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Reviews
Laura Benanti Serenades at 92nd Street Y
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 18 February 2026 14:27
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Laura Benanti, photo by Richard Termine
At the 92nd Street Y, on the night of Thursday, January 29th, I had the pleasure to a attend a splendid concert featuring the amazing and beautiful Broadway star Laura Benanti, along with the musicians Todd Almond, her longtime collaborator, on piano, Cat Popper on bass, and Eric Halvorson on drums.
Wearing a sparkling, silver-white gown, she began with a compressed and hilarious version of songs from the incomparable 1956 musical My Fair Lady, which has a score by Frederick Loewe and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, and is adapted from George Bernard Shaw’s sterling 1913 play, Pygmalion; these included “Wouldn't It Be Loverly?”, “Just You Wait,” “The Rain in Spain,” “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “Show Me,” and “Without You.” (She was extraordinary as Eliza Doolittle—in the wonderful 2018 Lincoln Center Theater production—which she described as her dream role.)
She then sang Stephen Sondheim’s “I Remember” from his 1966 television musical Evening Primrose, which was adapted from a 1940 John Collier short story. This was followed by two songs written with Almond: “Mama’s a Liar” and “Good Men.” One of the highlights of the event was her haunting rendition of Joni Mitchell’s “Carey” from the landmark 1971 album, Blue. (It was surprising that Benanti’s performances of more contemporary material were on the whole more memorable than her versions of popular song standards.)
She then sang the 1938 “Don't Worry 'bout Me” before the signature “Ice Cream” from the brilliant 1963 musical She Loves Me, with a score composed by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick. (Benanti was marvelous in the terrific 2016 Broadway revival of the show, which was presented by The Roundabout Theatre Company.) “Recovering Ingénue,” which was next, was a delightful, original, comic song that preceded an equally amusing mashup of Dolly Parton and J. S. Bach performed by Almond.
Benanti then emerged as Melania Trump, an impression for which she has become famous, to conclude the program. Of course, enthusiastic applause elicited two excellent encores. First, there was “Edelweiss,” from the 1959 show The Sound of Music, with a score by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein. (She debuted on Broadway in the role of Maria and more recently appeared as the Countess in a television adaptation of the musical.) Finally, she sang the popular “The Impossible Dream” from the 1965 musical—adapted from Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote—Man of La Mancha, with a score composed by Mitch Leigh.
She will perform her own fabulous show, Laura Benanti: Nobody Cares, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this summer.
Mozart & Shostakovich With The Cleveland Orchestra
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 17 February 2026 14:26
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Photo by Chris Lee
At the wonderful Stern Auditorium, on the night of Wednesday, January 21st, I had the privilege to attend an excellent concert—the second of two on consecutive days—presented by Carnegie Hall and performed by the superior Cleveland Orchestra, led with exceptional skill by Franz Welser-Möst.
The first half of the event consisted of an impeccable account of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s extraordinary final symphony, the No. 41 in C Major, K. 551, the “Jupiter,” from 1788. The initial, Allegro vivace movement begins majestically although the music acquires an urgent quality, but there are passages of contrasting gracefulness—it closes affirmatively. The succeeding Andante cantabile is elegant but not without a certain intensity at times, if nonetheless sunny in outlook; it ends softly. The Menuetto, marked Allegretto, is appropriately dance-like and sometimes playful, with a charming Trio. The Molto allegro finale is exhilarating and glorious in its fugal complexity, ending triumphantly.
The second part of the evening was at least equally memorable: a sterling realization of Dmitri Shostakovich’s imposing, undervalued Symphony No. 11 in G Minor, Op 103, “The Year 1905,” completed in 1957. About it, the scholar and program annotator Harlow Robinson has commented as follows:
“I have great affection for this period in our national history, so vividly expressed in revolutionary workers’ songs of the time,” wrote Shostakovich. In the Symphony No. 11, he incorporated the tunes of seven different revolutionary folk songs, tunes from his own Ten Poems (1951), and a quote from Soviet composer Georgy Sviridov’s 1951 operetta Bright Lights. This use of imported material was a notable departure from Shostakovich’s usual practice.
He added:
The first movement (“Palace Square”) portrays the merciless inhumanity of autocracy. Its powerful opening casts a hypnotic spell, evocative of autocracy, the cold, and the austere expanse of stone around the Winter Palace. This episode returns throughout the symphony as a kind of refrain. Then the movement introduces two prison songs (“Listen” and “The Convict”). The second movement (“The Ninth of January”) depicts the Cossacks’ assault, using two marching songs (“O Tsar, Our Father” and “Bare Your Heads!”). Meditative and requiem-like, the third movement (“In Memoriam”) unfolds variations of a well-known tribute to fallen heroes (“You’ve Fallen Victim”) over a slow ostinato foundation. Four different fast marching tunes (“Rage, O Tyrants”; “The Varsovienne”; “Comrades, the Bugles Are Sounding”; and Sviridov’s tune) combine in the raucous, percussive finale (“The Tocsin”). Several of the songs appear in multiple movements. Adding to the overall sense of unity, the four movements are played attacca, without pause.
The Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova, was asked about the song quotations and said, “They were like white birds flying against a terrible black sky.”
The opening Adagio has a hushed, mysterious beginning that precedes a series of fanfares—the movement is programmatic and largely subdued but portentous, while much of the ensuing Allegro has a tense, driving rhythm. The Adagio third movement is elegiac and gentle for an extended period but becomes more passionate. In the finale, an insistent, solemn and powerful march builds to a climax before the music from the first movement returns overlain with a poignant English horn solo; the closing section is turbulent, drawing on music from the second movement, concluding forcefully.
The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.
Cleveland Orchestra Perform at Carnegie Hall
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 16 February 2026 16:07
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Photo by Chris Lee
At the wonderful Stern Auditorium, on the night of Tuesday, January 20th, I had the pleasure of attending a magnificent concert—the first of two on consecutive days—presented by Carnegie Hall and performed by the outstanding Cleveland Orchestra, magisterially led by Franz Welser-Möst. The work on the program was Giuseppe Verdi’s incomparable Requiem completed in 1874. The event featured a superb slate of soloists—including soprano Asmik Grigorian, mezzo-soprano Deniz Uzun, tenor Joshua Guerrero, and basso Tareq Nazmi—along with the excellent Cleveland Orchestra Chorus directed by Lisa Wong.
About this piece, which was composed in honor of the towering figure of novelist Alessandro Manzoni, Verdi stated that “This Mass is not to be sung in the way one sings an opera.” The initial Requiem section of the first movement is relatively subdued while the ensuing Kyrie is more expressionistic. The Sequence (Dies Irae) movement that follows begins with an exuberant and arresting Chorus that prefigures Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana; the basso then enters with a powerful, contrasting statement while the next section, for mezzo-soprano and chorus is more operatic as well as dramatic in character. As the movement unfolds, it reaches a kind of climax with the soloists and chorus which precedes an exceedingly beautiful duet for the soprano and mezzo-soprano. The Dies Irae chorus is recapitulated before another highly lyrical passage for the soloists and chorus.
The third movement, Offertorio (Domine Jesu Christe) is exalting, and the succeeding Sanctus is exhilarating, while the Agnus Dei is more austere on the whole but with some lush sonorities. The Lux aeterna has a gloomier ethos before its affirmative finish. The last movement, Libera me, opens quietly and then becomes suspenseful before a second recurrence of the Dies Irae. Thesetting of the verse, “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Donmine, et lux perpetua luceat eis,” has exquisite writing for the soprano. The final verse is the vehicle for a glorious and rousing fugue although it ends very softly.
The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.
February '26 Digital Week I
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 12 February 2026 19:22
- Written by Kevin Filipski
