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Cleveland Orchestra Excels with Mahler 9

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Parent Category: Other Festivals
Category: Music
Published on Friday, 02 February 2018 15:09
Written by Jack Angstreich
 
A wonderful season of orchestral music at Carnegie Hall continued strongly on the evening of Tuesday, January 23rd, with the eagerly awaited appearance of the outstanding Cleveland Orchestra under the extraordinary direction of Franz Welser-Möst, one of the finest contemporary conductors. (It was the first of two concerts on consecutive nights, with the second devoted to Franz Joseph Haydn’s The Seasons.)
 
The program began intriguingly with the New York premiere of Stromab (Downstream) by the prizewinning Johannes Maria Staub, who was the Cleveland Orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow from 2007 through 2009. The work was co-commissioned by the orchestra along with Carnegie Hall—as part of their 125 Commissions Project—the Royal Danish Orchestra, and the Vienna Konzerthaus. Stromabwas inspired by the novella The Willows by the classic writer of ghost stories, Algernon Blackwood. Although the composer states that it was not his “intention to create program music”, the fifteen-minute score does effectively evoke uncanny events and is notable for its impressive orchestration.
 
The bulk of the concert was a masterly account of Gustav Mahler’s titanic Symphony No. 9, with the kaleidoscopic opening Andante intense, lyrical, and ruminative. The ensuing dance-music Scherzo was ebullient in its ironies, barring the more pensive interludes, while more madcap was the absurdist, fugal Allegro. The ethereal coda of the closing Adagio was ultimately exalting. The musicians received an enthusiastic ovation and I am surely not alone in excitedly looking forward to their return.

Wagner, Mahler &More from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

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Parent Category: Other Festivals
Category: Music
Published on Friday, 02 February 2018 15:01
Written by Jack Angstreich
Janine Jansen with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Photo by Richard Termine
 
 
A new year of orchestral music at Carnegie Hall opened brilliantly with the appearances on two consecutive evenings in January of the renowned Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under the superb direction of Daniele Gatti.
 
The magnificent program on Wednesday the 18th began gloriously with a masterly reading of Richard Wagner’s Prelude to Act III and Good Friday Spell from Parsifal, heavenly music too seldom heard in the concert hall. (Gatti conducted Parsifal marvelously in an unforgettable new production at the Metropolitan Opera in 2013.)
 
The remainder of the concert was devoted to an astonishing account of Anton Bruckner’s towering Symphony No. 9, especially apposite here for the work’s expression of the composer’s deep Wagnerian sympathies, with deliberate echoes of themes from Parsifal itself in the final movement. The musicians received an ardent ovation.
 
The second evening was also extraordinary, opening with a work of lesser eminence than the others in these programs, the nonetheless wonderful Violin Concerto No. 1 of Max Bruch, presented here in the best performance of this piece that I can recall hearing in the concert hall, a rendition notable for revealing the beauties of the composer’s undervalued orchestration. The excellent soloist was the lovely, appealing and celebrated Janine Jansen who wore a striking blue gown; she, with other musicians, treated the grateful audience to a beautiful encore: “Nana” from Manuel De Falla's Suite Espagnole II.
 
The highlight of the concert, however, was its second half, a gripping realization of the stunning Symphony No. 1 of Gustav Mahler, a perfect capstone to the two programs. The artists appropriately garnered rousing applause. I hope these outstanding musicians will return to New York before long and more often than hitherto.

Budapest Festival Orchestra Plays Bach & Beethoven at Lincoln Center

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Parent Category: Other Festivals
Category: Music
Published on Wednesday, 17 January 2018 20:52
Written by Jack Angstreich


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

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Parent Category: Other Festivals
Category: Music
Published on Saturday, 16 December 2017 20:51
Written by Jack Angstreich

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-Baroque—avant 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.

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