Archive for the ‘Why I Left Muncie’ Category

The Most Exciting Concert Week of the Season?

Friday, May 6th, 2016

By Sedgwick Clark I’ve been a parsimonious blogger this season. But the coming week in New York City concert halls has brought out the town crier in me. The week is bookended by performances of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata by two pianists I never expected to hear ascend this Everest of the keyboard: Murray Perahia at […]

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Topnotch Tchaikovsky from Juilliard and Perlman

Thursday, December 17th, 2015

By Sedgwick Clark Last Monday was one of the best concerts I’ve heard so far this season. Itzhak Perlman led the Juilliard Orchestra in an all-Tchaikovsky program at David Geffen Hall: Romeo and Juliet, Rococo Variations for cello and orchestra, featuring the impressive soloist Edvard Pogossian, and the Sixth Symphony (Pathétique). I love the commitment and brio of […]

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Notes on Lahti’s Jubilant Sibelius Festival

Thursday, September 17th, 2015

By Sedgwick Clark I had the great pleasure of attending this year’s Sibelius Festival in Lahti, Finland, about an hour northwest of Helsinki. From August 31 to September 5 I heard all seven of the symphonies plus the early Kullervo Symphony, the Violin Concerto, and a number of shorter works. Chamber, solo, and vocal works […]

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Harry Partch from the Source

Friday, July 31st, 2015

By Sedgwick Clark There is nothing hum-drum about the annual Lincoln Center Festival. Festival Director Nigel Redden likes to take chances, scouring the globe during off-summer months for new takes on traditional works in all the performing arts, balanced by newer works for which the word “unique” was invented. One of the latter was an […]

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Jon Vickers on the Met’s Sirius XM

Monday, July 20th, 2015

By Sedgwick Clark NOT TO BE MISSED! This week, the Metropolitan Opera pays tribute to the late Jon Vickers by devoting its entire programming on Sirius XM to archival broadcasts featuring the great Canadian tenor. The second opera I ever heard live was this Peter Grimes, and I was fortunate to attend at least one […]

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Russian Day Celebration?

Thursday, June 25th, 2015

By Sedgwick Clark A purported “Russian Day Celebration” on June 12 at Carnegie Hall was one of the more perplexing concerts of the season. Widely publicized was the legendary St. Petersburg Philharmonic, with the orchestra’s “Deputy Artistic Director,” Nikolai Alexeev, on the podium rather than its distinguished artistic director, Yuri Temirkanov. The program was unimaginative, […]

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Nielsen Feted at 150

Friday, June 19th, 2015

By Sedgwick Clark Alan Gilbert’s recorded cycle with the New York Philharmonic of Danish composer Carl Nielsen’s symphonies and concertos was feted on Monday by the orchestra at SubCulture, the lower Eastside concert venue. The symphonies were released in pairs as recorded by the orchestra live in concert over the last four years by the […]

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Old-world Glory from Boston

Friday, April 24th, 2015

By Sedgwick Clark When Richard Strauss conducted the Boston Symphony in 1904, he stopped the players during a rehearsal and said, “Gentlemen, when you play my music I hear all the notes. But I don’t want to hear all the notes.” My guess is that he would have loved to hear Andris Nelsons conduct his […]

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New York Phil’s 21st-century Tour

Friday, April 17th, 2015

By Sedgwick Clark Repertoire for international orchestra tours is usually so ho-hum that Alan Gilbert’s tour with the New York Philharmonic, which began on April 16 in Dublin, came as a jolt to me. If you’ve been going to his concerts the past few weeks, you’ll have heard the music—and noted, I should add, the […]

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Boulez on CD

Friday, April 3rd, 2015

By Sedgwick Clark Pierre Boulez turned 90 last week, on March 26. At first he struck fear in the ears of traditional concertgoers. But by his eighties he was hailed as a grand old man of music, in demand by all the major orchestras of the world. Fortunately, Boulez’s performing career is well documented, and […]

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