notes instead of fully attending to the performance. Perhaps supertitles briefly listing who is being played could be a compromise, a mix without undue preconceptual baggage.
All six installations of Fragments will be presented this week at the Spoleto Festival over four nights: May 26, 28, 29, and 31. Bring your cell phone and click on those QR codes as soon as the applause concludes.
NEW YORK – Celebrating their twentieth year, the vocal ensemble Stile Antico brought a program dedicated to the 500th anniversary of the composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s birth to Miller Theatre’s Early Music Series. The concert was held at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in midtown, a space that Miller has employed to host a number of Renaissance music performances.
Stile Antico appeared with only eleven singers, instead of their usual complement of a dozen. Baritone Gareth Thomas was ill and couldn’t perform. Between numbers, several of the singers hid surreptitious coughs, leading one to think that a bug had plagued the group en route. The quality of the performance didn’t suffer: they still sang sublimely.
The centerpiece of Stile Antico’s latest recording, The Golden Era: Palestrina (Decca, 2025), is perhaps his most famous piece, Missa Papae Marcelli. A great deal of lore has grown up around it, with a story that Palestrina wrote it in part to convince the more conservative members of the Council of Trent that they needn’t ban polyphony and revert exclusively to plainchant in services. Composers could write in multiple parts and still clearly convey the text. While it is unlikely that the Pope Marcellus Mass served as a test piece, Palestrina took pains to write polyphony that never obscured the words. Many composers, some even generations later, imitated what had come to be called the stile antico style of declamation and use of dissonance.
Stile Antico’s performance of Missa Papae Marcelli on the recording is impressive, a standout that is among the best in a crowded field. Their diction is crystal clear, and the tone and blend of the ensemble is particularly beautiful. At St. Mary’s, the mass’s Credo was featured, and it was an expansive display that was well-paced to express the drama inherent in various passages of the piece.
A number of motets by the composer were also included on the program. Tu es Petrus and Exsultate Deo displayed fleet runs and ricocheting exchanges. Sicut servus was performed with fetching delicacy, and Nigra sum sed formosa was imbued with stately elegance.
Photo: Eduardus Lee.
Composers besides Palestrina who also served in Rome were on the program as well. Josquin’s Salve regina, with a stark bass motive and a texture frequently divided into duets, represented one of the most prominent elder statesmen of the early Renaissance. Jacques Arcadelt’s Pater noster is an example of the florid writing and frequent use of extra-liturgical texts and tunes that contributed to the aforementioned controversy at the Council of Trent. It is hard to lay blame at Arcadelt’s doorstep when hearing his music, which is pleasing in its bustling rhythms and multihued chords. Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Trahe me post te and Orlando de Lassus’s Musica dei donum represented works by esteemed contemporaries. The former has an austere yet attractive manner and the latter, a six-voice motet, is more intricate in presentation. Christus resurgens was by Gregorio Allegri, a composer of the next generation, who continued in Palestrina’s footsteps, composing music in stile antico style. The piece’s use of antiphony is particularly striking. Another later composer, Felice Anerio, who succeeded Palestrina in the Papal Choir, combined passages of relatively homophonic declamation with expressive chromaticism in his Christus factus est.
The program also included a new work, A Gift of Heaven by the English composer Cheryl Frances Hoad, who used the preface to a publication by Palestrina, in which he flattered the dedicatee, as the text for her piece. Sumptuous polychords undergirded a solo tenor imparting what Frances Hoad describes as “buttering up a patron.”
Sadly, Stile Antico at eleven could not finish the program with the impressive 12-voice motet Laudate Dominum a 12. They substituted another Palestrina work, Surge Propera Amica Mea, with corruscating runs and an impressive final cadential section, creating an exuberant finale. The group returned to offer something completely different for an encore, “The Silver Swan,” a madrigal by the English composer Orlando Gibbons. It provided a delicately lyrical close to an evening of exquisitely well-performed music.
NEW YORK – If you think that audience development is a relatively new practice, then you may not have heard of Rug Concerts. In the 1970s, during Pierre Boulez’s tenure as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, these were an experiment to attempt to attract young people and downtown artsy types to try a concert at Avery Fisher Hall. Instead of rows of seating, rugs were strewn about the hall, inviting audience members to lounge in informal fashion while hearing a concert. Revisiting the first of these concerts, its program was presented in its entirety, albeit to audience members in the conventional seating setup of David Geffen Hall: no rugs rolled out.
The first half of the concert featured repertory works. J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major was given a period-informed performance by a small ensemble. Sheryl Staples, the concertmaster for the evening, providing the aphoristic solo part with suave elegance, and bassist Timothy Cobb and harpsichordist Paolo Bordignon were an incisive continuo pairing.
Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 2 in B-flat is an impressively beautiful piece, especially considering that it was completed when the composer was just eighteen. I have heard three different conductors lead this symphony with the NY Phil, a proto-romantic and broadly lyrical rendition from Kurt Masur, a breakneck-pace version informed by early music practice given by Alan Gilbert, and Robertson’s, which deployed a chamber-sized orchestra and emphasized the classical elements in Schubert’s early instrumental music. One hesitates to make a Goldilocks comparison, but Robertson’s interpretation felt just right.
The second half of the program consisted of music from the twentieth century. Anton Webern’s Symphony, completed in 1928, was a totemic work for the postwar avant-garde, notably Boulez. It is a set of variations that uses the 12-tone method in a way that points toward the systematic organization of serialism, and is also filled with canons, reflective of Webern’s dissertation on the Renaissance composer Heinrich Isaac. The piece is aphoristic with a thin texture, but deceptively challenging to perform, to connect the web of its lines in convincing fashion. The NY Phil navigated these demands under Robertson’s detailed direction with an ease of delivery that one seldom hears in the performance of Webern. Principal clarinetist Anthony McGill, who was given particularly disjunct lines to play, demonstrated a keen awareness of the importance of legato in the piece, even when leaping through dissonances.
Photo: Brandon Patoc
Boulez’s Pli selon pli: Portrait de Mallarmé, composed in 1957, was one of the pieces that put him on the map as an important creator. Its vocalist is tasked with significant interpretative challenges and a detailed and rangy score. Jana McIntyre performed commandingly, rendering the surrealist poetry with a wondrous exuberance for its strangeness, singing clarion top notes and plummy ones below the staff. A singer to watch for. The percussion section, which channels more than a bit of gamelan influence, played superlatively. Robertson was a close colleague of Boulez, and is a former director of Ensemble Intercontemporain. His conducting of Pli selon pli is the most authoritative that we have left since the composer’s passing.
The concert concluded with Igor Stravinsky’s concert suite version of L’Histoire du Soldat. Composed in 1918, it is for a septet of musicians and includes eight sections from the larger piece. One of the last pieces in Stravinsky’s Russian period of composition, it mixes folk tunes with prescient shadings of the neoclassicism that was to follow in his music. Three dances, a tango, waltz, and ragtime, were particularly well-played, with Staples animating the characteristic rhythms of each. Trumpeter Christopher Martin and trombonist Colin Williams played with crackling energy, McGill and bassoonist Judith LeClair navigated dissonant intervals with laser beam tuning, and Cobb and percussionist Chris Lamb imbued the march movements with propulsive kineticism.
It is fortunate for the New York Phil that Robertson works in the neighborhood, just across the street as Director of Orchestral Studies at the Juilliard School. One hopes that they continue to avail themselves of his considerable talent and warm presence on the podium.
