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MET Orchestra Perform American Musical Greats at Carnegie Hall
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 19 February 2026 14:24
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Photo by Jennifer Taylor
At the wonderful Stern Auditorium, on the night of Wednesday, February 4th, I had the privilege to attend an excellent concert—presented by Carnegie Hall—featuring the outstanding MET Orchestra under the peerless direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
The even began auspiciously with a sterling account of the undervalued Negro Folk Symphony of William L. Dawson, the ultimate revision of which was completed in 1952. About the piece, the composer told an interviewer that “the finest compliment that could be paid my symphony … is that it unmistakably is not the work of a white man. I want the audience to say: ‘Only a Negro could have written that.’” The initial movement, titled “The Bond of Africa,” begins with a solemn fanfare—this mood is discernible for longer, but as the movement becomes livelier in tempo, it is overcome by greater levity. In useful notes on the program, Harry Haskell explains:
“The Bond of Africa” opens with a portentous (and very Dvořákian) theme for solo horn that serves as a recurring leitmotif throughout the work; according to the composer, this four-note motto symbolizes the “missing link” that was “taken out of a human chain when the first African was taken from the shores of his native land and sent to slavery.” Contrast is provided by the solo oboe in the form of a perky melody from “Oh, My Little Soul Gwine Shine Like a Star,” the first of three spirituals that Dawson subtly weaves into his symphonic fabric.
The ensuing movement also has a serious ethos, but again lighter, joyful music comes to the fore, although it alternates with much heavier passages and builds to a powerful series of climaxes, and then finishes very quietly. The annotator comments:
The second movement, “Hope in the Night,” is the most explicitly programmatic of the three. In Dawson’s words, the three introductory gong strokes represent “the Trinity, who guides forever the destiny of man,” while the English horn “sings a melody that describes the characteristics, hopes, and longings of a folk held in darkness.” This theme in turn gives way to playful music depicting children who remain blissfully “unmindful of the heavy cadences of despair.”
The last movement is dynamic, even dance-like, with some suspenseful moments and, again, high-spirited interludes, concluding abruptly and triumphantly. Haskell adds:
The finale, based in part on the spiritual “O Le’ Me Shine, Shine Like a Morning Star!,” is notable for its rhythmic vitality and colorful battery of percussion instruments, both elements of the revised score that Dawson created after making his first visit to West Africa in 1952.
The piece was very enthusiastically received by the audience.
The stunningly beautiful and marvelous mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard then entered the stage—she wore a fabulous, shimmering pink gown—to magnificently perform Samuel Barber’s exquisite Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Op. 24, from 1947, a setting of an autobiographical text in poetic prose by the eminent author James Agee. The composer interestingly said that the work evokes “the child’s feeling of loneliness, wonder, and lack of identity in that marginal world between twilight and sleep.” The first section is nostalgic, while the second is more animated but with a reflective close. The third part recaptures the sensibility of the first although the music intensifies, and in the last section again the lyricism of the opening returns, before it ends gently.
The second half of the evening was also memorable, starting with Leonard’s magical, movingly sung rendition of Leonard Bernstein’s sensational “Somewhere”—with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim—from the landmark 1957 musical, West Side Story. The program concluded with an accomplished version of the same composer’s fine score for the delightful 1944 ballet, Fancy Free—it was brilliantly choreographed by Jerome Robbins—which affords many of the pleasures of his other popular (and populist) music. Bernstein provided this synopsis of the work:
From the moment the action begins, with the sound of a juke box wailing behind the curtain, the ballet is strictly young wartime America, 1944. The curtain rises on a street corner with a lamp post, a side street bar and New York skyscrapers pricked out with a crazy pattern of lights, making a dizzying backdrop. Three sailors explode on the stage. They are on a 24-hour shore leave in the city and on the prowl for girls. The tale of how they first meet one, then a second girl, and how they fight over them, lose them, and in the end take off after still a third, is the story of the ballet.
The artists deservedly were deservedly, ardently applauded.
February '26 Digital Week II
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 18 February 2026 19:22
- Written by Kevin Filipski
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.
