In this exquisite recital Renée Fleming and Evgeny Kissin came together in a carefully curated program showcasing Romantic song along with a selection of piano solos. The soprano was wonderfully fresh voiced in the opener, Schubert’s ‘Suleika 1’. Combining vocal refinement, stunning phrasing and articulate delivery, she most effectively conveyed the anticipation of meeting her …
Originally scheduled for February 28, but postponed when Joshua Bell tested positive for Covid, Bell’s showier performance style contrasted intriguingly with Daniil Trifonov’s more understated manner. In Beethoven’s first of ten Sonatas for Piano and Violin, the pair performed it as a fluent and highly spirited conversation, overflowing with confidence and character. In the opening …
Fifty-five years after its only previous appearance at Carnegie Hall, the Helsinki Philharmonic returned, with a Finnish program, opening with a rousing rendition of ‘Lemminkäinen’s Return’, the final movement of the four-part Lemminkäinen Legends about one of the heroes of the Kalevala, Finland’s national epic, here recounting how the eponymous warrior, after dying in battle …
This chronological program opened with a bravura account of Bach. Abounding in unanticipated twists and turns, tempo changes and modulations, it is one of the composer’s most virtuosic and dramatic keyboard pieces. Kissin’s masterly but agreeably natural performance was totally effortless and unforced. The Fantasia was dashing and brilliant, and the Fugue superbly vital and …
In this gently unfolding recital, Emanuel Ax offered deeply moving music, flowing naturally without affectation, opening with Schubert’s three-movement winsomely charming Sonata in A, credibly dated 1819, the year in which the twenty-two-year-old composer and his close friend, the singer-composer Johann Michael Vogl spent a carefree summer in Steyr, Upper Austria. The buoyant music seemingly captures …
This Sibelius-themed program opened with a radiant interpretationof Sibelius’s rarely heard Luonnotar, one of his many works based on the Kalevala, Finland’s national epic poem. Singing in Finnish, and in total command throughout, Golda Schultz brought luminous voice, emotional weight and keen dramatic sense to the challenging vocal part, which describes the goddess Luonnotar’s descent …
Dawn was the unifying theme for the first of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s two Carnegie Hall appearances this season. Alborada del gracioso (the fourth movement of Ravel’s five-part piano cycle Miroirs, orchestrated by the composer), a morning song sung by a buffoon, this exuberant work is colored with Flamenco dance rhythms and Spanish flavors. Conducted …
Back in Carnegie Hall after four years, Gianandrea Noseda and the National Symphony Orchestra [Washington D.C.] opened with ‘Strands’, George Walker’s single-movement Sinfonia No.4, co-commissioned by the NSO in 2012, in celebration of the composer’s 90th-birthday, which alludes to two spirituals – ‘There is a Balm in Gilead’ and ‘Roll, Jordan, Roll’ – whose melodies …
National Symphony Orchestra/Gianandrea Noseda, with Daniil Trifonov, at Carnegie Hall Read More »
One night after its world premiere at home in Verizon Hall, the Philadelphia Orchestra brought John Luther Adams’s timely Vespers of the Blessed Earth to Carnegie Hall. Due to Illness, Yannick Nézet-Séguin was unable to lead either performance; in his place Donald Nally, the choral group’s regular conductor, stepped in and expertly coordinated the unusual …
Among Handel’s twenty-nine oratorios, one of the most spectacular is the pageant-like Solomon (1749), splendidly performed on this occasion. The anonymous libretto is based on stories in the First Book of Kings and the Second Book of Chronicles. The structure is unique, presenting Solomon’s reign not as a continuous narrative, but in a series of …
Harry Bicket conducts Handel’s Solomon at Carnegie Hall Read More »
