300-word reviews

This is a random collection of classical music reviews from four different critics for the New York Times, written between 1987 and 2007. I compiled it simply to demonstrate to beginning critics that it's possible to say a lot in a short space. It's a good reminder that just because you can say a lot about a performance doesn't mean you have to, and also that what feels short to a writer may not feel short at all to a reader.

The critics are John Rockwell, Tim Page, Anne Midgette, and Bernard Holland. 

The New York Times, February 11, 1991

Reviews/Music; A Soprano’s Insights

BYLINE: By John Rockwell

LENGTH: 248 words

     Roberta Alexander does not possess the most lustrous of sopranos, but she remains one of our most appealing artists, in opera but especially in song and double-especially in American song. On Friday night at Weill Recital Hall, an intimate space that boxed in her voice and turned it edgier than usual, she still managed to triumph in the Barber and Ives material after the intermission.

     Not that the first half, devoted to Dvorak’s “Zigeunermelodien” (Op. 55), in German, and Debussy’s “Ariettes Oubliees,” was negligible. Miss Alexander sang them warmly and surely, but without the reserves of warmth, humor and all-round idiomatic assurance she brings to American composers.

The Ives group at the end ranged widely among this remarkable eccentric’s varied oeuvre, emphasizing the comic and the grotesque without slighting his sober side.

     But Barber’s “Hermit Songs” (Op. 29) were the highlight of the night. Once recorded by both Leontyne Price (with the composer at the piano) and Eleanor Steber, they set Irish texts of the 8th through the 13th centuries in modern English versions, concerning the joys and tribulations of solitude and the contemplation of Christian mysteries, to wonderfully wise and lovely music. Miss Alexander caught their varied moods with spirited insight. And her voice proved ever responsive to the technical and interpretive demands she placed on it, and ever faithful to Barber’s intentions.

Warren Jones was the helpful accompanist.

The New York Times, March 31, 1991 

Review/Music; Czech Bill by Talich Quartet

BYLINE: BY JOHN ROCKWELL

LENGTH: 252 words

     Unaccountably, the Talich Quartet, founded in Prague in 1964 and most likely Czechoslovakia’s leading string quartet, had to wait until Wednesday evening to make its New York debut, at the 92d Street Y. Unfortunately, the foursome was saddled -- an unkind but accurate word -- with a pianist who was presenting the group.

     The program was entirely Czechoslovak. On its own, before the intermission, the Talich players -- Peter Messiereur and Jan Kvapil, violinists; Jan Talich, violist (the nephew of the quartet’s namesake, the conductor Vaclav Talich), and Evzen Rattay, cellist -- delivered wonderfully skilled, idiomatic accounts of Smetana’s Quartet No. 2 in D minor and Janacek’s Quartet No. 1 (”Kreutzer Sonata”).

One is used to making distinctions between warmly musical central European groups and their brilliantly virtuosic American counterparts. The Talich Quartet sounded amply virtuosic yet exquisitely balanced and always ready to subsume technical skill to musical expression. The Janacek, in particular, was a lesson in the articulation of that composer’s quirky but impassioned language.

     Then, after the intermission, came Dvorak’s Quintet in A (Op. 81), with Caroline Stoessinger as the pianist. Ms. Stoessinger played with the lid full up, which only reinforced her leaden touch and plodding playing. Throughout, one could hear subtle, delicate string work, reaching its height in the hush just before the end. But as an overall performance, this one was seriously compromised.

The New York Times, March 17, 1991

RECORD BRIEF

BYLINE: By JOHN ROCKWELL

LENGTH: 153 words

Handel: ‘La Resurrezione’

     Lisa Saffer and Judith Nelson, sopranos; Patricia Spence, mezzo-soprano; Jeffrey Thomas, tenor; Michael George, bass-baritone; Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra conducted by Nicholas McGegan. Harmonia Mundi 907027/8; two CD’s and cassettes. 

     First heard in Rome in 1708, “La Resurrezione” is an operatic liturgical drama composed for a city in which sinful secular opera was forbidden. It is a brilliant example of the young Handel’s genius, and it receives a brilliant recording here, taped live during two performances last June at the Berkeley Festival and Exhibition in California.

     What’s brilliant about the performance is not only the superb singing, especially by the two sopranos, but also the way Mr. McGegan sustains and propels his singers. The intensely musical synchronicity here between instruments and voices is a model any vocal performance could well emulate.

The New York Times, February 24, 1991

RECORD BRIEF

BYLINE: By JOHN ROCKWELL

LENGTH: 255 words

Schubert: “Fierabras”

     Karita Mattila and Cheryl Studer, sopranos; Josef Protschka, tenor; Thomas Hampson, baritone; Arnold Schoenberg Chorus; Chamber Orchestra of Europe conducted by Claudio Abbado. Deutsche Grammophon 427 341; two CD’s. 

     Composed in 1823 but not performed until 1897, “Fierabras” has long been dismissed as further proof of Schubert’s unsure grasp of operatic dramaturgy. But like Weber, whose “Freischutz” was outnumbered by musically rich scores with wacky librettos, Schubert offers ample musical felicities to compensate for a meandering, bland libretto. Indeed, that libretto, a vast medieval epic, may be more dated than inept; the opera’s failure to find a performance during Schubert’s lifetime had primarily to do with Viennese opera politics (complex then as now) rather than with its inherent merits.

     The score itself is a rich one, both full of music that equals Schubert’s grandest and akin in idiom and inspiration to Weber’s -- which is high praise indeed. Schubert cannot be called a precursor of Wagner because his operatic music was hardly known during his maturity and Wagner’s youth. But he was certainly another composer of genius, along with Beethoven and Weber, struggling to find a voice for German opera at a time when Italian composers and singers still dominated European stages.

Claudio Abbado’s recording, which derives from 1988 Vienna Festival performances, serves the music admirably, with a fine cast, a responsible edition and warmly sympathetic conducting.

The New York Times. May 4, 1991

Music in Review; Gamelan Son of Lion

BYLINE: By JOHN ROCKWELL

LENGTH: 232 words

     The Gamelan Son of Lion is the most prominent New York-area manifestation of a fascinating nationwide movement, wherein American composers and musicians design and perform Indonesian gong ensembles in repertory ranging from traditional Balinese and Javanese music to modern compositions.

     Most of the modernity is by Westerners; Indonesians are apparently still unused to composing for these ensembles in ways that transcend tradition or that can be notated and transported halfway around the globe.

     Wednesday evening’s concert was billed as “new music by Indonesian and American composers,” but the only actual Indonesian gamelan piece, “Gotong Royong” by B. Subono, stuck pretty closely to traditional practice. Otherwise, there was an appealing if quirky vocal setting of Indonesian rhythmic patterns by Slamet A. Sjukur and a percussion improvisation by I Wayan Sadra.

     The American compositions were, well, more compositional. One of the two most effective was “Sharon -- for Karen,” which transposed the traditional gamelan vocal parts for two violins, Lou Harrison-style, by Barbara Benary, who directs the Gamelan Son of Lion. The other was “Circle Line” by David Demnitz, which delightfully blended the Latin clave rhythm, jazz improvisation and gamelan practice. Other works were by Daniel Goode and, again, Mr. Demnitz.

The New York Times, May 4, 1991

Music in Review; David Van Tieghem

BYLINE: By JOHN ROCKWELL

LENGTH: 121 words

Alice Tully Hall

     David Van Tieghem is a percussionist turned performance artist, and he has an undeniable rangy charm. Unfortunately, he also has a tendency toward underrealized ideas, and his glamorous Lincoln Center forum on Monday evening, courtesy of Great Performers and the Composers’ Showcase, seemed more ragged and fragmentary than usual.

     Only 55 minutes long, “Disorderly Conduct II” found Mr. Van Tieghem wandering about a stageful of instruments and props, acting out tired little comic routines or pounding away at his percussion to accompany blandly new-ageish music either prerecorded or performed live by Eric Liljestrand and Bill Buchen. Mr. Van Tieghem is a talent, but he’s slighting his own gifts.

The New York Times, April 27, 1991

Music in Review; Prokofiev Remembered: Chamber Music

BYLINE: By JOHN ROCKWELL

LENGTH: 251 words

     As its contribution to the Prokofiev centenary, Town Hall presented an imaginative pairing of programs of the composer’s chamber music this week. Monday’s first concert was devoted to quartets, a quintet and a sextet; Tuesday’s was given over to sonatas.

     The Monday program was a charmer. There is a curious sameness to Prokofiev’s music, even considering the tarter ferocity of the Western music compared with the safer accessibility of his work after his return to the Soviet Union. Yet the basic materials have a moody charm and are so well worked that in good performances like these they make a vivid effect.

     The program offered the Overture on Hebrew Themes for clarinet, string quartet and piano of 1919, the two string quartets of 1930 and 1941 and the Quintet in G minor for oboe, clarinet, violin, viola and bass of 1924, also known as “Trapeze” for its use in a Berlin ballet of that name.

     The excellent performers began with the Manhattan String Quartet: Eric and Roy Lewis, violinists; John Dexter, violist, and Judith Glyde, cellist. David Krakauer, clarinetist, and Christopher O’Riley, pianist, joined them for the Overture, and Mr. Krakauer, the oboist Matthew Sullivan and the bassist Jon Deak played in “Trapeze.”

     One thinks of Prokofiev most often in grand, fervent orchestral, choral and operatic music, and that has dominated this week’s Prokofiev celebrations in New York. Thanks to Town Hall for reminding us of his more intimate side.

The New York Times, April 20, 1991

Music in Review; New York Philharmonic

BYLINE: By JOHN ROCKWELL

LENGTH: 236 words

     In another of the Philharmonic’s amazingly frequent substitutions, Yoel Levi is filling in for Giuseppe Sinopoli in the orchestra’s current subscription program, scheduled for repeats tonight and Tuesday night.

     Mr. Levi, an Israeli who has led the Atlanta Symphony since 1988, retained Mr. Sinopoli’s choice of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 as the sole item on the program. But he gave it a rather different reading.

     New Yorkers are used to their Mahler served Leonard Bernstein-style, meaning lots of spice. This was partly a matter of extremely fast and slow tempos, but even more of accents, intensity and passion, sharpened by the acoustics of Fisher Hall. Mr. Sinopoli is no Bernstein, but he is at least similarly unpredictable and at times impassioned.

     Mr. Levi kept one of the extremes: at more than 90 minutes, this was an even slower Mahler Ninth than Bernstein’s. But he seems to prefer a calmer, more Classical, more contemplative Mahler interpretation.

     Except in the closing pages of the Molto adagio, heartbreaking in their understated simplicity, that approach didn’t work too well on Thursday night. The music lacked energy or even coherence, especially in the meandering first movement. And the Philharmonic’s playing, accomplished in many individual passages, stubbornly refused to blend into the rich sonic tapestry that would have best served Mr. Levi’s purposes.

The New York Times, April 16, 1991

Music in Review: Helene Grimaud

BYLINE: By JOHN ROCKWELL

LENGTH: 266 words

Metropolitan Museum of Art

     Helene Grimaud, who was born in 1969, made a Rachmaninoff record at the age of 15 that won a Grand Prix du Disque. Since then, Miss Grimaud has built her career carefully, and only got around to her New York debut on Friday night.

     As if to confound cliches about French pianists, Miss Grimaud played only German music, assuming one counts as German the wildly pianistic, hyper-Romantic elaboration of Bach’s Chaconne by Ferruccio Busoni, Italian-born but German-based. Otherwise, there was Beethoven’s Sonata in A flat (Op. 110), Brahms’s Six Piano Pieces (Op. 118) and his Sonata No. 2 in F sharp, composed when he was exactly the same age Miss Grimaud is now.

     The biggest problem on Friday was the dry sound of the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, which dampened the rich tone Miss Grimaud has mustered on her recordings. For all her considerable virtuosity and passionate pianistic enthusiasms, her playing lacked a little of the Teutonic solidity, that firmness of contrapuntal exposition, that marks the best Germanic pianism. But there were wonderful moments, still, especially in rhapsodic outbursts and subtly poetic lyricism, and a nice refusal, in her freedom and rubato, to conform to modernist straitjacketing.

     As encores, Miss Grimaud still avoided France but returned to familiar territory, with Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G sharp minor (Op. 32, No. 12) and his Etude-Tableau in C sharp minor (Op. 33, No. 9). Both were on her debut album, and she dispatched the moody Prelude and the proclamatory Etude with ravishing command.

The New York Times, April 23, 1987

MUSIC: CLEVELAND QUARTET

BYLINE: By Tim Page

LENGTH: 213 words

     The Cleveland Quartet began its Monday evening concert at the Metropolitan Museum with Ravel’s Quartet in F -- serene, dapper music that received an appropriately serene, dapper performance. The ensemble has undergone several personnel changes in the past few years; it now consists of Donald Weilerstein and Peter Salaff on violin, Atar Arad on viola and Paul Katz on cello. In the past, Cleveland performances have thrived on a certain kinetic friction: this listener cannot recall the group ever sounding so mature and so smoothly unified.

     Toru Takemitsu’s “Entre Temps” proved a divertingly lyrical exercise that set a fluid part for oboe against shimmering, harmonium-like passages for string quartet. The two mesh and coalesce for a few minutes, then merge on a consonant final chord. Richard Killmer, for whom the work was written, piped gracefully.
      

     The program closed with the Brahms Piano Quintet in F minor (Op. 34) -- an impulsive and hyper-romantic performance, in many ways admirable, with Stephen Hough playing piano. For this taste, it was rather too brilliant; I prefer a gentler, more caloric approach to Brahms. But there was much to enjoy -- particularly the mad dash through the Scherzo and the formal consistency the group brought to the final movement.

The New York Times, April 21, 1987

MUSIC: DUPRE’S ‘STATIONS’

BYLINE: By Tim Page

LENGTH: 208 words

     MARCEL DUPRE’S compositions for organ have neither the irresistible tunes we find in the works of Charles-Marie Widor nor the harmonic invention and spiritual intensity that distinguishes the best music of Olivier Messiaen. Nevertheless, devotees of the 20th-century French organ repertory will find much to admire in Dupre’s work, which combines chromaticism and polytonality in a manner that seems both antiquated and Modernist at the same time. 

     On Friday night at Calvary Church, Harry Huff played Dupre’s “Stations of the Cross,” as part of a Good Friday commemoration that also included poetry by Paul Claudel (in a translation by Sister Mary David, read by Sylvia Moss and James Shaffer), dancing by the Christine Kuhnke Dance Company, costumes by Ann Shaffer and lighting by Pia Francesca DeSilva.

     It was a solemn and meditative occasion. Dupre’s score was used as a background for the action that depicted the condemnation, Crucifixion and burial of Christ. The presentation called to mind a particularly affecting silent film - the actors mute, the music detailing both internal and external events, the readers describing the action in a manner similar to spoken subtitles. All performances seemed authoritative and deeply felt.

The New York Times, April 16, 1987

CONCERT: CHAMBER SOCIETY

BYLINE: By Tim Page

LENGTH: 205 words

     The highlight of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Sunday evening concert at Alice Tully Hall was a propulsive, streamlined performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s “Kammersymphonie” for 15 solo instruments (Op. 9), conducted by Gervase de Peyer. This is music at the threshold of atonality, full of chromatic tension, yet its gestures and rhetoric remain fully grounded in Brahms and the 19th century. One noticed a slight, timid, exodus from the auditorium before the work began, but those who stayed were rewarded by an excellent performance, and the house rang with bravos.

     Aside from the Schoenberg, it was a fairly typical Chamber Music Society program - Beethoven’s Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano in B flat (Op. 11), played by Mr. de Peyer (clarinet), Fred Sherry (cello) and Lee Luvisi (piano); a stylish distillation of Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” for string quintet, and the chamber version of Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll,” conducted from the violin by James Buswell. Here one sensed the presence of expert musicians, but one felt they were playing in individual vacuums: the winds sounded well, as did the horns and strings, but they never quite seemed to occupy the same musical universe.

The New York Times, April 16, 1987

MUSIC: HORST RICKEL PIECES

BYLINE: By Tim Page

LENGTH: 203 words

     Horst Rickel's Sunday-evening program of original compositions at Roulette, entitled “The Five Winds,” was alternately frustrating and fascinating. Mostly frustrating as sheer music -- an audience listening to Mr. Rickel’s determinedly sparse sounds (mostly long drones, rattles, snorts and whistles) at home, on a radio or recording, with no visual counterpart, would have found little to engage the attention. 

     But as a work of theater -- with musical accompaniment -- the evening had its fascinations. Mr. Rickel ran around the refurbished loft space, adjusting pipes on what passed for a homemade horizontal organ, striking a suspended and remarkably resonant sculpture and, at one point, monitoring the sounds of a rainy, windy night on West Broadway, the street lights from outdoors shining through the window in a distinguished visual composition.

     Mr. Rickel’s harmonic language -- when there was any -- changed very slowly; nor were there melodies as such (although there were snatches of blues harp). This was a much more extreme form of minimalism than that practiced by its better-known exponents. Still, one was gradually drawn into Mr. Rickel’s sonic landscapes, and one left Roulette oddly refreshed.

The New York Times, April 13, 1987

MUSIC NOTED IN BRIEF; Kim Kashkashian Offers Viola Recital

BYLINE: By Tim Page

LENGTH: 224 words

     Kim Kashkashian’s viola recital Thursday night at the Metropolitan Museum was pristine and deeply satisfying. The viola is too often played as if it were a slightly hoarser version of a violin; less often (and usually more grotesquely) it is treated like a surrogate cello. In fact, of course, at the risk of sounding obvious, it is itself -- an instrument of patrician expressivity, with a burnished luster to its alto tone, its somewhat closeted sound made up of wonderfully variegated shades of gray.

     Ms. Kashkashian plays the viola with no attempt to turn it into anything else. A disciplined artist, she is not averse to pyrotechnics, as she proved in the more extroverted passages of Schumann’s “Marchenbilder.” But it was the final movement of the work, a simple, plaintive song that made the deepest impression. Juan Orrego-Salas’s “Mobili,” in its New York premiere, proved a sonata in all but name: it is in four interrelated movements, turbulent and playful, aggressive and reflective by turn, lightweight but expertly fashioned for the viola.
     

     The program closed with the Sonata in F minor (Op. 120, No. 1) by Johannes Brahms - a skillful performance, although this listener would have preferred a somewhat more leisurely approach to the great Andante.
      

     The pianist James Tocco was a full partner in the evening’s success.

The New York Times, April 13, 1987

RECITAL: HORSZOWSKI

BYLINE: By Tim Page

LENGTH: 290 words

     The pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski’s concert at Town Hall yesterday afternoon was one of the great musical events of the season.

     Much has been made of Mr. Horszowski’s advanced age: he is now 94 years old, and he played his debut recital in 1901.
 That he is still before the public is, of course, something of a miracle in itself (Mr. Horszowski’s career is probably the longest career of any major musician), but what was more important was the grace and profundity of his pianism.
      

     He played Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in A minor (in the Liszt transcription); Mozart’s Sonata No. 12 in F (K. 332); Schumann’s “Kinderscenen” (the “Scenes From Childhood,” which seems to be a particular favorite of elderly pianists), and a selection of works by Chopin, including the Polonaise in C sharp minor (Op. 26, No. 1), the Impromptu in A flat (Op. 29), two mazurkas and the Nocturne in B (Op. 32, No. 1). In each performance, one could find elements to startle and delight, and I suspect I will remember the haunting, infinitely delicate cantabile he brought to the Mozart Adagio for the rest of my life.
      

     Mr. Horszowski has always been a musician’s musician. He has never been a forceful, demonstrative showman like Vladimir Horowitz, nor does he convey the effusive bonhomie that made Arthur Rubinstein such a popular favorite. He is, in fact, an inward pianist: his audience must come to him. But one is repaid many times for the effort.
      

     There were some technical flaws -- phrases that lacked sufficient definition, some finger slips, a memory lapse or two. But one minded not a bit, for Mr. Horszowski can convey more music in two or three gently shaped measures than an artillery of note-perfect pianists can drive home in an evening.

The New York Times, May 15, 2003 

IN PERFORMANCE: CLASSICAL MUSIC;  Young Performers Feast on Concertos

BYLINE: By ANNE MIDGETTE 

LENGTH: 291 words

     Hearing three concertos in one evening is like making a meal entirely of foie gras: a rich pleasure. This was appropriate last Thursday night, since the Irene Diamond concert at Alice Tully Hall was a benefit for the Young Concert Artists series. At the first seating, inside the hall, guests partook of three concertos; at the second, they were served culinary delicacies at festive tables in the lobby.

     The Diamond concert enables the series to showcase three of its winners in orchestral works, with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, under the energetic Kenneth Jean, providing a thoroughly professional accompaniment. The three-part evening was itself divided like the movements of a concerto. It opened, sparkling and debonair, with Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto; continued with the more overtly emotionally intense workings-out of Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto; and concluded with a stimulating bonbon, the Fifth Violin Concerto of Henri Vieuxtemps.

     Youth was a theme, and all three soloists embodied it excellently and very differently. Alexander Fiterstein, the clarinetist in the Mozart, offered its insouciance. An urbane figure, he played with a beautiful liquid clarity so effortless as to sound at times almost careless. Thomas Carroll, the cellist in the Shostakovich, dug in and worried the music with eager energy.

     Mayuko Kamio, 16, was making her first concert appearance in New York. Her performance showed a radiant talent that is still unfolding. Her adept playing had some of the unsteadiness of a teenager’s breaking voice, but she left you looking forward to hearing her as she develops and appreciative of the quality of utter conviction that she brings to her music now. 

The New York Times, May 3, 2003 

MUSIC REVIEW; Cellist Returns to 1948

BYLINE: By ANNE MIDGETTE 

LENGTH: 287 words

     Pieces written in the same year may have nothing in common. Such was the deliberately provocative thesis of Carter Brey, the powerful principal cellist of the New York Philharmonic, who gave a recital called “1948” at Weill Hall on Sunday night.

     Selecting pieces composed in (or around) that year yielded a program of sonatas by Prokofiev, Poulenc and Elliot Carter, with an encore by Lukas Foss. (“Capriccio” was actually written in 1946 but not published until 1948, so it made the cut.) Mr. Brey stated his thesis in remarks he made before Mr. Carter’s sonata, a piece that conventional wisdom labels both seminal and difficult.

     In fact, as Mr. Brey well knew, the juxtaposition of the pieces made for interesting commonalities as well as contrasts. As different as their languages were, Prokofiev and Poulenc sounded as if they had been posed a similar challenge, which they met in recognizable terms: rapid scherzo movements or lovely melodies, Poulenc’s thinner and tangy, Prokofiev’s veritably romantic, so much so as to subvert and give poignant color to the broad humor of the second movement.

     The year 1948 was rough for Prokofiev -- his music was denounced by the Soviet authorities -- and his sonata seemed anxious to leave no loose, nonconformist ends: the middle movement a tidy three-part scherzo, the third movement picking up material from the first and lightening its traces of pathos.

Mr. Carter’s piece, by contrast, introduced new definitions of the terms of the challenge: salty atonalities and complex rhythmic modulations, illuminated by Mr. Brey’s full, easy tone and the solid accompaniment of Benjamin Pasternack, whom Mr. Carter assigned a complex and rather pedantic role as the pianist.

The New York Times, March 18, 2003

IN PERFORMANCE: CLASSICAL MUSIC; Tremolos and Repetitions, With a Smile

BYLINE: By ANNE MIDGETTE 

LENGTH: 283 words

Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Metropolitan Museum of Art

     Philip Glass’s “Tirol Concerto” (2000) begins with a theme: you can almost hear the quotation marks around the thing. The melody is that of an 1820 folk hymn from southern Austria, but the way it’s introduced, as a solo piano line supported by questioning harmonies, seemed to link it with bubble-gum pop.

     This is a piece with a smile on its face, and the smile lasted all the way to the end in its New York premiere March 10, when the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and Dennis Russell Davies offered an all-Glass program at the Metropolitan Museum. In the final movement, a manic cross between a Beethoven prestissimo and bebop, the smile was manifest: on the face of a last-chair violinist, even after a whole evening of Mr. Glass’s physically taxing tremolos and repetitions; on Mr. Davies’s face as he, a willing though slightly heavy-handed pianist, kept astride the solo line. It’s a pretty irresistible piece.

     It was a varied evening, too, with three distinct pieces challenging any vestigial stereotypes about uniformity in Mr. Glass’s oeuvre. First came the Third Symphony, composed for this ensemble in 1995, experimenting with harmonies and sounds spreading gradually throughout the orchestra, with singing phrases and complex, definite rhythms. More restrained was another New York premiere, “In the Upper Room,” which held back as if leaving room for the dancers for whom it was written to take the solo line over its supportive bed of sound (although there was a slight coarseness, a sense of sawing, in the violas). That line was taken, here, by two mimes who enacted a skit: perhaps de trop, certainly diverting. 

The New York Times, March 4, 2003

MUSIC REVIEW; A Piano Heard and Seen Through a Veneer of Haze

BYLINE: By ANNE MIDGETTE

LENGTH: 291 words

     Carnegie Hall was so dimly lighted on Saturday night that the audience sat in a chiaroscuro haze. The light, what there was of it, picked out distinct highlights: the white piano keys and the white hair of the pianist, Richard Goode.

     The effect could have been calculated to reflect Mr. Goode’s playing, which juxtaposed a delicate haze of pedal with exquisitely controlled clarity of detail.

     The pedal haze didn’t obscure the music; but it was like a layer of veneer that rendered surfaces similar, even as it revealed more clearly what lay beneath them.

     Contributing to the sense of a veneer was a control so supreme that it never let you forget about it: evident in delicate rubatos in Mozart’s K. 310 sonata, or, in Beethoven’s Op. 109, the articulate picking out of a bass line beneath a puff of golden fingerwork.

     Not that Mr. Goode was insensitive to the stylistic niceties of each composer in his far-reaching program, which extended from Byrd (16th century) to Debussy (20th). But the quality of his touch and control was so distinctive that it tended to emerge as the most memorable feature in each case; the question was what the different musical containers did to this same basic essence. Two Byrd Pavans and Galliards from “Lady Nevell’s Book” sounded surprisingly heavy, thickly textured and somewhat romantic in approach; the Beethoven, by the same token, seemed relatively light and delicate.

     Chopin emerged as a kind of tonic conclusion, music particularly suited to Mr. Goode’s blend of delicacy and control, pedal shading and precision. The climax of the final Polonaise-Fantasie in A flat showed Mr. Goode’s superb playing on a scale as large and virtuosic as a pianist can reach without actually opening up or letting go.

The New York Times, March 1, 2003 

IN PERFORMANCE: OPERA;  With Cuts Restored, a Chance To Hear the Cabalettas

BYLINE: By ANNE MIDGETTE 

LENGTH: 279 words

“La Traviata” Metropolitan Opera

     Once, Verdi’s “Traviata” was a radical opera. For much of the 19th century, Italian opera was historic costume drama. Verdi wrote a contemporary piece about a courtesan, although its first producers tried to tone it down by casting it in 18th-century garb.

     Today, of course, “La Traviata” epitomizes grand opera convention to many people, not least to Franco Zeffirelli, whose view of the piece has grown increasingly opulent over the years. In his fine 1982 film of it, Verdi’s score was cut to the bone; on Tuesday night, by contrast, in the Metropolitan Opera’s latest revival of his lavish 1998 production, most of the traditional cuts were restored, offering a rare chance to hear both the tenor and the baritone cabalettas. There was no extra length from Bertrand de Billy, a good, crisp, taut and slightly pedantic conductor who avoided traditional interpolations of notes either high or held.

     There was reason to restore the cuts, because the Met had singers who could do them credit. Frank Lopardo was a fine Alfredo, singing with conviction and ardor. And as Germont, Lado Ataneli, a Georgian with a beautiful, easy Verdi baritone, had a company debut to be proud of. The hitch is that he doesn’t use his voice with any particular flair; you wonder how this natural phenomenon will fare after a few more years of large-scale singing.

     The soprano Ruth Ann Swenson is a known quantity. You can either castigate her for a general lack of warmth and feeling in her singing, or revel in her ability to sing coloratura, use her voice and deliver high notes to burn. On Tuesday, this particular listener felt like reveling. 

The New York Times, February 15, 2003 

IN PERFORMANCE: CLASSICAL; Contrasting Sound and Words In Schubert and Barber

BYLINE: By ANNE MIDGETTE 

LENGTH: 266 words

Emerson Quartet, Carnegie Hall

     The Emerson Quartet, the Fab Four of the string world, brought in a special guest, the baritone Thomas Hampson, to help explore the theme (“Text/Subtext”) of words and music last Saturday night.      The Emerson played Smetana’s autobiographical first quartet with refinement, a kind of restraint conveying great depth of feeling, with details limned in carefully. But intonation was a problem.

This did not impede the narrative flow. Balancing funky intonation, especially in the first movement of the Smetana, were moments of breathtaking precision: the stab of a perfect synchronized entrance, or a solo phrase from the cellist, David Finckel, who played gorgeously. And in Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” quartet, Eugene Drucker, on first violin, maintained the shape of gracefulness, if sometimes falling a little flat.

     The program seemed less about words per se than about what the music is saying: contrasting words and music, rather than combining them, with the voice of a single singer as an interesting contrast to the Emerson’s democratic blend of sound, with all four voices equally present even when there’s a clear melody. Last Saturday Mr. Hampson sounded rich and fine. In three Schubert songs, he reined in a couple of climaxes by imposing a veneer of self-consciousness; but it would be hard to find a better performance of “Death and the Maiden.” (Craig Rutenberg was the pianist.) And in Barber’s “Dover Beach,” Mr. Hampson was perfectly pitched to the Romantic words, while the instruments played the sound of the waves beneath them. 

The New York Times, February 11, 2003 

MUSIC REVIEW; Wandering in a Wilderness Of Old Testament Passages

BYLINE: By ANNE MIDGETTE 

LENGTH: 263 words

     It’s a happy thing when a chorus devotes virtually its whole New York concert to works by living composers. And Gloriae Dei Cantores, a chorus from the Community of Jesus in Orleans, Mass., upped the ante by commissioning a major new work by Mark O’Connor, “Folk Mass,” which had its world premiere at St. Thomas Church on Tuesday night.

     You had to applaud the effort and the fine chorus. Unfortunately, effort was palpably in evidence.

It was an effort just to sit through Mr. O’Connor’s 50-minute opus. The music chugged its way through huge chunks of Old Testament text, creating a sprawling behemoth with no discernible form, served up at an unvarying emotional and dynamic temperature. Conceived as a response to 9/11, the piece was ambiguous in its message, and any fragments of folklike melody were too firmly embedded in the concretelike conglomerate of the whole to be extracted with any pleasure.

     And for all the valiant work of the singers and soloists, led by the chorus’s director, Elizabeth C. Patterson, it had to be an effort to sing the thing. Even the very good tenor soloist, Brother Richard Cragg, was flagging slightly by the end.

     By contrast, the second half of the program featured some well-wrought music by able craftsmen, like Conrad Susa’s lovely “The God of Love my Shepherd Is.” In “Rex Gloriae,” William Mathias managed to do what Mr. O’Connor could not: write a piece in several sections with different, contrasting moods. The evening closed with a beautiful Gregorian chant that helped wash away the aftertaste of the first half of the concert.

The New York Times, February 28, 2002 

MUSIC REVIEW; Savoring A Comeback Moment

BYLINE: By ANNE MIDGETTE

LENGTH: 235 words

     They called her the Black Venus: in 1961 she was the first black singer at Bayreuth, and her triumph in Wagner’s “Tannhauser” helped propel her into a nearly legendary international career. Now Grace Bumbry is 65 and rarely sings.

     But she emerged last Thursday night, trailing clouds of glory and a long tulle train, to present a recital program conceived in homage to her teacher, the German soprano Lotte Lehmann, at Alice Tully Hall.

     Ms. Bumbry still has plenty to offer. Her voice is not as free or strong as it was in her prime, but it is safe to say that none of her fans in attendance were sorry they had come; she gave quite a show.

The program consisted of songs that Lehmann knew, with selections by Schubert, Brahms, Liszt, Schumann and Strauss, plus Marguerite’s aria in Berlioz’s “Damnation de Faust.” Ms. Bumbry’s accompanist, Helmut Deutsch, was a wonderful support right from the start.


     Ms. Bumbry remains an expressive singer with a strong connection to her music. There were fine moments, particularly when she did not try to force a large sound. Untarnished vocal ability, though, was not really the point, although Ms. Bumbry’s inability to sustain a big operatic sound became increasingly difficult to overlook. Eventually, Ms. Bumbry’s evident pleasure at being back onstage slightly outstripped her vocal resources. The loving audience, however, was not likely to hold this against her.

The New York Times, September 25, 2007

Cabaret Conversation In Three-Part Harmony

BYLINE: By BERNARD HOLLAND

LENGTH: 287 words

     The longstanding duo of William Bolcom and Joan Morris seemed very much like a trio at the Flea Theater on Sunday. Ms. Morris sang; Mr. Bolcom had written all the music and was playing the piano. But the afternoon’s collection of 29 cabaret songs was just as much about Arnold Weinstein’s words as what Mr. Bolcom and Ms. Morris did with them.

     So delicate was this three-sided demonstration of balance and equilibrium that it was hard to tell who led whom. Was it Ms. Morris? Her mezzo-soprano is not very strong these days, but helped by a small performing space (about 100 seats on risers), she reminded listeners that diction and comic timing are not derived from muscle.

     Was it Mr. Bolcom pulling his colleagues along? He is a marvelous pianist and a flesh-and-blood encyclopedia of musical styles. Look up any entry from “barroom” to “Bayreuth,” and Mr. Bolcom could give you brief meditations in the manner of Messiaen, playful updates of old-style pop-music harmonies and inventive disruptions of steady, on-the-beat timekeeping.

     Musically speaking, Mr. Weinstein was the silent partner here, but he got my vote for leader of the pack. As social scientist, he captures Manhattan imagined by wistful provincial eyes, and as storyteller makes us both wince and smile at sexual adventures turned violent.

     In “Song of Black Max,” the balladeering poet makes the mysterious laugh-out-loud funny. Elsewhere the daring metaphors work, and as a connoisseur of lopsided phrases, Mr. Weinstein repeatedly throws us off balance but then lands us on our feet.

     Mr. Bolcom’s deft music became equivalent in sound to the texts presented with it. Ms. Morris could not have had material more sensitive to her talents.

The New York Times, July 2, 2007 

MUSIC REVIEW ‘SOUNDS OF SUMMER’; Played ‘William Tell’? Yes They Did, Yes They Did, Yes They Did, Did, Did

BYLINE: By BERNARD HOLLAND

LENGTH: 300 words

     “Sounds of Summer,” the latest installment of the New York Philharmonic’s Summertime Classics series is a kind of vacation in sound. Listeners wearied by challenge and deep edification get to lean back and get comfortable. Friday’s program at Avery Fisher Hall, led by the conductor and amiable conversationalist Bramwell Tovey, was a chestnut roast from start to finish: a greatest-hits lineup calculated to soothe the brain and slow the heart rate.

     It is embarrassing to say, on the other hand, that by avoiding very familiar repertory so strenuously, we end up not playing it much at all. Fearing the obvious, we make the obvious into the rare.

     I can’t remember the last time I heard Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance” or Smetana’s “Moldau.” One noticed details in the Grieg Piano Concerto and Rossini’s “William Tell” Overture that over long periods of absence had been forgotten. The Philharmonic sounded in good spirits and fine voice. Given the rapidly changing programs and limited rehearsal time for each, Mr. Tovey had a hard time avoiding looseness of execution that the orchestra’s music director, Lorin Maazel, might not have stood for.

     The audience, enjoying the best spirits of all, seemed to like everything and also to adore young Joyce Yang’s playing of the Grieg. Ms. Yang has a big-time sound and technique, and so basic is her musicality that I can see her one day abandoning the theatrical stretched-out tempos that sometimes work overtime at milking the drama of the moment. Barely 21 and still in school, Ms. Yang has the self-possession and grand style that will make her a competitor in the virtuoso career wars to come.

Elgar, Smetana and Rossini were what they were and offered considerable entertainment. The orchestra sounded lovely. I saw very few empty seats.

The New York Times, March 26, 2007 

A Vocalist Who Relishes The Poetry

BYLINE: By BERNARD HOLLAND

LENGTH: 298 words

     Gerald Finley, who sang at Zankel Hall on Friday night, has a bass-baritone of easy luxury. Mr. Finley must work hard to manage the top of his voice, but manage it he does. Elsewhere in his range there is a welcoming quality. Music is invited in, rather than pursued, and made at home.

     Beautiful sound like this has to be imagined before it can be made. Mr. Finley’s sensibilities begin with the pre-eminence of words. Heine’s “Dichterliebe” seemed to arrive an instant ahead of Schumann’s “Dichterliebe,” the poet’s word already fixed in our ears by the time the musical tone arrived. Diction also served Ned Rorem’s “War Scenes,” five songs set with elegance and graceful prosody in the midst of violence. Mr. Rorem makes sure that not a syllable of Walt Whitman’s scathing reportage on war is missed.

     The seven Charles Ives items ranged, as Ives’s music is likely to do, from the rowdy to the picturesque to the comic. If Schumann’s famous version of “Ich Grolle Nicht” comes off as a protest song, Ives’s setting has a sweeter, gentler astringency. Then there was the mysteriously beautiful “Housatonic at Stockbridge,” in both its vocal and orchestra versions perhaps the most satisfying music Ives ever wrote.

     Mr. Finley, a Canadian, ended his all-American second half with six Samuel Barber songs: three with folkloric ties and then the Three Songs, Op. 10: grand, demonstrative statements with virtuoso piano parts. They, like the rest of the program, were played by Julius Drake.

     The 16 numbers of “Dichterliebe,” with their long, wandering instrumental finale, are not so much songs with accompaniment as duets for singer and pianist: signified is equally shared responsibility. Mr. Drake was splendid in a variety of moods and styles. The audience loved it all.

The New York Times, September 22, 2006 

Bright Sound and Intimate Vibes in a New Space

BYLINE: By BERNARD HOLLAND

LENGTH: 297 words

     The St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble went to the Morgan Library and Museum on Wednesday with a program calculated to set even the most sedate toe to tapping. This “Baroque Blast” was indeed a happy-making event. It was also another step forward for the Morgan’s shiny pocket concert hall. Most of its steeply raked seats were filled with delighted and, in many cases, well-heeled patrons.

The music was mainly Vivaldi and Bach with some Handel at the start. The 12 musicians came from the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, a larger ensemble that maintains unusually high standards.

     In an already bright-sounding acoustical space, modern instruments playing music originally intended for more subdued antecedents can carry brightness to an extreme. Not to be argued with, on the other hand, were the intense focus and skill of these musicians and the in-your-lap chamber-music intimacy of the Morgan. It is a space in which musicians are going to have to learn to push a little less.

     Four pieces were concertos, with soloists stepping out of the ensemble. Elizabeth Mann’s acrobatics in a Vivaldi C major piccolo concerto sat the listener up straight. A Concerto in F for violin and cello with Naoko Tanaka and Myron Lutzke was also in the usual Vivaldi mode. Less so was the brief, dark and harmonically pungent “Sinfonia al Santo Sepolcro” in B minor.

     Handel’s Overture to “Alcina” and his “Arrival of the Queen of Sheba” from “Solomon” were done with an energetic theatrical flair. As for the Bach: Stephen Taylor and Mayuki Fukuhara were soloists in the C minor Concerto for Oboe and Violin, and Krista Bennion Feeney played beautifully in the Violin Concerto in E.



The New York Times, June 22, 2006 

Tough Works, Faced Alone, With Mind Over Matter

BYLINE: By BERNARD HOLLAND

LENGTH: 253 words

    John Kamitsuka’s musical care and responsible sense of style worked best in the first half of his solo piano program at Weill Recital Hall on Tuesday night. Playing two preludes and fugues from Book 1 of Bach’s “Well-Tempered Klavier,” Mr. Kamitsuka made Bach’s sudden harmonic transitions in the E-minor piece sound as startling as they actually are. The G-major Prelude and Fugue had the energy it deserved, and Beethoven’s late set of Bagatelles (Op. 126) retained their wild and woolly character.

      Mr. Kamitsuka, whose musical experience and training come from both the United States and Japan, is probably more a musician than a natural virtuoso. To his great credit he had the technical measure of all his music on Tuesday, even Prokofiev’s fiercely challenging Seventh Sonata, which was pursued with dogged correctness.

     There is a feeling of constraint to Mr. Kamitsuka’s playing. The tone is neither big nor deep, qualities that would have better served Rachmaninoff’s slow-moving and darkly baritonal “Moment Musicaux” (Op. 16, No. 3).

     One also sensed a pianist playing at or near the limits of his technical ability, with little room to spare. Getting nearly everything right in the Prokofiev is no small achievement. What one didn’t hear was the freedom and confidence to give this brutal and deeply unhappy music the breathing room it needs.

     Mr. Kamitsuka, on the other hand, gave a nearly full house a satisfying exercise in mind over matter, and there was just enough matter to make his evening work.

The New York Times, May 16, 2006 

The Agony in the Garden Of Shostakovich’s Quartets 

BYLINE: By BERNARD HOLLAND

LENGTH: 288 words

     Shostakovich’s last three quartets ended the Emerson String Quartet’s two-week series at Alice Tully Hall on Sunday afternoon, during which all 15 have been played. Anti-rhetorical, largely stripped of the forms and gestures with which the Classical tradition usually greets its listeners, and in general unlike any music you have ever heard, these quartets are like the last entries in a private diary.

In place of grand summations are endings that fade quietly away, or else stop as if cut off.          

 Predominant in the first two of these quartets is a kind of slow drumbeat that we do not actually hear but whose presence thumps along in our imaginations. Paul Epstein’s interesting program notes cite Beethoven as an inspiration for the last quartet. A closer ancestor might be the Haydn of “The Seven Last Words of Christ,” also a series of unrelieved slow movements, Haydn’s seven to Shostakovich’s six.

     None of this work bears good news. But music can be unhappy in several ways. Some pleads for our sympathy. Some demonstrates its nobility in the face of suffering. Shostakovich’s last quartets do neither. We are witness to something inconsolable that we are helpless to do anything about. Shostakovich in these amazing pieces is like some wounded beast incapable of asking for help, much less pity. We can only observe. Introduced into the vocabulary of music is a new element: hopelessness. It makes these three quartets very beautiful but nearly unbearable to listen to.

     The Emerson approaches Shostakovich with an austerity that at first may sound a little cool. I think not. Overplaying sorrow serves only to cheapen it. On Sunday, before a large, attentive audience, dignity, reserve and respect did admirable service.

The New York Times, May 13, 2006 

Playing Mozart With Poise And Passion

BYLINE: By BERNARD HOLLAND

LENGTH: 251 words

     Mitsuko Uchida’s all-Mozart piano recital at Carnegie Hall on Thursday stayed in the minor mode for half its length, then offered two major-key sonatas after intermission. “Night and Day” might have been a good title for this lovely evening. Cole Porter would have been pleased.

     The C minor Fantasy (K.475) and the C minor Sonata were played as a single piece, as they often are, followed by the rambling, ruminative B minor Adagio. The rays of sunshine were the Sonata in F (K. 533), with its large-scale slow movement, and then the D major Sonata (K. 576).

     Mozart wrote lots of piano sonatas, but the medium did not always engage his full attention. This last item in D may be the best among them. The first movement’s counterpoint alludes to Mozart’s fascination with Bach. The Adagio is rich, compact and filled with a tragic dignity. The finale offers cheerful challenges to the pianist’s left hand.

     Ms. Uchida signs on to Mozart’s theatrical side. The C minor Fantasy came at us with dramatic surges and decelerations, drawn-out pauses and gaps of silence -- all governed by a kind of invisible, carefully calculated sense of momentum that made many different things sound as if they belonged together.

     The first movement of the C minor Sonata was fast to the point of rashness, but this is precisely why Ms. Uchida’s playing so attracts us. There is both fastidious coolness and an utter recklessness here. When she plays Mozart, elegance and abandon come as close to each other as they ever will.

The New York Times, April 27, 2006

What Would Wagner Think?

BYLINE: By BERNARD HOLLAND

LENGTH: 283 words

     Salvatore Sciarrino’s “Lohengrin” reduces Germanic legend to a kind of delirious narrative scarcely an hour long. As presented at the French Institute/Alliance Francaise on Monday evening, Elsa, the accused murderess, and Lohengrin, her swan-borne rescuer, drift in and out of sweaty sex, anguish, dread, visions of childhood and general madness.

     The only principal performer, Marianne Pousseur, though billed as a soprano, scarcely sang at all. There were fractured storytelling and dialogue between lovers, all punctuated by a running repertory of gasps, gurgles, hiccups, orgasmic moans and coos. These were timed to a small, heavily amplified ensemble conducted by Alan Pierson. Ms. Pousseur functioned as a kind of untuned percussion instrument and could get your attention by hardly raising her voice.

     Mr. Sciarrino’s quasi melodrama (in the original sense of “melodrama”) comes at the audience with a feverish theatricality fueled by an often overheated text. The music uses silence to good effect, with raw amplified string sound and woodwind chirps arriving in little bursts and gulps. The sounds seem almost intrusions on the emptiness they interrupt.

     Mr. Sciarrino, a Sicilian, has a deft and imaginative mind. And if you can concentrate on his music and not the woozy philosophizing that goes along with it, “Lohengrin” is something you can buy into with pleasure and profit. The length is perfect for the medium.

     Ms. Pousseur was very good. So too were Mr. Pierson and his several dozen young players and background singers.

     This “Lohengrin” was the third of four Wagner-minded events at the institute. The last, on May 1, is called “Wagner: Visionary or Gravedigger?” Gee.