Last night I finally had a chance to hear David Lang’s The Little Match Girl Passion. The piece is a Carnegie Hall commission that had its world premiere in 2007 with Paul Hillier’s four-member Theatre of Voice.
If you were lucky enough to catch The Little Match Girl Passion premiere at Carnegie or have listened to it on the recent recording, you may agree with the judges who awarded the 35-minute work the Pulitzer Prize in 2008. It masterfully blends the simple tragedy of the Hans Christian Andersen story about a girl going door-to-door, barefoot, selling matches on the coldest night of the year, with a Bach-style passion structure of alternating narrated story passages and vocal commentary.
Lang has now rescored the work for chorus, and that is the version that about 100 of us heard last night, at WNYC’s Greene Space down on Varick Street, with the New York Virtuoso Singers led by Harold Rosenbaum. read more
I think it’s safe to say that George Steel and Peter Martins are probably two of the happiest men in New York today.
Last Thursday morning, Steel and Martins—the general director of New York City Opera and Ballet Master in Chief of the New York City Ballet—invited members of the press to a preview of the newly renovated David H. Koch Theater (a.k.a. the New York State Theater), which is finally set to re-open on November 5 with American Voices, a program of American music. The gala reopening will honor Koch, who gave a $100 million lead gift to the joint capital campaign of the two companies, which both perform at the theater. Also at this morning’s preview was New York City Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate D. Levin—the city of New York also donated $26.9 million toward the rebuilding project. Steel joked that the opening-night gala will be an opportunity to hear “ballet, opera-theater, and Rufus Wainwright—all at one low price.” Martins quipped that the theater’s 40-foot legroom space would be maintained, and the theater’s changes meant that Tchaikovsky could now be heard “as he was meant to be heard.” After the jump, you can see some pictures of the newly renovated space. read more
This morning I received a personal note from clarinetist José Franch-Ballester to let me know about his October 13 recital at Poisson Rouge with pianist/composer Adam Neiman. I first met José during the summer of 2008; you can read the text of our conversation for SundayArts here.
The Poisson Rouge concert mixes new and old music, but it’s of particular interest to me because it will feature two movements from Cookbook, a suite for clarinet and piano by the Brooklyn-based composer Kenji Bunch, who is also a violist. Both Neiman and Bunch are very active in the new-music scene, so if you’re free, this concert is worth checking out.
José, originally from Spain but now based in Philadelphia, sounded jazzed-up about the Poisson Rouge event—which includes works by Brahms, Poulenc, Chopin, Arturo Marquez, Neiman, and Bunch—and he e-chatted with me briefly about the music. read more
As I write this, it’s 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 8, and I’m listening to WNYC radio host Terrance McKnight count down the last 30 minutes before New York City’s all-classical WQXR becomes part of the WNYC public radio family. The change to a new radio frequency is being celebrated with a live broadcast of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s Carnegie Hall concert, which features Stravinsky’s “Dumbarton Oaks,” Webern’s Fuga from Bach’s Musical Offering, the Beethoven Violin Concerto, and the world premiere of Aaron Jay Kernis’s Concerto with Echoes. In a few minutes I will move my Bose radio pre-sets so that there is a reserved spot at 105.9 instead of 96.3, and here’s hoping the signal makes it over the airwaves to where I live. The is the main worry that traditional radio listeners may have about the change, other than duplication of radio hosts and programs during the hours when both WNYC-FM and WQXR hosted all-classical programs. (You can view a WQXR program schedule at the WNYC website and a bunch of other FAQs about the switch can be found at here.)
Terrance McKnight sounds pretty happy and proud of the fact that an all-classical station has been preserved in any form in the city of New York. read more
Two of last century’s revered artists are having major shows in New York at the same moment: Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) at the Whitney, and Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944) at the Guggenheim. The coincidence of the two exhibitions offer some interesting parallels and divergences, not to mention a look at a wealth of revolutionary artwork that altered art history’s path.
The O’Keeffe show, through January 17 (score one for O’Keeffe—her show runs four days longer), is subtitled Abstraction, and so excludes the best-known icons of her oeuvre depicting her identifiable New Mexico surrounds. It’s a revelation, like being able to have a meaningful conversation after deafening music stops. Certainly some work is familiar—imagery of crevasses, flowers, skies. But much of it is fresh, permitting an appreciation of O’Keeffe’s talents as an abstract painter. Elegant lines in spare compositions, intriguing hints of source imagery, and a gorgeous, clear palette. Dense shapes reminiscent of storms, waves, and geology mix with lighter ones of skies, clouds, plants. read more
If you believe the adage that no publicity is bad publicity, then perhaps the Met’s opening-night Tosca Monday night was a success. By now, you’ve probably read about the prolonged booing that greeted Luc Bondy’s new production, which starred Karita Mattila as Tosca, Marcelo Alvarez as Cavaradossi, and George Gagnidze as Scarpia. Yes, in operaworld people get more than a little upset when you change the plot—the directorial equivalent of spitting on tradition. (You can read more about the brouhaha in HuffPo and the New York Times.)
I, however, was not in the house, surrounded by other lovers of opera and opera tradition, when this all transpired. Instead, when the evening began at 6:30, I was 20 blocks away in Times Square. I was curious to see what sort of reception Puccini might get in the noisy crossroads of the world. read more
The Guggenheim’s Works & Process series has evolved into a commissioning entity producing some fascinating new work. Until recent years, it was more akin to a lecture/demo format, with a casual atmosphere where the dancers wore rehearsal clothes. It often featured excerpts of works that would be seen elsewhere, on a larger stage; some events still follow this format. But as the fall season’s inaugural show featuring choreography by Peter Quanz and Larry Keigwin demonstrated, it is capable of producing some inspired new choreographic work.
The program last weekend, Steve Reich Interpreted, featured dances set to the same Reich composition, Double Sextet (2007). Peter Quanz, of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, created the ballet In Tandem that seemed to stretch the physical limits of the distinctive, if oddball, theater at the Guggenheim, which is all circles, and quite small at that. read more
There is such an wealth of culture in New York, particularly in the fall season, that it’s often difficult for presenters to make their offerings stand out. French Institute (FIAF), however, with its Crossing the Line festival (video here), has managed to both expand its genres and refine its mission to create a sort of core sample of contemporary French culture. This year, that includes culinary arts—so integral to France—in addition to many other events, most of which elude genre pigeon-holing. They blend varying strands of dance, art, film, and performance with one certain element—French essence. The festival is curated by Lili Chopra, FIAF’s artistic director, and Simon Dove, director, School of Dance at Arizona State University.
Festivities kick off in Central Park on Saturday, Sep 12 with Le Bal NYC, a mash-up of choreography, audience participation, and picnic outing. French choreographers (“established and emerging”) will teach short dances to the public, which gets a first-hand look at the dance performing process. Meanwhile, chefs—including NY’s David Chang and Wylie Dufresne, reportedly—will be prepping bento boxes of edible treats. read more
Last summer season, the Public Theater paired Hamlet with the musical Hair—which subsequently went to Broadway and won the Tony for Best Revival. This year, the Delacorte played host to another Shakespeare classic, Twelfth Night, paired with another bawdy piece: the Greek drama The Bacchae, scored with new music by Philip Glass. Alas, this Bacchae is not likely to transfer or win any awards. JoAnne Akalaitis’s concept has some interesting and ambitious notions, but they never quite fuse with the text or the performances. The result is a sluggish 90-minute show that feels much longer. (And which inspired numerous walkouts on the evening I attended—the first time I’ve witnessed that in years of attending the Delacorte). read more
Back in the spring of 2008, New York opera-lovers were aflutter over Juan Diego Flórez’s nine spectacular high Cs in “Ah, mes amis (Pour mon âme)” from La Fille Du Régiment at the Metropolitan Opera, with Natalie Dessay, whose Marie wasn’t exactly chopped liver. And guess what? You can hear them again during the Met’s free summer HD festival which begins on August 29 with that Donizetti opera.
Just like an ongoing television series set for a new season, it’s always useful to re-run the previous season, to get in the mood and to reacquaint yourself with your favorite heroes and villains. The mood in the city is a little less upbeat than in spring of 2008, when the economy’s unraveling was less in full swing. The Met opens its season on September 21 with Karita Mattila in Tosca, but for the city’s recently downsized and underemployed workers, the HD broadcasts may be one of the Met’s most opera affordable options this year. Certainly the weather was splendid on July 14, when the New York Philharmonic performed in Central Park, but you have to wonder if such employment factors are what attracted the unusually large crowd. read more
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