New York

Choral Music, Concert review, early music, File Under?, New York

Stile Antico Sings Palestrina at St. Mary’s

Photo: Eduardus Lee.

Stile Antico Sings Palestrina at St. Mary’s

March 29, 2025

Church of St. Mary the Virgin

 

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. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
Canada, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, New York

Preview: Pianists Adam Sherkin and Anthony de Mare: “Composers in Play XV”

Pianists Adam Sherkin and Anthony de Mare (courtesy of the artists)

The Canadian pianist/composer Adam Sherkin shares music from his home country on an extensive program at Merkin Hall in New York on March 15, 2025. “Composers in Play XV” is presented by Piano Lunaire, an organization launched by Sherkin and his colleagues in 2018. On this occasion he joins forces with the American pianist Anthony de Mare.

Together the two perform music by (mostly) living Canadian composers for one and two pianos.

Each of the performers has connections with some of the creators. In Sherkin’s case it is himself as the composer of Ink from the Shield for two pianos, which has its world premiere performance this program. De Mare has a 30+ year friendship with Rodney Sharman, and was one of the people who encouraged the composer to write a series of “Opera Transcriptions,” three of which are on this program.

The composers represent a geographical cross section of Canada: Vivian Fung hails from Edmonton; Ann Southam (the sole non-living composer on this program) was from Winnipeg; Kelly Marie-Murphy from Calgary, and Linda Catlin Smith and Sherkin from Toronto.

by Gail Wein
Classical Music, Concert review, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Lincoln Center, New York, Orchestras, Twentieth Century Composer, Vocals

Remaking a Rug Concert: Boulez at 100

David Robertson conducts NY Phil
Photo: Brandon Patoc

Sound On: A Tribute to Boulez

The New York Philharmonic, Conducted by David Robertson

Jane McIntyre, Soprano

David Geffen Hall, January 25, 2025

By Christian Carey – Sequenza 21

 

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.

Photo: Brandon Patoc

 

by Christian Carey
Classical Music, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, New York, Opera, Vocals

Compelling and Visceral: “In a Grove” and Arooj Aftab at Prototype

In a Grove at Prototype Festival 2025 (credit Maria Baranova)

PROTOTYPE – OPERA | THEATRE | NOW defines itself as a “festival of visionary opera-theatre and music-theatre works”. Its presentation of In a Grove (January 16 – 19, 2025) was as close as Prototype comes to conventional opera in the context of eschewing tradition. It was also one of the most compelling productions I’ve seen in a long time. The intimate setting at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theater augmented the visceral impact.

The story unfolded in four sections, each expressing a different character’s point of view of a murder in the woods. If that description sounds like the Kurosawa film Rashomon, it’s because that film was based on the same book: In a Grove, a century-old short story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa.

The four singers: John Brancy, Chuanyuan Liu, Paul Appleby, and Mikaela Bennett, all excellent vocalists and actors, played multiple roles. Surtitles were projected above the stage, but for the most part they were not necessary to decipher Stephanie Fleishman’s effective libretto.

Christopher Cerrone’s melodic material was memorable without being trite. As I left the theatre after the performance, the haunting lament of the last scene continued to ring in my ears. Director Mary Birnbaum’s concept was exceptionally powerful in its simplicity, with no props and no set, save for a large pane of glass that glided in to bisect the stage at certain points. The glass panel also served as a mirror in some scenes.

Cerrone’s vocal score was accompanied by ten instrumentalists of the Metropolis Ensemble, led by Luke Poeppel (standing in for music director Raquel Acevedo Klein on the day I attended). The orchestration included some appropriately eerie effects, such as drawing a violin bow across the edge of a xylophone.

I was very much captivated by this powerful drama and its excellent performance.

The Pakistani-American singer and composer Arooj Aftab’s performance couldn’t be classified as an opera at all, though one can think of her concept album Night Reigns as a dramatic song cycle in the guise of pop culture. She appeared with her band for a one-hour set at HERE’s Dorothy B. Williams Theatre January 15 – 17.

Aftab’s style bridges world music and jazz with an ethereal aesthetic. Her presentation was casual and unusual – she distributed shots of whiskey to the audience in mid-show. It was also transporting; an atmosphere and music that took me out of the real world, and her clear lilting voice had an emotional impact. Never mind that most of the words were in Urdu. The meaning came across easily.

In this intimate space, seeing Arooj and her band – harpist Maeve Gilchrist, bass player Zwelakhe-Duma Bell Le Pere and Engin Kaan Gunaydin on percussion – was a visceral, and, enhanced by whisps of smoke created by dry ice, often ethereal experience.

by Gail Wein
Canada, Cello, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Composers Now, Concert review, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, New York, Orchestral, Premieres, viola, Violin, Women composers

Momenta Festival IX: Ives at 150 and a Quartet at 20

On Thursday evening in New York, Momenta Quartet’s October festival – now nine years running – closed with an assorted program, enthusiastically curated by violist/composer Stephanie Griffin. Griffin is the last founding member still actively performing with the group. Noting that this festival has ever featured the opportunity for each member to have curatorial carte blanche on one night only, Griffin nodded to the overall 2024 theme – Charles Ives at 150 – while admitting that “this is not a thematic program, but rather a joyous collection of pieces that I saw fit to celebrate the genius of Charles Ives and my own twenty years as the violist of Momenta.”  As such, her own instalment was themed Momenta at 20. Griffin’s rather fine and comprehensive program notes are recommended ancillary reading, and can be found HERE.

The first musical offering was from Mexican composer Julián Carrillo: his String Quartet No. 3 “Dos Bosquejos.” Opening with muted strings and an effective microtonal chorale, this music veiled itself in mystery, dark and lush, a perfect selection with which to begin the evening. The piece continued to unfold like a set of exercises – or experiments – in string writing, with novel techniques (ca. 1927!) and textural effects. The first movement, “Meditación,” eventually burst a romantic vein, with solos and extended techniques eliciting vaguely integrated call-and-answers.

The second movement, “En Secreto,” felt eerily expressionist. (Griffin likens Carrillos’ music “to the work of surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí and René Magritte.”) While related in mood and material to the first, the “secrets” revealed in this second and final movement were whispered between instruments in a matter-of-fact, straightforward mode, a little too efficiently.

Momenta seemed to relish these coloristic experiments in extended space. Carrillo’s numerous homophonic passages prove especially demanding in their intonation and yet most octave unisons were handled judiciously by this group. Suddenly, just as this essaying music began to fatigue under its own weight, it was over: a mere eleven minutes in duration.

After this, Stephanie Griffin spoke to the audience about the quartet’s close relationship with the music of Carrillo. They “fell in love” with the string writing of this composer and have established an important connection with his unduly neglected catalogue. Griffin has proclaimed* the forthcoming recording of Carrillo’s complete string quartets on the Naxos label to be Momenta’s “most significant legacy.”

The remainder of the first half highlighted early music from Charles Ives. Brief and inconsequential, The Innate (1908) for string quintet and piano, is based on hymnal material. It stood out as a somewhat unquantifiable preamble to the composer’s early quartet – the Quartet No. 1 (1896-1902) – which has been a favorite of Momenta’s, as Griffin explained in her spoken introduction. It was a part of their first season in 2004-2005, twenty years ago.

This first quartet from the turn of the century is a high-energy, Ivesian romp in three movements, containing a great deal of musical irony: an irony sometimes missed by Momenta on Thursday night. Striking the right side of Ives’ mercurial nature can challenging, particularly in his earlier works. There exists a quirky dimensionality here, even in seemingly upfront and “folksy” material. During Thursday’s performance, a command of tempi and rhythm in the first movement could have been better established.

The rhetorical components of the first and second movements urge a singular vision of interpretation. This brave new music, (as it was in its own time), remains theatrical today. For Momenta, the blending and balance amongst the four instruments went astray at times, requiring more central grounding in the hopes of evoking a sense of play. Where was the element of surprise?

Conversely, the third movement read as well integrated and convincing. The individualistic approach from each player here yielded dynamic displays of line and texture. One was reminded of Dvorak’s string quartets: folk-inspired and generous. Through contrapuntal awareness and a dash of extra courage, Momenta brought the recital’s first half to a delightful close, gleeful and quicksilver; Ives himself, not to mention Dvorak, would have approved.

After an intermission during which the audience was advised to stay in their seats, this lengthy program continued with a world premiere by Stephanie Griffin, herself in the solo role. The Overgrown Cathedral (2019-24) for viola and lower string ensemble was inspired by a disused, ruined cathedral in Brazil, the Igreja do Senhor da Vera Cruz.

Griffin’s idiomatic writing for solo viola flattered the piece’s narrative musical structure. Her new work unfolded as a dirge-like processional, improvisatory in its droning, rolling lyricism and unusually self-contained. The pulse altered little throughout the single-movement and skillful writing for all players alike brought to mind successful spectralist composers as well as the more contemporary Scotsman (and friend to string players), James MacMillan.

Solos in other instruments – especially the cello – peppered Griffin’s soundscape. About midway through the proceedings, “mosquito” effects emerged antiphonally, forming an integral role in the narrative and echoed by accompanying violas. As the scoring was devoid of violins (!) this resulted in an attractive sonority. The constant lulling never ceased and, relievedly, never got in the way of prominent soloistic activity. Dipping in and out of familiar string effects like sul ponticello and glissandi, The Overgrown Cathedral meandered its way to a final utterance, at the brink of being circuitous.

Photo credit: Nana Shi

As finale, and in diptych with Griffin’s Cathedral, Claude Vivier’s Zipangu was an impressive stroke. Interspersed between these two larger works for string orchestra was another short, innocuous piece from Charlies Ives: his Hymn of 1904. One craved more context for this curatorial placement, especially for its juxtaposition with Zipangu.

But Vivier’s vivid, brazen work for strings from 1980 remained an apt and powerful choice. Brimming with a depth of sound we had not yet heard on the program, Zipangu boasted its novel textures as a means of expression, easily engrossing even the most casual listener. Vivier himself claimed, “within the frame of a single melody I explore in this work different aspects of color. I tried to ‘blur’ my harmonic structure through different bowing techniques.”

Glimmers of microtonal Ligeti shone through the spectral haze of this work (*think* 2001: A Space Odyssey). After Griffin’s favoring of low registers, the arrival of Vivier’s upper strings scoring proved a dramatic and welcomed shift.

This branch of string writing is not always easy to interpret nor to refine, especially for a quasi pick-up orchestra. Nevertheless, the sheer impact and boldness of the material seemed to inspire the string players on Thursday, many of whom Griffin described as “Momenta alumni,” having played with the group over the past 20 years.

Photo credit: Nana Sh

For some time, conductor and artistic director, Sebastian Zubieta, had urged Momenta to program this music by Vivier. On Thursday night, it seemed to augment the quartet’s profile and manifest a compelling wrap-up to the 2024 Festival.

What’s more, the works of Claude Vivier are worthy of wider recognition, 41 years on from his death. Thanks to Momenta and their colleagues this relevant, near-cosmic, Canadian voice reached our sympathetic ears on Thursday night, straight on through the hurly-burly “blur” of a 21st century that Charles Ives would have almost certainly recognized.

by Adam Sherkin
Cello, Composers, Concert review, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, New York, Orchestras

Sphinx Virtuosi and New York Philharmonic Play Black American Composers

Cellist Seth Parker Woods with New York Philharmonic, Thomas Wilkins conducting. Music by Nathalie Joachim on October 17, 2024 (credit: Chris Lee)

Black American composers dominated the programming at two of New York City’s major institutions last week — a 180° turn from the typical fare of Dead White Men at most orchestral concerts.

On Wednesday, October 16, Carnegie Hall presented Sphinx Virtuosi — the flagship ensemble of the Sphinx Organization, an organization whose mission it is to encourage careers of Black and Latino classical musicians and arts administrators. Thursday at Lincoln Center’s Geffen Hall was New York Philharmonic’s program “Exploring Afromodernism” — a program which was repeated on Friday. Both concerts featured outstanding and committed performances of mainly 21st century classical works.

Sphinx Virtuosi at Carnegie Hall on October 16, 2024 (credit Brian Hatton)

Sphinx Virtuosi is a conductorless chamber orchestra of 18 Black and Latino string players. It can be hard to pull off cohesive performances without a conductor, but it was immediately apparent that this ensemble was up to the task. The concert began with a reworking of Scott Joplin’s overture to his opera Treemonisha, arranged by Jannina Norpoth. The work infused classical gestures with blues, gospel and a bit of ragtime. The most effective and exciting selection was the world premiere of Double Down, Invention No. 1 for Two Violins by Curtis Stewart, performed by Njioma Chinyere Grievous and Tai Murray. It was a brilliant display of virtuosity from both violinists, playing off one another in a keen game of counterpoint which included a fiery display of fiddling as well as percussive foot-stomping. The audience roared its approval with a lengthy standing ovation. Stewart’s other work on the program was the New York premiere of Drill (co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall, Sphinx Virtuosi and New World Symphony). Percussionist Josh Jones, a member of the ensemble, was the soloist. It was a wild piece with frenetic drumming countered by subtle moments of gentle trills on wood blocks. All in all, it was a roiling cluster of excitement.

Music by Derrick Skye, Levi Taylor and the 19th century Venezuelan-American Teresa Careña, rounded out the brief program, which included a five-minute promotional film and comments by Sphinx Organization president Afa Dworkin.

The New York Philharmonic’s program was a wonderful display of a range of talents and generations conducted by Thomas Wilkins. It began with Carlos Simon’s Four Black American Dances, which impressed right away with the composer’s great orchestration. The rich first movement showcased the brilliant playing of every section of the Philharmonic, including a rollicking solo by concertmaster Sheryl Staples, who showed off her great artistry later in the work as well. After a somewhat schmaltzy second movement (“Waltz”) and predictably percussive third (“Tap!”), the final section (“Holy Dance”) began with a mystical aura which devolved into a loud and jaunty display.

The New York premiere of Nathalie Joachim’s concerto Had To Be, written for the cellist Seth Parker Woods began with an off-stage band replicating a New Orleans-style “second line.” After a smooth transition into a slow and lush passage by the orchestra on stage, the solo cellist had a lyrical soulful melody. The second movement, “Flare” launched with boisterous brass and percussion, which tended to drown out the strings. “With Grace,” the final movement, was beautifully emotional. Though the soloist wasn’t given an especially virtuosic part, Woods’ stage presence dominated throughout the work. Wilkins graceful conducting infused an appropriate amount of emotion into the performance.

David Baker’s Kosbro was intense from its very beginning, with driving rhythms, insistent timpani whacks, double-tongued brass and winds and angular melodies. Written in the 1970s, the work was an effective combination of jazz and classical styles.

William Grant Still’s gift for melody, harmony and orchestration made me wonder why this particular work – Symphony No. 4, Autochthonous, (the subtitle refers to indigenous people) isn’t programmed more often. Still’s superb orchestra writing balanced winds and strings in a dialogue which Wilkins navigated beautifully, each exchange infused with profound meaning.

Beyond the demographics of the composers, a similarity on both of these programs was that each of the works by the living composers was an olio of styles. In each case, the creators sought to include a variety of folk, pop, jazz and other cultural idioms in a single composition. It may be unfair to generalize, because the selections were undoubtedly programmatic decisions. I promise not to make a broad generalization until I hear more music from each of these composers, which I am eager to do.

With regard to the focus of these two concerts, I am going to say something very unpopular: Nobody is proclaiming that there aren’t enough White rappers or that Anglos aren’t well enough represented in, say, Latin jazz or conjunto music. And yet in recent years there has been great emphasis on striving for diversity in classical music. I’m not saying we shouldn’t work very hard to be inclusive of all Americans — or of all peoples in general for that matter — to be a part of this art form, this culture. I’m wondering aloud why it seems especially crucial in classical music.

Let’s discuss.

Be that as it may, the Sphinx Organization has been a leader in encouraging careers and celebrating people of color in classical music for over 25 years. They have done an admirable — nay amazing — job, welcoming hundreds of young musicians into the art form, creating role models for future generations, and creating an environment in which it is not only comfortable, but encouraging for young musicians to get involved and excel in the field.

by Gail Wein
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Events, Music Events, New York, News, Premieres

Tonight: New York Premiere by Christian Carey

Tonight, the Locrian Chamber Players gives the New York premiere of Quintet 2 by Christian B. Carey.

Sequenza 21 readers know Carey very well through his insightful reviews of concerts and recordings in this publication. He is also a superb composer with a lengthy catalogue of varied works.

Christian B. Carey

Quintet 2 is scored for oboe, clarinet, violin, cello and piano, and Carey wrote it for the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble, who commissioned it and premiered it in 2016. In his program note, Carey writes that much of his music – including this work – is based on the idea of labyrinthine structuring. “Quintet 2 deals with a spectrum of harmonic shadings, from triads to microtonal verticals with a great deal expressed in between. Likewise, the short melody at the beginning is offset by long passages of linear counterpoint. A number of rhythmic layers corruscate to create overlapping and frequently syncopated gestures.”

You can listen and follow along with the score on this YouTube recording.

Also on the program, music by Augusta Read Thomas, Oliver Knusson, Jeremy Beck, Jonathan Newman and the world premiere of “I Like Chocolate Ice Cream” by David Macdonald (me too, says the writer).

Performance Details:

August 15, 2024, 8 pm

Locrian Chamber Players

Music from the Past Decade

Riverside Church

490 Riverside Drive, NY NY

Admission is free. A reception will follow.

Performers include:  Calvin Wiersma and Conrad Harris, violins; Daniel Panner, viola; Chris Gross and Peter Seidenberg, cellos; Huan-Fong Chen, oboe; Benjamin Fingland, clarinet; Jonathan Faiman, piano; Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, mezzo-soprano

by Gail Wein
BAM, Bang on a Can, Brooklyn, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Events, Experimental Music, Minimalism, New York, Opera, Percussion

A Short Piece about Long Play 2024

Long Play …. Not long enough!

This year’s Long Play schedule is particularly dizzying. The annual festival presented by Bang on a Can in Brooklyn, now in its third year, seems to have crammed more events than ever into its three day festival, running May 3, 4 and 5. For instance, on Saturday, May 4 at 2 pm, you’ll have to choose between a new opera by the Pulitzer Prize finalist Alex Weiser with libretto by Ben Kaplan, called The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language (at American Opera Projects) AND Ensemble Klang imported from the Netherlands playing works by the Dutch composer Peter Adriaansz (who has set texts from “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”) at BRIC Ballroom AND vocal sextet Ekmeles performing music by George Lewis, Hannah Kendall, and Georg Friedrich Haas (actually at 2:30, but I imagine you’d have to get to The Space at Irondale early for a seat). A choice as difficult as any I’ve had to make at Jazzfest in New Orleans (which incidently is also happening this weekend, albeit 1000+ miles from Brooklyn).

Fans of Balinese gamelan music are in luck. A rare confluence of events provides the opportunity to hear two different ensembles, both free, both in Brooklyn, on Saturday. At 3:30 at the BRIC Stoop, you can enjoy the Queens College Gamelan Yowana Sari, performing with the percussion ensemble Talujon, along with the composer / performer Dewa Ketut Alit. Alit has come halfway around the world from Indonesia to Brooklyn for the premiere of his new work commissioned by Long Play. And at 5 pm the ensemble Dharma Swara performs at the Brooklyn Museum. Note: The Dharma Swara performance is not part of Long Play – it is a Carnegie Hall Citywide presentation.

Once your head has gone to Indonesia, you may want to continue on an around-the-world trip at Long Play. On Sunday at 2 at the Bam Café, hear DoYeon Kim playing gayageum (a traditional Korean plucked zither with 12 strings) along with her quartet featuring some New York jazz and classical luminaries.

Stick around at Bam Café after Kim’s set for another musician with sounds of a far-flung continent: At 3 pm the master kora player Yacouba Sissoko from Mali is joined by percussionist Moussa Diabaté. Diabaté is an internationally acclaimed dancer, choreographer, drummer and balafon player and together the two bring the sounds and culture of West Africa to us.

Come to think of it, when was the last time you heard music by Philip Glass played on accordion? Might as well settle in at Bam Café for the 4 pm show on Sunday, then, to hear a rare performance of the Polish virtuoso Iwo Jedynecki. Jedynecki has created some inventive arrangements of Glass’ piano etudes for button accordion.

The pinnacle of Long Play comes Sunday evening at 8 at the BAM Opera House, when the Bang on a Can All-Stars along with a bunch of special guests perform a seminal work by Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians.

by Gail Wein
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, File Under?, New York, Songs, Violin

Saturday, March 30th: Kafka Fragments at Tenri

Saturday, March 30th: Kafka Fragments at Tenri

On Saturday at 8 PM, Kafka-Fragmente by  György Kurtág will be performed at Tenri Cultural Institute (43A West 13th Street,New York NY), by soprano Susan Narucki and violinist Curtis Macomber (tickets). Earlier this week, they performed it at another venue also abundantly supportive of contemporary classical music, Buffalo University.

 

Kafka-Fragmente is based on aphoristic texts by Franz Kafka from his diaries and correspondence. As is his practice, Kurtág brought the composition together gradually, collecting fragments over time and completing the piece in 1985. At seventy minutes in duration, until his opera Fin de Partie (2018), it was the composer’s longest piece. Not only are the forty movements based on brief texts, they are also miniature in design. The text-setting is exquisitely detailed, and the musical language is frequently dissonant and angular, drawing both from postwar modernism and Eastern European folk traditions of declamation and string performance.

Narucki and Macomber are both new music specialists. I have remembered a number of their performances with great pleasure, especially Narucki’s creation of the role of Mama in Elliott Carter’s opera What Next? and Macomber’s authoritative rendition of Mario Davidovsky’s Synchronism No. 9 for violin and tape.

To get acquainted with this distinctive music, listen below to excerpts from the soprano’s Avie CD The Edge of Silence, consisting entirely of vocal chamber works by Kurtág. It received a Grammy nomination in 2019, and demonstrates her command of the composer’s individual and demanding work.

 

 

Here is Macomber’s recording of the Davidovsky.

 

by Christian Carey
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concert review, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, New York

Takács Quartet Gives Birth to the Universe

Takacs Quartet at 92ny-March 13, 2024 - credit Joseph Sinnott
Takacs Quartet at 92nd Street Y on March 13, 2024 (credit Joseph Sinnott)

How does a composer write music? Whether she pulls interesting sounds out of the air, or creates an elaborate scheme of hieroglyphics – can an uninformed listener tell the difference? Sometimes not, as was the case Wednesday night at the 92nd Street Y where the incomparable Takács Quartet gave the New York premiere of Flow by Nokuthula Endo Ngwenyama.

Flow was backed up by an elaborate set of program notes that described inspiration ranging from the sound of the Big Bang to the breathing discipline “Pranayama”. Even with that knowledge in hand, for the most part I couldn’t detect the connection between concept and sound. Within the four-movement piece, I heard a heartbeat depicted by the viola’s pizzicato, observed sultry pitch slides in the second violin and enjoyed a wacky waltz where every measure seemed purposely just a little bit out of kilter. But the “outburst of energy and matter at the birth of our universe”? Not apparent at all. On the other hand, Flow ingeniously and successfully meshed extended technique with conventional sounds, and overall is a beguiling piece.

I’ve been a fan of the Takács Quartet for at least half of the group’s 49 years of ensemble-hood. This evening was the first time I heard them in their current lineup, with violinist Harumi Rhodes (joined in 2018) and violist Richard O’Neill (came on board in 2019), merging with first violinist Edward Dusinberre who has been with Takács since 1993, and the sole original member, cellist András Fejér.

This long-lived ensemble retained its aesthetic and its tight sound over the years and throughout its personnel changes. The Beethoven String Quartet in E Minor, Op. 59, No. 2 “Razumovsky” which made up the second half of the concert was so captivating that, in that moment, I felt like I would never want to hear any other quartet, ever. The group’s lightness and joie de vivre, dramatic attention to dynamics, and intonation and rhythmic accuracy so good, it might as well be a single instrument, all contributed to the quartet’s breathtaking performance.  Their reading of the String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 76, No. 4 “Sunrise” by Franz Josef Haydn which opened the program was equally outstanding.

Flow by Nokuthula Endo Ngwenyama was commissioned for the Takács Quartet by Cal Performances and a consortium including 92NY. They’ll perform the work several more times in March and April 2024, in Philadelphia, Schenectady, Scottsdale, Buffalo, Ann Arbor, and Rochester, NY.

by Gail Wein