Hans Werner Henze: The Last Interview?

The program was not a crowd pleaser. But the crowd seemed open to whatever they were given at this closing Aug. 10 concert of the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center’s summer season. From a distance, the program looked a lot like a particularly wide-reaching New York Philharmonic subscription concert, but with key difference. No cellphone interruptions. There was applause … [Read more...] about Lincoln Center’s new-ish Festival Orchestra is cheered by audiences – upstairs and down – but has a ways to go

So much stimulating, challenging music threatened to overflow and overload the Tanglewood Music Festival’s annual composer’s week that one had to stand back and realize how radically this bucolic setting in Lenox, MA diverges from the typical summertime concert life of major orchestras. The closest thing to recreational listening over the 42 pieces played July 25-29 was the … [Read more...] about Tanglewood: Idyllic to the eye, radical to the ear

Singing Bach's Mass in b minor can be terrifying. You're holding your own, and then, the page turns to reveal something that looks barely singable. You're teetering like a novice downhill skiier on a slope with pathetically inadequate skills. No turning back. And that's just a matter of vocal technique. Why is this monumental piece the way it is? That's a life-long quest that … [Read more...] about Clarion’s Bach Mass in b minor – summit achieved

Any Steinbeck adaptation needs to be epic. Few works of literature go so deep into the need for home and family as the John Steinbeck novel The Grapes of Wrath. And Ricky Ian Gordon’s 2007 opera version packed the Carnegie Hall stage April 17 with the necessary magnitude of resources, plus extra relevance. No longer a piece of American history and lightning rod for social … [Read more...] about Grapes of Wrath at Carnegie Hall: A story whose time has come – yet again.

Russian sacred choral music - with its brooding bass lines and treble writing that reaches for the stratosphere - is express route to one’s soul, raising the question: Why is Alexander Levine one of the few composers to tap into it to address our current ills? Perhaps because all-things Russian are perceived by some to be the root of the current global unrest? Let's not be … [Read more...] about Russian liturgical choral music supports the Ukraine in an NYC Clarion Choir world premiere – without irony.