Danish composer Poul Ruders (b. 1949) made a post-Easter sweep through the northeast U.S. – though it didn’t feel brief in the least and was never likely to. “He strikes a huge stride over all kinds of music. Light, dark, contrapuntal, monophonic, high and low registers ... he revels in extreme contrasts. And like a tight-rope artist, he’s also an entertainer,” said … [Read more...] about Poul Ruders at Curtis and N.Y. Phil: Transcending notes, rests and contradictions
Cavalli’s Eliogabalo: An opera that needed rescuing…out of The Box
The pickup truck pulled up alongside me and my bicycle on 47th Street in need of directions: “Where’s that street with all the strip clubs?” “You’re asking the wrong guy,” I said. And before I could disqualify myself by claiming to be gay, the driver’s head snapped the other direction and was off. In retrospect, that moment began my karmic payback for being so dismissive … [Read more...] about Cavalli’s Eliogabalo: An opera that needed rescuing…out of The Box
Gloriously useless beauty on a rainy New York night
“Beauty makes me sad,” said Steven Mackey, threatening to take a Byronic turn. “If you can’t have sex with it or eat it, what good is it? “Maybe that’s why people invented picnics. If they can’t eat it [beauty] they can at least eat in its presence.” So said the Princeton-based composer by way of introducing his piece Groundswell to the audience at American Modern … [Read more...] about Gloriously useless beauty on a rainy New York night
Van Cliburn and his fraught generation
With any luck, Van Cliburn lived to watch the Oscars one last time. The legendary pianist, who died Wednesday at age 78 after a long struggle with liver cancer, was that kind of guy. In the years after his 1978 retirement from full-time concertizing, the way to engage him was not with some erudite conversation about music – such things seemed to pain him – but to discuss the … [Read more...] about Van Cliburn and his fraught generation
Star wars with Daniil Trifonov, Benjamin Grosvenor and Ingolf Wunder
The old stereotype of the emerging Russian pianist was fast, loud and so physically massive that the New Yorker once ran a cartoon showing a Carnegie Hall-ish poster of a grizzly bear next to a tiny keyboard reduced to rubble. Not so with Daniil Trifonov, the slim, courtly 21-year-old winner of the Tchaikovsky Competition - even if he does require a piano tuner at … [Read more...] about Star wars with Daniil Trifonov, Benjamin Grosvenor and Ingolf Wunder