Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf might be the greatest musical work of the twentieth century, for one important reason — its lasting impact introducing countless children to classical music. Guggenheim’s Works & Process series has kept the tradition alive for more than a decade, presenting Peter and the Wolf every December, in a delightful production conceived, directed, narrated, and designed by Isaac Mizrahi.
The musicians of Ekmeles approached the work with reverence, under the baton of conductor Jeffrey Gavett, the performance was impressive for its cleanliness and lack of sentimentality. The percussion clangor was an eerie death knoll in the crypt’s acoustics, but never overpowered the tender, rounded vocals. Well-balanced, and perfectly in tune, and with floaty, unadorned diction, Lang’s Passion is a perfect showcase for the virtuosity of Ekmeles.
Visionary virtuoso Conrad Tao pounced onto the 92NY stage with an electrifying … program, which Tao called Rachmaninoff Songbook, explores his theory that upon Rachmaninoff’s move to New York in 1918, the Russian composer’s interest in American popular song and jazz influenced his compositions, and vice/versa.Zigzagging across time, Tao made his argument in an eclectic curation reflecting his varied enthusiasms and limitless skills.
Copland’s Statements, five movements for orchestra from 1935, have suffered the fate of being, as Botstein remarked, “the ugly duckling” of Copland’s orchestral output. Yet, they are precisely of a piece with the themes in the Met’s exhibit. This is Copland’s musical portrait of America during the Depression.
The New York Philharmonic gave the local premiere of his 2017 concert work Concerto for Two Pianos, composed expressly for the glamorous piano duo of Katia and Marielle Labèque. Semyon Bychkov was a beacon on the podium, emanating a love for the music. With a floating stance, and the hypnotic assurance of a wizard conjuring a spell, Bychkov extracted luxuriant playing from the musicians, suffusing David Geffen Hall with tidy sumptuousness.
CadenzaNYC’s Picks of the best classical music happening in New York City December 2023.
The Brahms work that concluded the evening remains the most transcendent — among the great composer’s best. Paul Huang, on the violin, and Juho Pohjonen, assuming duties at their keyboard, were completed by Watkins on the cello. The group began the first movement, Allegro moderato, at a bright tempo, setting an urgent pace for this large-scale work’s breadth of sensations. It’s symphonic in scope, yet structurally dense and rhythmically complex, with varied demands for each musician. Pohjonen transcended the piano part’s octave-heavy thickness, so that the first movement had soaring arcs, and in the sentimental coda, when the opening theme returns in the cello, everything seemed different. We emerge changed.
The piano recital is alive and well. 92NY’s Kaufmann Concert Hall — one of the city’s superior stages for solo piano — hosted Garrick Ohlsson, first and only American winner of the Chopin International Piano Competition, in his first all-Chopin concert for New York audiences in more than a decade. Ohlsson delivered a veritable masterclass not only in classical piano performance, but also the fine art of programming.
Stéphane Denève, alongside violin soioist Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, joins the NY Phil for a weighty concert that requires, and rewards, an old-fashioned attention span. The digital organ may merely suffice, acoustically, but when the Philharmonic’s inimitable low brass section are finally allowed to join the festivities, in bombastic, gloriously well-tuned fanfares, the audience is roused to their feet.
New York City’s veritable festival of Stephen Sondheim continued with a rare trio of performances of one of the deep cuts, The Frogs, in the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center. MasterVoices, formerly the Collegiate Chorale founded in 1941, has performed astoundingly diverse repertoire in recent years under the artistic direction of Ted Sperling.
Imani Winds has been making a case for the enduring relevance of the woodwind quintet for 27 years. But the twice Grammy-nominated group hadn’t performed at 92NY until now, joined on this occasion by pianist Terrence Wilson, buttressing two French classical works with Latin American music rooted in dance. It was a nicely balanced evening.
The Museum of Broadway finally opened on the main stem in the guise of an “an experiential, interactive museum,” nestled in the heart of Times Square, neighboring the Lyceum Theatre, one of Broadway’s oldest gems. The museum gives you your money’s worth, whether you’re a teenager making a WICKED-inspired pilgrimage to Oz, or a seasoned subscriber who remembers “when they saw the original production of ___.”
