Critics’ Choice: New York. Not-So-New Music.
Compiled and annotated by Dennis D. Rooney.
Read about: New York. New Music.
25 September 2011
Corpus Christi Church
529 West 121st Street.
Music Before 1800. Kenneth Weiss, harpsichord.
Famous for his versatility as a performer, conductor and teacher, American harpsichordist Kenneth Weiss offers works from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book with a refreshing difference. Taking advantage of their distinctive timbres and tonal dimensions, Weiss uses three separate instruments—an Italian harpsichord, virginals and ottavino – to intensify what is already a highly varied selection of pieces by Munday, Dowland, Byrd, Philips, Farnaby, Gibbons, Peerson, Tomkins and Bull. It’s an opportunity to hear Elizabethan and Jacobean keyboard music as its contemporaries would have heard it.
26 September 2011
Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church
152 West 66th Street.
Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players.
Just West of the glitzy refurbished Alice Tully Hall is the decidedly un-glitzy Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church, which has been the longtime home of the Jupiter Symphony and its quasi-successor, the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players. Chamber music for elastic forces is the norm for most of the concerts in a season that runs through May 2012. Each program is presented at 2:00PM and 7:30PM, so even if you’re planning to hear the opening concert of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, listed below, you can still attend an afternoon of assorted works – written mostly by conductors who were also composers — for various forces. The opening Mahler A minor Piano Quartet does occasionally get trotted out on a chamber program, but when was the last time you heard George Szell’s Piano Quintet, Felix Weingartner’s Octet or Primo Bacio by none other than Arturo Toscanini? Jens Nygaard’s own cadenza for Mozart’s Piano Concerto, K. 441 is also on the bill. Violinist Misha Vitenson and pianist Michael Brown are the nucleus of the performing forces, with additional members to be announced.
26 September 2011
Alice Tully Hall.
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
The society launches its 42nd season with a program suitably festive and diverse, a kind of musical sampler of the styles, textures and repertoire encountered on their programs. The five works chosen emphasize entertainment without neglecting nourishment: Saint-Saëns’s Fantaisie in A major for Violin and Harp, Op. 124; Vivian Fung’s Pizzicato for String Quartet; Henri Dutilleux’s Sonatine for Flute and Piano; Giovanni Bottesini’s Gran’ duo concertante for Violin, Bass and String Quartet; Brahms Hungarian Dance No. 5 for Piano, Four Hands; and the Mendelssohn Octet. A total of 17 Society Artists Members will take part, including pianists Wu Han and Alessio Bax; Bridget Kibbey, harp; Tara Helen O’Connor, flute; violinists Cho-Liang Lin and Erin Keefe; violist Paul Neubauer; cellist David Finckel; double bassist DaXun Zhang; and the Escher String Quartet.
6 October 2011
Bargemusic.
Stephanie Chase, violin, Sara Davis Buechner, piano.
Chase, a student of Arthur Grumiaux, 1982 laureate of Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Competition and recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, (among many other awards) makes one of her infrequent New York recital appearances, partnered by Buechner, in a program that emphasizes elegant and graceful musical expression. Joaquin Turina (1882-1949) studied in Paris with d’Indy and was influenced by the music of Debussy and Ravel. His fellow Andalusian, Manuel de Falla (1876-1946), generally considered Spain’s greatest composer, joined him there from 1907 until the outbreak of World War I, when both returned to Spain. The transcription of five of Falla’s Siete canciones populares españolas made by Pavel Kochanski will follow Turina’s Danzas gitanas (both books) and Sonata Española. The program ends with two of Ravel’s explorations of Spanish style: Pièce en forme de Habanera and Tzigane.
6 – 10 October 2011
Carnegie Hall.
Mariinsky Orchestra,
Valery Gergiev, conductor.
The former Kirov Orchestra opens Carnegie’s 120th-anniversary season with a gala program and follows a few days later with an integral survey of the symphonies by the man who was the star of Carnegie’s opening night in May, 1891. Pairing early and late symphonies is not so unusual, but the couplings of these programs are strongly reminiscent of a three-LP set of days gone by, sequenced for automatic changer use. The First and Sixth (subtitled, respectively, Winter Reveries and Pathétique) will be heard on the Oct. 6; the Second (Little Russian) and Fifth are on Oct. 9. The Third (Polish) and Fourth on Oct. 10 bring the cycle to a close. Last season’s series of Mahler programs by the same forces was a decidedly mixed bag, but Gergiev is a devoted Tchaikovsky-ite and will doubtless make this series something special.
20, 21 and 22 October 2011
Avery Fisher Hall.
New York Philharmonic,
Lorin Maazel, conductor.
Philip Myers, horn.
For those who enjoy a wallow in luxurious orchestral sonorities, a program of two R. Strauss tone poems (An Alpine Symphony and Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks) played by this orchestra with its conductor emeritus on the podium, with one of its premier principals as soloist in the same composer’s Horn Concerto No. 1, should be self-recommending.
21 October 2011
Bargemusic.
Jeanne Mallow, viola, Doris Stevenson, piano.
Lillian Fuchs (1902-1995), a great performer and teacher, was one of the founders of modern viola playing. Mallow, her granddaughter, continues the family tradition with a technically challenging program that is also brimming with musical beauty. Brahms originally composed his Op. 120 Sonata in F-minor for clarinet but the arrangement for viola is his own. A more unusual arrangement is the Rachmaninoff Sonata in G minor, Op. 19, almost universally considered as a cello work. In between them will come the tonal and expressive eloquence of Schumann’s Fairy Tale Pictures.
23 October 2011
Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church.
Dame Emma Kirkby, soprano, Jakob Lindberg, lute.
The Queen of Early Music vocalism for more than three decades teams with an equally esteemed lutenist. Their program is entitled “Love Songs, Lute Solos and Laments” and focuses on the 17th-century golden age of lute songs from Britain and Italy.
23 October 2011
American Academy of Arts & Letters
Jennifer Koh, violin.
Koh, often identified with new music, here offers a marathon performance of the complete Solo Violin works of J. S. Bach. The six sonatas and partitas will be played over the course of a single afternoon.
31 October 2011
Carnegie Hall.
András Schiff, piano.
As part of his season-long Perspectives series, entitled “In the Steps of Bartók,” Schiff’s solo recital includes Bartók’s Piano Sonata flanked by the J. S. Bach Three-Part Inventions (or Sinfonias), BWV 787-801 and Beethoven’s extraordinary Diabelli Variations, Op. 120. What better way to celebrate Halloween?
