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Music

Budapest Festival Orchestra Plays Bach & Beethoven at Lincoln Center


A new year of orchestral music in New York opened splendidly with its first significant concert of the year, the much awaited return—on the afternoon of Sunday, January 14th, to David Geffen Hall—of the incomparable Budapest Festival Orchestra under the brilliant direction of Iván Fischer, presented as part of the Great Performers series of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The house was surprisingly full with few empty seats in the orchestra, despite the bitterly cold weather, attesting perhaps to the reverence with which these musicians are held.


The somewhat heterogeneous program began wonderfully with a sterling account of Johann Sebastian Bach's popular and marvelous Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B minor, played here by a small ensemble on period instruments with the maestro conducting from the keyboard and featuring Gabriella Pivon on the transverse flute—it would nonetheless have been exciting to hear this work as transcribed for the entire orchestra.

The impressive soloist Dénes Várjon then took the stage for what may be the finest rendition I have yet heard in the concert hall of Ludwig van Beethoven’s equally celebrated Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, with the artist playing the composer’s cadenzas. An enthusiastic ovation elicited a terrific encore: the beautiful Three Hungarian Folksongs from Csik by Béla Bartók.

The second half of the program was even more memorable, devoted to an extraordinary realization of the magnificent Symphony No. 2 of Sergei Rachmaninoff. Spirited applause was answered by Fischer, always generous with encores, with a delightful surprise: an arrangement for orchestra and voices of the famous and lovely Vocalise, Op. 34, No. 14, by the same composer. I look forward to the next appearance of this glorious ensemble.

Chamber Orchestra of New York Brings to Life the Works of Strauss & More

Salvatore Di Vittorio

The outstanding musicians of the Chamber Orchestra of New York—composed of remarkably accomplished young professionals—returned to Weill Recital Hall—on the evening of Saturday, December 9th—for a superb concert devoted to music for strings, under the sterling direction of Salvatore Di Vittorio.

The program opened splendidly with a lucid account of Edvard Grieg’s lovely Holberg Suite of 1884, a work of neoclassicism—or more properly, neo-Baroqueavant la lettre and a precursor to modern works like Maurice Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin.

The conductor then led the musicians in the world premiere of his own composition, the excellent Preludio Sentimentale, mostly derived from the first movement of his Sinfonia No. 1 for strings from 1999, described as his “first mature, published orchestral work.”

The first half of the concert closed with another crystalline reading, here of the mesmerizing Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis of 1910 by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

The evening concluded with its most impressive work, an astonishing realization of the magnificent, dazzling Metamorphosen of Richard Strauss from 1945. I look forward to seeing these wonderful artists again in coming appearances.

Forward Festival 2017 Features Acts Young & Old

 

The third edition of the Forward Festival is happening this week on December 7th and 8th at ShapeShifter Lab (18 Whitwell Pl., Brooklyn). Featuring a mix of established and up and coming creative musicians in a showcase of some of the most exciting experimental music happening in NYC today.

The Forward Festival 2017:

  • Daniel Carter
  • Hilliard Greene
  • Federico Ughi
  • Kid Millions
  • Sarah Bernstein
  • Paul Flaherty
  • Matthew Putman
  • Andrew Lamb
  • Warren Smith
  • L’Rain
  • Patrick Holmes
  • Donald Sturge Anthony McKenzie II
  • A mystery guest guitarist
  • Jimmy Lee
  • Nick Dimopoulos
  • Micah Gaugh
  • Duane Eubanks
  • Greg Lewis
  • Gene Moore
  • Gene Janas

To learn more, go to: http://www.577records.com/forwardfestival/

Forward Festival
December 7 - 8, 2017

ShapeShifter
Lab 18 Whitwell Pl.
Brooklyn, NY 11215

Sibelius Academy Symphony Orchestra Delights at Lincoln Center

The new season at Lincoln Center of the excellent Juilliard Orchestra opened auspiciously on the evening of Tuesday, September 5th, at the splendid Alice Tully Hall, with a program where its members played alongside excellent musicians from the Sibelius Academy Symphony Orchestra of Helsinki, under the expert direction of the renowned Esa-Pekka Salonen, in the last of three collaborative concerts with the two ensembles in celebration of the centennial of Finnish independence.

 The unifying thread of the program was, aptly, the music of Jean Sibelius, whose Seventh Symphony influenced the first two works of the concert, beginning with the compelling Radical Light by the eminent, late composer Steven Stucky— who had joined the Juilliard faculty in 2014 —which was notable for its brilliant orchestration and was inspired by a poem by the greatly esteemed A.R. Ammons.
 
Also of interest was the Finnish conductor's own composition, the virtuosic cello concerto,Mania,dazzlingly performed by the Finnish-Dutch soloist, Jonathan Roozeman, who had received his early training at the Academy. He went on to present a delightful encore, the finale of Gaspar Cassadó’s Suite for Cello.
 
It was the second half of the evening, however, that proved to be the most extraordinary. The concluding work on the program was the very seldom performed, complete score of the wonderful Lemminkäinen Suite (Four Legends of the Kalevala)of Sibelius, which left a more vivid impression than anything that had come before. An enormously appreciative audience earned a fabulous encore, the same composer's unutterably lovelyValse Triste,closing an exceptional concert.

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