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By Sedgwick Clark<\/strong><\/p>\n So it\u2019s time for my annual paean to the Juilliard Orchestra. I love to hear these young musicians\u2014their passion, their commitment, their maturity, their technical polish. Last Friday (11\/15) they played a varied program of 20th-century works by Adams, Barber, R. Strauss, and Ives. Conductor Jeffrey Milarsky, whose work I had\u00a0admired previously with Juilliard\u2019s excellent contemporary-music group Axiom, was mighty impressive\u2014surprisingly so in Salome<\/i>\u2019s Dance of the Seven Veils because I didn\u2019t expect such a sinuous performance from a contemporary-music specialist. So much for my preconceptions.<\/p>\n John Adams\u2019s Tromba lontana<\/i>, a quiet, four-minute fanfare for two trumpets opened the concert. Samuel Barber\u2019s Pulitzer Prize-winning Piano Concerto (1962), commissioned for Lincoln Center\u2019s opening week, received a balanced mix of expressiveness and virtuosity by soloist Kevin Ahfat. But is the piece itself worth the effort? Barber biographer Barbara B. Heyman writes, \u201cThe Piano Concerto marks the high point in Barber\u2019s career.\u201d Surely that isn\u2019t a qualitative<\/i> judgment, which it could be of the frequently performed, far superior\u00a0Violin Concerto (1939). Despite the praiseworthy Juilliard outing last week, it remains an oddly disjunct piece, with solo and orchestral passages alternating disconcertingly as if the composer had not had the time to integrate them. A major performance of the Piano Concerto hasn\u2019t turned up in a New York concert hall since May 1987 with John Browning, the work\u2019s faithful first soloist, Leonard Slatkin, and the St. Louis Symphony at Carnegie Hall. A check with its publisher, G. Schirmer, finds scattered performances at\u00a0music schools\u00a0and second- and third-tier orchestras around the U.S. in the past 20 years.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Before the concert resumed, pianist Gilbert Kalish presented Milarsky with the 2013 Alice M. Ditson Conductor\u2019s Award for the advancement of American music. Milarsky\u2019s sexy Salome\u2019s Dance and an\u00a0ideally paced\u00a0performance of Charles Ives\u2019s Three Places in New England <\/i>completed the concert. I look forward to hearing this conductor again. As for hearing\u00a0the Juilliard Orchestra again, we need only wait until Monday, 11\/25, at Alice Tully Hall, when Vladimir Jurowski leads an all-Shostakovich program. See you there.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rosenkavalier\u2014<\/i><\/b>See It Now<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n An amusing press release arrived from Chicago Lyric Opera the other day, exclaiming that its new production of La Traviata <\/i>would be \u201cperformed uncut!\u201d Amusing because we in James Levine\u2019s Met Operaland are accustomed to hearing every last note, good or bad. That was brought home last Saturday night as PK and I staggered home from Die Frau ohne Schatten<\/i>, wishing the third act had been at least 20 minutes shorter. The same act of Der Rosenkavalier <\/i>has its longeurs<\/i> too, but Strauss wasn\u2019t mystified by Hofmannsthal\u2019s libretto in this case and produced music of consistently soaring inspiration.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Some friends think Die Frau <\/i>is Strauss\u2019s best opera. I\u2019ll take Rosenkavalier<\/i>, myself, for its everlasting humanity, wit, and melodic beauty. For 40 years I\u2019ve reveled in the Met\u2019s consummate 1969 Nathaniel Merrill production, and fondly recall Yvonne Minton\u2019s hilarious \u201cMariandel\u201d in 1973 and Evelyn Lear\u2019s Marschallin (admittedly long in the tooth for the 30-something character, but affecting) in 1985 at her very last Met performance. The production will be revived on 11\/22, with further performances on 11\/25, 30mat, 12\/3, 7eve, 10, and 13. Judging by the Gelb regime\u2019s systematic retirement of old productions, this may be its last stand. I urge all who love this opera, or don\u2019t know it yet, to see it before it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Big Mac\u2019s Old Ploy<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n McDonald\u2019s had a problem: Teenagers were loitering instead of buying Big Macs, so management blared \u201coperas and classical music\u201d over their speakers. \u201cAbsolute genius,\u201d said Diane Sawyer on ABC Nightly News last night, evidently unaware that a 7 Eleven store in British Columbia had pioneered the idea in 1985 and that New York\u2019s Port Authority bus station had been driving the homeless away for years with Mozart and Handel.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n