Isabel Leonard Performs the Greats at Carnegie Hall

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 12 February 2026 15:52

Written by Jack Angstreich

Isabel Leonard (R) and accompanist John Arida. Photo by Chris Lee

At the wonderful Stern Auditorium, on the night of Thursday, January 15th, I had the privilege to attend a splendid concert—presented by Carnegie Hall—of mostly popular songs performed by the incomparably beautiful mezzo-soprano, Isabel Leonard, with accompanist John Arida on piano.

The singer—who entered the stage wearing a fabulous, sparkling, golden gown—started with Aaron Copland’s “Why Do They Shut Me Out of Heaven?” from the 1950 collection, Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson. Her next selection was one of the highlights of the evening: “I’ll Be Seeing You,” from 1938, with music composed by Sammy Fain. Another classic was the following song, “My Ship,” with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Ira Gershwin, from the 1941 musical, Lady in the Dark. She performed another from the Copland and Dickinson set—“Heart, We Will Forget Him!”—before one more of the most memorable from the recital: “The Way You Look Tonight,” composed by Jerome Kern and with lyrics by Dorothy Fields, which is from the unforgettable 1936 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical film, Swing Time, which was directed by George Stevens in the strongest and most consistent phase of his long career. 

The bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green then joined Leonard onstage for a delightful duet: Irving Berlin’s “Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)” from his 1946 musical, Annie Get Your Gun. Green went on to perform several songs on his own: Copland’s “The Boatmen’s Dance” from Old American Songs, Set I, from 1950; “I, Too” from Three Dream Portraits (1950) by Margaret Bonds, to a text by Langston Hughes; two more from Copland’s Old American Songs, Set 1, including “The Dodger” as well as the exquisite Shaker hymn, “Simple Gifts,” which the composer immortally employed in his great ballet score for Martha Graham, Appalachian Spring; and, finally, another Hughes setting, the 1942 “Songs to the Dark Virgin” by Florence Price. Another vocalist, the Broadway star Jordan Donica—who played Freddy Eynsford-Hill in Lincoln Center Theater’s stellar production of My Fair Lady with Laura Benanti—joined the pair to perform “New York, New York” from Leonard Bernstein’s 1944 On the Town, with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. 

The second half of the event was stronger, beginning with another highlight of the evening: “Many a New Day” by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein, from their 1943 musical, Oklahoma!, here beautifully sung by Leonard, who wore a shimmering red gown for this part of the program. Another of the best moments was the next selection, the Rodgers & Hammerstein duet, “If I Loved You,” from the 1945 Carousel, sung by Leonard and Danica. The latter went on to effectively perform several excellent songs on his own: “Dis Flower” from the 1943 show Carmen Jones, with music by Georges Bizet from his great opera, Carmen, arranged by Robert Russell Bennett, and lyrics by Hammerstein; “Come to Me, Bend to Me,” from the 1947 Brigadoon, with a score by Frederick Loewe and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner; “Where Is the Life That Late I Led?” from Cole Porter’s 1948 Kiss Me, Kate; and, lastly, “Some Enchanted Evening” by Rodgers & Hammerstein from their 1949 musical, South Pacific.

Leonard then returned for the remainder of the program proper and started with two Bernstein numbers: “I’m a Person Too,” from his 1943 I Hate Music: A Cycle of Five Kid Songs, and another song from On the Town, “Lonely Town.” She then performed “I’m a Stranger Here Myself,” with music by Weill and lyrics by Ogden Nash, from their 1943 One Touch of Venus. She concluded her set with another sterling rendition: “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes” by Mack David, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston, from the 1949 film, Cinderella. Donica and Green then joined her for another pleasure: “Some Other Time” from On the Town. Enthusiastic applause elicited three encores from the artists, beginning with “Sisters” from Berlin’s White Christmas, sung by Donica and Green. Leonard then gloriously sang “When You Wish Upon a Star” from the film Pinocchio and Harold Arlen’s “Over the Rainbow,” with lyrics by Yip Harburg, from the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz, concluding a marvelous evening.

New York Philharmonic Perform Chen Yi & More

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Wednesday, 11 February 2026 20:51

Written by Jack Angstreich

Soloist Yefim Bronfman, photo by Brandon Patoc

At Lincoln Center’s wonderful David Geffen Hall, on the night of Saturday, January 17th, I had the privilege to attend an excellent concert presented by the New York Philharmonic under the sterling direction of Xian Zhang.

The event started auspiciously with the admirably realized New York premiere of the impressively orchestrated Landscape Impression by Chen Yi, which is shot through with a strong sense of urgency and finishes forcefully but resists easy encapsulation. According to useful notes on the program by Thomas May—who “is a writer, critic, educator, and translator whose work appears in such publications as The New York Times, Gramophone, and The Strad”—“The work is inspired by two short poems by Su Shi written in the 1070s, during the Song dynasty.” He adds: “These two poems — Landscape and The West Lake — offer contrasting views of the same site.” And he reports that the composer admires the music of Witold Lutosławski and Isang Yun. On the piece’s close, Chen said: 

I didn't wrap up quietly. I wanted the ending to move toward light and the future — a feeling that could belong both to the poet and to today's listeners. 

The renowned soloist Yefim Bronfman then entered the stage for a magisterial performance of Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54, which was completed in 1845 and is one of the very finest essays in the genre of its period. 

The former New York Philharmonic Program Annotator, James M. Keller, records that “In 1839 [Schumann] had written to his then-fiancée, Clara Wieck” as follows: “Concerning concertos, I've already said to you that I can't write a concerto for virtuosi and have to think of something else.” He astutely adds, “What he produced was not, in fact, a highly virtuosic piece,” and that:

This is a supremely “symphonic” concerto in the democratic way in which the soloist and the orchestra pursue their unified intent. Nonetheless, its rather transparent scoring stands in striking contrast to that of Schumann's symphonies themselves, which can tend toward density in their textures. 

The program notes state, “In 1839, before he embarked on composing his only Piano Concerto, Schumann published an essay on the subject of piano concertos in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik,which he had founded five years earlier”: 

[The] separation of the piano from the orchestra is something we have seen coming for some time. Defying the symphony, contemporary piano-playing seeks to dominate by its own means and on its own terms. … This periodical has, from its beginning, reported on just about every new piano concerto that has come along. There can hardly have been more than 16 or 17, a small number in comparison with former days. Thus do times change. What once was regarded as an enrichment of instrumental forms, as an important discovery, is now voluntarily abandoned. … And so we must await the genius who will show us in a newer and more brilliant way how orchestra and piano may be combined, how the soloist, dominant at the keyboard, may unfold the wealth of his instrument and his art, while the orchestra, no longer a mere spectator, may interweave its manifold facets into the scene.

The initial, Allegro affettuoso movement—which is the closest in sensibility to that of Felix Mendelssohn but with a much more pronouncedly Romantic cast—begins dramatically but immediately adopts a reflective mood; the music intensifies before becoming meditative, even lyrical, once again—the development traces a similar, recurrent course of variation from moody inwardness to stirring extroversion, before a climactic cadenza ushers in a rapid, emphatic conclusion. In the ensuing Intermezzo—its tempo is Andante grazioso—Mendelssohnian affinities are also discernible; the music conveys a characteristic, if somewhat restrained, emotionalism that transitions to the greater dynamism of the Allegro vivace finale, which is the most affirmative in tone of the three movements—here one can most clearly detect the influence of Ludwig van Beethoven—and it closes triumphantly. Enthusiastic applause elicited a beautiful encore from the soloist: the Scherzo, marked Allegro energico, of the Sonata for piano No. 3 in F minor of Johannes Brahms. (On the previous day’s concert, he played the Schumann Arabeske in C major, Op. 18.)

The second half of the evening was even more memorable: an amazing account of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s undervalued and seldom presented Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Op. 17, which received its ultimate revision in 1880. Keller comments:

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov had proclaimed the Second Symphony “a work of genius.” However, Tchaikovsky later came to consider the work to be not so perfect after all, but rather “difficult, noisy, disjointed, and muddleheaded.” In 1879 he set about an extensive rewrite, reporting that he “composed the first movement afresh, leaving only the introduction and the coda in their original form; rescored the second movement; shortened and rescored the third movement; and shortened and rescored the Finale.”

The program notes explain that the “Second Symphony is replete with such Ukrainian folk songs as Down by Mother Volga (played by horn, and then bassoon, in the slow introduction to the first movement), Spin, O My Spinner (as a tune for clarinet and flute in the second movement), and The Crane (the principal theme in the finale)”.

The first movement starts abruptly but then quietly with an Andante sostenuto introduction that builds at length in the Allegro vivo main body to musical passages of a more passionate, even turbulent, character, even as there are more subdued interludes; it finishes very softly. The slow movement that follows—it is marked Andante marziale, quasi moderato—has a more playful ethos although with solemn episodes; it too ends very gently. The succeeding Scherzo—its tempo is Allegro molto vivo—is more energetic with driving rhythms and a charming, ludic Trio section that is recapitulated; it concludes suddenly. The Moderato assai Finale opens grandly and sustains a majestic, somewhat celebratory effect, although with numerous measures in a more low-key register; it closes powerfully and exultantly.

The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.

Chamber Orchestra of Europe Perform Brahms at Carnegie Hall

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 09 February 2026 17:52

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Jennifer Taylor

At the wonderful Stern Auditorium, on the night of Tuesday, December 9th, 2025, I had the privilege to attend an excellent concert—presented by Carnegie Hall—of music by Johannes Brahms, featuring the fine Chamber Orchestra of Europe, under the outstanding direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin. 

The event started brilliantly with a superb and especially dynamic reading of the marvelous Tragic Overture. Soloists Veronika Eberle and Jean-Guihen Queyras then entered the stage for an accomplished account of the undervalued Concerto for Violin and Cello in A Minor, Op. 102, from 1887. The initial Allegro movement begins boldly but, after some challenging writing for the two virtuosi, it swiftly becomes more expansive—the development is unusually complex—and it ends forcefully. The ensuing Andante is largely melodious and lyrical, although with some “rebarbative” moments; it closes gently. The finale, marked Vivace ma non troppo, is energetic with dance-like rhythms and is often charming but with passages of greater intensity; it concludes affirmatively.

The second half of the evening was probably even stronger: a magnificent realization of the extraordinary Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68, completed in 1876 after a long genesis. The initial movement begins portentously with an Un poco sostenuto introduction—its much faster main body is highly passionate although with some leisurely interludes, finishing softly. The slow movement it precedes—its tempo is Andante sostenuto—is song-like and enchanting, often with a waltz-like quality—it too ends quietly. The succeeding, Un poco allegretto e grazioso movement is joyful and lively, while the finale has an Adagio introduction that is solemn and suspenseful; its main body begins majestically—much that follows is exultant and exhilarating and it builds to a powerful climax before closing triumphantly.

The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.