Mahler, Extra-Reduced for the River

NY Times Review August 24, 2009

 

By STEVE SMITH

Chamber-scale Mahler would appear to be the kind of oxymoron that George Carlin once fixated on, like jumbo shrimp. Mahler, high priest of an all-embracing symphonic gigantism, wrote works seemingly ill suited to the salon-scale conversion involved in a performance of his Symphony No. 4 by the Chelsea Symphony at Bargemusic on Saturday night.

True, Mahler’s Fourth is commonly cited as his most transparent, chamber-scale symphony. And there were precedents for the Bargemusic offering. In 1920 Erwin Stein, an Austrian writer, editor and arranger, made a reduced version of the work for Schoenberg’s Society for Private Musical Performances, an organization meant to champion modern music through carefully prepared concerts for small, discerning audiences. Stein’s version maintained most of Mahler’s instrumentation, replacing the bassoon, brass and harp parts with piano and harmonium.

A more recent arrangement by Yoon Jae Lee, a conductor and pianist, restored those missing parts. According to his program note from a 2006 performance by Ensemble 212, a chamber group he leads, Mr. Lee envisioned an orchestra of 26 to 34 players.

The Chelsea Symphony offered Mr. Lee’s version at Bargemusic, with one significant departure: Yaniv Segal, the conductor, said that with Mr. Lee’s permission the string sections had been further reduced to single players. The ensemble had a mere 16 instrumentalists.

The result was more illuminating than convincing. The lightness of Mahler’s original score was everywhere in evidence, with solos leaping out in unusually bold detail. Exchanges between Monica Davis, the first violinist, and Michael Haas, the cellist, were refined and attractive. Jesse Schiffman, the flutist; Stephen Zielinski, a clarinetist; and Emily DiAngelo, on oboe and English horn, made potent contributions throughout. Patrick Duff, the bassist, provided a firm foundation.

Still, transitions in the opening movement felt jarring, and the skeletal scherzo sounded more morbid than ironic. The adjusted arrangement worked best in a tender, practically Mozartean adagio and in an appropriately childlike finale that featured a fresh-voiced performance by Serena Benedetti, an appealing soprano. Occasional patches of rough ensemble (possibly because of choppy waters) were easily overlooked during the earnest, vibrant account.

The concert opened with Mr. Lee’s similarly reduced arrangement of Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” again pared down by Mr. Segal. Here the results were less successful: Mr. Schiffman was an eloquent soloist, but Debussy’s hazy shimmers and voluptuous lolls eluded the lean complement. Too often secondary wind figures overshadowed primary string lines.

Ms. Benedetti struggled with a few isolated top notes during a warmly lyrical performance of Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” especially in a final line delivered at a hush. But those problems hardly lessened the impact of a lissome, sweetly sung account, sensitively accompanied by Mr. Segal and his players.

Rob Schwimmer will perform on Thursday and the Voxare Quartet on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Bargemusic, Fulton Ferry Landing, next to the Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn; (718) 624-2083, bargemusic.org.

New Release for Nadja Salerno-Sonenberg and The new Century Chamber Orchestra

NADJA SALERNO-SONNENBERG & THE NEW CENTURY CHAMBER ORCHESTRA NSS Music is proud to present Together, a landmark recording celebrating the musical union of toady’s foremost violinists, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, and San Francisco’s celebrated 17-year old conductorless string chamber orchestra, the NEW CENTURY CHAMBER ORCHESTRA. Ms.Salerno-Sonnenberg became Music Director and Concertmaster of the ensemble at the beginning of the 2008-2009 season. The CD is a showcase of passion, energy, musical skill and depth. An aural depiction of the joy these musicians feel performing together, the recording also includes several surprises… Release date August 11, 2009.

Ms. Sonenberg will be performing with teh Austin Symphony during teh 2009-2010 season.

Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers to Join Faculty at UT’s Butler School of Music

AUSTIN,Texas — Internationally renowned violinist Anne Akiko Meyers will join the faculty of the Butler School of Music at The University of Texas at Austin in fall 2009. Meyers is one of the most celebrated violinists of our time, earning worldwide recognition as a soloist, chamber musician and educator.

“The University of Texas at Austin is proud to offer a home for the top creative minds of the world,” said Provost Steven Leslie. “We strive to create a culture of excellence that generates intellectual excitement, transforms lives and develops leaders. A world-class talent, Anne Akiko Meyers sets the standard for artistic leadership and I am proud to welcome her to our faculty.”

Audiences in Austin know Meyers from her recent solo appearance at the Butler School of Music’s Starling Distinguished Violin Series and from her multiple performances with the Austin Symphony Orchestra.

“Anne Akiko Meyers is a celebrated concert violinist of the very highest order,” said Doug Dempster, dean of the College of Fine Arts. “She performs with technical virtuosity that never overwhelms her musicality. She performs with an unmistakably lush tone that she uses to explore an adventuresome repertoire. I’m looking forward to her extraordinary standard of professionalism and artistry coming to The University of Texas at Austin.”

Meyers’ portfolio includes multiple premieres of works by composers such as David Baker, John Corigliano, Jennifer Higdon, Wynton Marsalis, Olivier Messiaen and Somei Satoh among others. She has recorded more than 20 albums, brings a commitment to teaching and new music, and remains a participant in community outreach programs around the world.

“I am thrilled at the opportunity to work with the incredibly talented faculty and build on the inspiration the Butlers have afforded The University of Texas at Austin,” said Meyers. “I believe the students and quality of music making will be the talk of the world. I look forward to passing on the traditions that I learned from my mentors and incredible teachers throughout my life.”

In addition to teaching master classes globally, she has been a panelist at the Juilliard-hosted Starling-Delay Symposium and has adjudicated numerous competitions. She was recently the first violinist to be named Regent’s Lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“Ms. Meyers has achieved much in her 20 years of concertizing around the world,” said B. Glenn Chandler, director of the Butler School of Music. “I am very pleased that she has decided to make our school the place where she will now focus her attention on passing those performance skills on to the next generation of young violinists.”

In her concert career, Meyers has been a regular guest at some of the most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw, the Hollywood Bowl, Lincoln Center and Suntory Hall. She has also performed with some of the world’s most recognized orchestras, including the Boston Symphony, London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, l’Orchestre de Paris, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic, Tokyo’s NHK Symphony and the Vienna Symphony.

For Maestro Maazel, It’s on to the Coda

NY Times ~ June 14, 2009

 

By DANIEL J. WAKIN

SINGING in a soft falsetto, the conductor Lorin Maazel lifted his voice through the genteel din of lunch at the Lotos Club: “Tutto nel mondo è burla, whummm!” — imitating the orchestra. “L’uomo è nato burlone.” It was a line from “Falstaff,” Verdi’s quicksilver late opera, that happens to be accompanied by one of the greatest double fugues ever written, Mr. Maazel said.

The translation?

“Everything in the world is a joke, and man is the biggest jokester,” he said. “That’s more or less where I’m at, mentally and emotionally.”

Journalistic encounters with the cerebral, musically brilliant Mr. Maazel are unpredictable. He can be dismissive, censorious, attentive or engaging, attitudes also encountered by the musicians who play for him. On this day in early June he was philosophical.

Maybe it was the occasion: an interview looking toward the end of his last season as music director of the New York Philharmonic, a professional association he calls one of the happiest of his life. Maybe it was his age, 79, roughly the same as Verdi’s when he wrote “Falstaff.”

“Nobody is older than me,” Mr. Maazel said. “I’ve been working on getting older for 79 years.”

Over four hours (with his own digital recorder running), he talked about his post-Philharmonic plans: a series of choice guest-conducting engagements, a return to composition, a new summer festival at his Virginia farm. In typical Maazel fashion the conversation ranged over Montaigne, the Greek philosophers, old-fashioned American slang and the role of musicians in politics.

The leitmotif running through the maestro’s musings was that life had brought him to a new level of “mellow,” a kind of gimlet-eyed distance from the follies of humanity. It is a view of Falstaff more Shakespearean than Verdian.

“I remember once reading that what we are living, we may not be living at all,” he said. “We may just be characters in God’s dreams” — he paused and dropped his voice — “or nightmares. I don’t happen to believe it, but it’s a wonderful concept. If that were true, we’re all moving about in some god’s, or God’s, fantasy. That’s kind of unbelievable. Very scary to think about it.”

Maybe there was another reason for Mr. Maazel’s cosmic frame of mind. His life as a music director of great orchestras is reaching an end. He defines the notion of a magnificent maestro who jets among podiums as a guest conductor while moving between music directorships around the world. He is proud of never having had to ask for a job, he said, “which I suppose in a way is the ultimate arrogance.”

He was artistic director at the Deutsche Oper Berlin from 1965 to 1971, led the Cleveland Orchestra for 10 years until 1982, moved on to the Vienna State Opera, then the Pittsburgh Symphony, then the Bavarian Radio Symphony in Munich and finally the opera house in Valencia, Spain, and the New York Philharmonic.

Mr. Maazel has agreed to run the house in Valencia — the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía — for an additional two years because a designated successor withdrew. But that will be it for permanent jobs.

“After the New York Philharmonic one doesn’t take positions,” he said. “That’s the ultimate. I’d always felt that way.”

He will cherry-pick guest appearances. Next season he will do extended tours with the Vienna Philharmonic and the Philharmonia Orchestra of London and spend two weeks at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has engagements through January 2014, he said, and no plans to retire.

“I was thinking about early retirement at the age of 95, but I probably will change my mind when I get there,” said Mr. Maazel, whose father is 106.

Conducting has been extremely lucrative for Mr. Maazel. Three seasons ago he received $2.8 million from the New York Philharmonic alone, according to the latest figures available. He operates a 550-acre farm in Castleton, Va., at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains. He and his wife, the actress Dietlinde Turban-Maazel, built a 131-seat theater there and have been putting on operas, concerts and other performances over the last dozen years.

The operation has coalesced into a summer festival to be held for the first time this July 3 through 19. It will focus on chamber opera and mount four Benjamin Britten works this summer. It will also include master classes for young instrumentalists, singers and conductors. Mr. Maazel has engaged members of the New York Philharmonic to coach.

The Maazels provide the grounds and housing for the more than 200 participants. And they will be waiting in the wings to make up any shortfalls in the $1.5 million budget, which is financed by individual donations and a six-figure sum from Rolex. As part of the sponsorship deal Rolex provided Mr. Maazel with a watch made of what he called unostentatious white gold. “This tells you everything about me,” he said, displaying it proudly.

Mr. Maazel will oversee the conducting students. “Apparently folks out there have been wondering for years when the time would come where a major conductor would sit back and say, ‘Now it’s time for me to tell all of you what this is really all about,’ ” he said.

There are younger conductors who are good teachers, he acknowledged. “I’m talking about someone who is one foot in the grave,” he said. “Not many of these folks can say that they played string quartets with Mischa Elman. How many people have played with Jascha Heifetz? How many people have sat down and talked with Rachmaninoff who are alive today? I happen to be one of these people. That is significant.”

It’s true that few conductors alive can boast of the experiences of Mr. Maazel, who made his New York conducting debut at 9 and worked his way up through regional opera houses and orchestras. As a violinist with the Pittsburgh Symphony early in his career he also played with some of the most eminent conductors of the 20th century. It was nothing he brought about, Mr. Maazel said. “I had these opportunities and am grateful to have had them.”

He describes himself as a loner and an independent person. He has no management and a reputation for aloofness among musicians. Those qualities would seem at odds with the nurturing musical community he wants to build on his farm. But they are not incompatible.

“The principle is, it’s participant friendly,” Mr. Maazel said. “It’s not about me. It’s about the folks who take part.” The master-class program, he added, is “really an offshoot of my thought that these young people should be mentored.”

In his long career Mr. Maazel has attracted plenty of rockets from music critics and the musicians who played for him. Then again, orchestras are famous for having strong opinions about conductors.

No member of the Philharmonic will argue with the proposition that Mr. Maazel is a master of conducting technique, that he is a maestro with a tremendous grasp of the score and a superb set of ears. He also earns praise from many for the efficiency of his rehearsals and the ability to identify and fix problems quickly.

“What I appreciate most in him is his incredible grasp of music making and getting the result of what he wants,” said Hanna Lachert, a violinist in the Philharmonic. “It made our lives easier and more joyful.”

Like others Ms. Lachert praised Mr. Maazel for maintaining the orchestra’s high level, the product of improvements by the previous music director, Kurt Masur, and for hiring excellent players. But strong undercurrents of criticism surface: namely that Mr. Maazel sometimes seems uninvolved, even emotionless, on the podium. “Sometimes the level of disinterest is astounding,” said Carol Webb, another violinist. On the positive side, she added, “He stays out of our way and trusts us and lets us play.”

Some players fault what they see as Mr. Maazel’s tendency to distort or manipulate a phrase. “He can be very idiosyncratic and sometimes arbitrary,” said Judith Nelson, a violist, who also called Mr. Maazel “uninvolved.” Other players echoed those views but declined to speak publicly.

But even these players praise Mr. Maazel’s musicianship and say he is capable of exciting, dynamic performances. “His technical expertise is unmatched,” Ms. Nelson said. “The man has the best chops I’ve ever seen.”

Mr. Maazel gushes about the Philharmonic. In contrast to most of his other tenures, he said, “in the seven years I have been here there has never been a glitch, a bump, an angry word, never an unpleasant moment.”

“I really do love this orchestra,” he added. “They’re such fine people.”

What did he give them? Self-esteem, Mr. Maazel said. “When I arrived, the orchestra was not absolutely feeling totally good about itself,” he said. “I tried to make them realize how marvelous they really are, to put them at their ease.”

He broadened the orchestra’s repertory, he said, and restored attention to neglected areas like the “Brandenburg” Concertos of Bach. Concert performances of operas like Strauss’s “Elektra” and Ravel’s “Enfant et les Sortilèges” were considered landmarks. Attendance rose to 90 percent of capacity from 81 percent on his watch.

Mr. Maazel is a composer, and his 2005 opera, “1984,” is scheduled for performance at his Valencia house. Other unidentfied companies are interested, he said. Now, after a hiatus from composing, he said, he plans to write music of a “much lighter nature.”

Despite all Mr. Maazel’s professions of a newly relaxed nature, he has not lost the pugnaciousness that led to bloody noses in the Los Angeles and Pittsburgh schoolyards of his youth.

He recalled his meeting with the iconoclastic composer Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne, Germany, years ago. Stockhausen referred to the “sentimental weakness of German Jewish immigrants” who kept alive an “obscene love” for Romantic music, Mr. Maazel said, then suggested that Mr. Maazel come close to a speaker to hear a piece of his. “A tremendous blast came out of it which almost destroyed my eardrum, which he knew perfectly well would happen,” Mr. Maazel said. “Total monster.”

Mr. Maazel returned several times to criticism of his involvement with the Philharmonic’s trip to North Korea last year. After it was announced, he said, “all of a sudden folks are crawling out from under a rock and saying, ‘How can he go and conduct the New York Philharmonic in this ghastly country of repressed liberty?’ ”

“These guys were talking about the horrors of insane Communist repression,” he continued. “I mean, I was there before these guys were born, in Moscow, Sofia, Budapest, Prague, Warsaw. I’m talking about 40 years back, when these guys were still in diapers. I saw that world. I know more about it then they will ever know.”

The North Korea trip was a “triumph of cultural diplomacy,” Mr. Maazel said, but an unintended one.

“I don’t see myself as a messianic promoter of international peace,” he added, “bringing peoples together, then capitalizing on this very laudable intention and promoting myself as the ultimate peacemaker. I don’t do that. Several of my colleagues may do so.”

That category would seem to include the Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim, a man and musician Mr. Maazel professes to admire greatly. Mr. Barenboim, a vocal proponent of Palestinian rights, has created musical projects to bring Arabs and Jews together.

“If we’re going to address the inequities and the injustices of the world and the suppression of people,” Mr. Maazel said, “then certainly a much bigger problem is Sudan.”

Still, he added, he appreciates Mr. Barenboim’s efforts. “So God bless Danny,” he said. “But Danny is Danny, and Lorin is Lorin. I just happen to think that music in itself, art in itself, is a political instrument.” Associating it with a political movement, Mr. Maazel suggests, weakens its power.

As he approaches his ninth decade, Mr. Maazel said, he has finally had an inkling of mortality. “It’s beginning to dawn on me at my advanced age,” he said, “we are not immortal. The idea of dying is like a joke or a literary device. It’s not all that bad. So you fall into eternal sleep. So what?”

The interview had progressed to the downstairs grill room of the club, where pictures of eminent members and dreamy portraits of nude women fill the walls. On the way out Mr. Maazel could not resist sitting down at an upright piano, not in the best of tune.

“I love these honky-tonk pianos,” he said, and played in the lush style of a 1950s cocktail pianist, closing with “The Man I Love.”

Amid West Bank’s Turmoil, the Pull of Strings

NY Times ~ June 2, 2009

 

By DANIEL J. WAKIN

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The young man was handy with tools. A carpenter’s nephew, he liked to fix chairs, windows and door locks. At other times he would stand idly on the street corner.

Ramzi Aburedwan noticed him. Like the Pied Piper, Mr. Aburedwan, a French-trained violist raised in a Palestinian refugee camp, was trying to lead Palestinian children into the world of music: namely, a music center he was establishing in an old quarter of the town.

But he had other ideas for the young man. The center had received dozens of donated string instruments from Europe: instruments prone to cracks, broken bridges and damaged scrolls.

The young man, Shehade Shelaldeh, would become the violin repairman.

And so, two years later, after absorbing lessons from visiting volunteer luthiers and a three-month apprenticeship in Italy, Mr. Shelaldeh, 18, has his own instrument repair shop. It is in a former garage around the corner from the music center, Al Kamandjati (“the Violinist”). He has learned to fix instruments and replace the hair on bows. He has already made two violins, one with a tiny Palestinian flag on the tailpiece, which anchors the strings.

“It’s a beautiful feeling,” he said one day in late April. “I want to work here and teach people.” It is the precision of the work that appeals to him, he added, as well as the peace that comes from working by himself, late into the night.

In a place all too familiar with the sounds of gunfire, military vehicles and explosions, he said, “Al Kamandjati taught us to hear music.”

The center, and Mr. Shelaldeh’s acquisition of a trade born in the workshops of 17th-century Italy, are part of a recently kindled interest in classical music, both Western and Oriental, in the occupied territories. Parents, students and teachers here say it comes from the realization that culture is an effective assertion of national identity, particularly at a moment when the prospects for a Palestinian state seem to be receding. It is also a way to give idle young people something to focus on.

In Mr. Shelaldeh’s case, classical music means a career. One of his main teachers, Paolo Sorgentone, reached at his workshop in Florence, Italy, last month, said that while the young man had a lot to learn, he was a natural, “both in his hands and in his head.”

“From the beginning he showed a rapidity and intelligence to understand exactly what needed to be done,” Mr. Sorgentone said. “He has an intuition for this.” In a few years, he added, Mr. Shelaldeh will become an “excellent luthier.”

Mr. Sorgentone said he had advised Mr. Shelaldeh and his family that he should gain real training and suggested Newark College in England, well known for its violin-making and restoration program. He applied and is waiting to hear whether he has been accepted, and whether there will be enough money to send him.

Mr. Shelaldeh’s story, in a way, reflects the biography of Mr. Aburedwan, Al Kamandjati’s founder. As a boy in Al Amari refugee camp near here, Mr. Aburedwan was an industrious newspaper seller who slept in a room with his grandfather. Together they would listen to classical Arabic music on the radio. During the first intifada, which started in late 1987, he was photographed throwing a rock at Israeli soldiers. The picture was widely circulated.

One of his newspaper buyers, a vocal opponent of the Israeli occupation, would take foreign journalists to interview him. The same woman suggested to a visiting violin teacher from Amman, Jordan, that the boy might be a good prospect for a string workshop the teacher was offering.

The teacher showed him a viola. “Immediately I fell in love,” said Mr. Aburedwan, now 30. He began studying locally, and the American and European teachers who periodically passed through took an interest, struck by his curiosity and rapid absorption of technique. He spent a summer session at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music in New Hampshire. The French Cultural Center in Ramallah gave him a grant to study viola at the conservatory in Angers, France.

Toward the end of his eight years at the conservatory, Mr. Aburedwan decided to establish a music school in his hometown. He rounded up donations of money and instruments, invited colleagues to the area for workshops and pushed for the renovation of a building in Ramallah’s old town. Al Kamandjati opened in January 2006. Operating on a shoestring budget of about $400,000 a year, it now has about 400 students studying both Western and Oriental instruments.

“I want these children to achieve something,” Mr. Aburedwan said. “That’s my dream, that they have a way of expression, a way of living. I want these kids to participate in the building of a Palestinian cultural future.”

Mr. Aburedwan said he saw the young Mr. Shelaldeh, whose family — including eight children — lived nearly next door to the center, loitering about. He eventually lured five of Mr. Shelaldeh’s siblings into music lessons. The oud and the violin did not quite take with Mr. Shelaldeh. But Mr. Aburedwan knew of his propensity to work with his hands.

“He was like a technician of everything,” Mr. Aburedwan said.

So when two violin makers, one French and one Belgian, came to work on the center’s instruments, he pushed Mr. Shelaldeh to spend time watching. They gave him small tasks, like cleaning tools, and began showing him basic woodcutting skills.

Every few months, luthiers sympathetic to the project would visit to fix instruments and pass lessons on to Mr. Shelaldeh, giving him the kind of personal attention the average violin restoration student would not normally receive.

“The instrument makers were touched,” Mr. Aburedwan said, and gave as much as they could.

The first thing Mr. Shelaldeh learned was how to cut wood for tools and how to hold a knife. Some Italians taught him how to make bridges, pegs and a sound post. An American showed him how to fix bows. Gianluca Montenegro, an associate of Mr. Sorgentone, came from Florence for a month, and they worked together all day, every day. Mr. Shelaldeh learned how to make a finger board.

Then he was invited to Italy for three months, starting last July, to apprentice with several firms, spending a week in Cremona, the Italian violin-making center, where he bought a special machine used to curve wood.

There he finished his first instrument, a violin based on a Stradivarius model, with a small Palestinian flag decal on the base. He also took back books on violin-making and history. Mr. Sorgentone gave him a video on violin-making, Mr. Shelaldeh said, “if I forget something.”

He built his tool collection slowly. The center bought a batch, and visiting luthiers left some behind.

In his workshop a string held bridges lined up by size. Another string held five violins in various forms of undress. Tools were arrayed on the wall over his work bench: a row of chisels (not nearly enough, he said), a tiny hacksaw, needle-nose pliers, clamps, curved instruments used to get inside the violin through the f-holes. A yellow paper outline of a violin was pasted above, the shape of the Guarneri del Gesù King Joseph from 1737, a renowned instrument.

At work one day, his hair fashionably gelled upward, Mr. Shelaldeh applied himself to replacing a poor-quality, ill-fitting bridge on a Chinese violin. He clamped a block of wood to his workbench and put the new bridge in a slot on the block. He removed the blade from a plane and carefully sharpened it on a moistened stone, then passed it over a lathe. Sparks flew.

“My dream,” he said, “is to become a famous instrument repairer.”

The Birth of a New Quartet…The Dripping Strings!

May 2009~

Dripping Springs/Wimberley, Texas 

Announcing the formation of a new quartet. we have a long way to go to replace the Guaneri Quartet, but we’ve taken our first baby steps!

After 43 Years, a Quartet Bids Farewell to the City

May 19, 2009

Music Review~ NY Times | Guarneri String Quartet

By STEVE SMITH

“What witch’s brew did the Guarneri Quartet concoct to stay together for so long, while most other chamber music groups have weathered turnovers or self-destructed entirely?” Arnold Steinhardt, the first violinist of the Guarneri String Quartet from the day it was founded at the Marlboro Music Festival in 1964, poses the question in the first chapter of “Indivisible by Four,” his insightful, entertaining 1998 memoir of the group.

Mr. Steinhardt is hardly the only one to have pondered the remarkable longevity of the Guarneri Quartet, which endured for 45 years with just one personnel change: David Soyer, the founding cellist, left in 2001. The remaining members — Mr. Steinhardt, the violinist John Dalley and the violist Michael Tree — carried on with a new cellist, Peter Wiley. Tackling his own query, Mr. Steinhardt wrote that the greatness of the string quartet repertory had been sufficient to overshadow interpersonal difficulties.

The concert that the Guarneri Quartet presented on Saturday night at the Metropolitan Museum of Art presented a new question: at what point should a popular, successful group say goodbye? The event was the quartet’s farewell to New York City, ending a 43-year series at the museum. (It has a few more performances scheduled around the United States, with its final concert in October on Amelia Island, Fla.)

Unsurprisingly, the concert drew a substantial audience. A standing-room line extended from the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium lobby into an adjacent hall. Onstage, the performers’ seats were surrounded by dozens more that had been added for audience members. Before a note was played, the quartet was greeted with a lengthy ovation.

But playing music for a living is strenuous, especially given the packed schedule that the Guarneri Quartet has long maintained. Technique and stamina eventually start to fade. An account of Beethoven’s Quartet No. 12 in E flat (Op. 127) was not without blemish, and you could wish for a more visionary intensity. Still, the Guarneri players performed with warmth and poise, and achieved an almost uncanny unanimity of expression.

Schubert’s String Quintet in C, for which Mr. Soyer rejoined his old comrades, was finer still. Mr. Soyer and Mr. Wiley interacted eloquently in the first movement. The opening theme of the second movement — Mr. Steinhardt’s solo phrases answered by Mr. Soyer’s plucked notes over rapt chords from the others — was a sublime moment. When it repeated with Mr. Steinhardt playing pizzicato, a melancholy sensation of absence was palpable.

Similarly, the joy and energy these players brought to the boisterous Scherzo and burly Allegretto compensated for rough edges. An instantaneous ovation was punctuated with bravos, whistles, cheers and a few lusty howls.

The Guarneri members and Mr. Soyer accepted the lengthy outpouring with the same dignity that had always shaped their playing. No encore was offered; the group’s work was done.

Lincoln Center Upbeat About Face-Lift

May 11, 2009 ~ NY TImes

By ROBIN POGREBIN

When Lincoln Center kicks off its 50th anniversary festivities on Monday with performances by the likes of Itzhak Perlman and Wynton Marsalis, it will, in a way, be celebrating the future more than commemorating the past.

The event, after all, will be taking place in the newly renovated Alice Tully Hall, which reopened in February. Its auditorium has received rave architectural and acoustical reviews, and its lobby cafe, at 65, is attracting so many people that extra seating has been added.

Lincoln Center still has more than $200 million to raise in a tough economic climate to pay off the last of the redevelopment’s $1.2 billion bill. And plans are still unclear for a renovation of Avery Fisher Hall, a major undertaking that is not part of this phase of redevelopment.

But all around the campus are signs that the overhaul of Lincoln Center, the country’s largest performing arts center, is in the home stretch. On balmy days people have been hanging out on the new bleachers, opposite Alice Tully’s entrance on the corner of Broadway and West 65th Street, and on the steps leading down to the front doors, just as Lincoln Center officials had hoped.

“There’s a theme here, and the theme is how best in the 21st century to maximize the use of these precious public spaces,” Reynold Levy, the president of Lincoln Center, said in an interview. “Also for the general visitor to feel welcome, feel they’re invited and have a place to hang out. We’re multiplying the number of places people can say, ‘Meet me at. …’ ”

The skeleton of the green roof that will cover a new restaurant overlooking the north plaza reflecting pool, in front of Lincoln Center Theater, is taking shape; it is scheduled to open in September 2010. A black-box theater designed by the architect Hugh Hardy and suitable for smaller, experimental productions — originally supposed to take up space in the center’s garage — is planned for the roof of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, though it still needs city approval. The grove of trees, with scattered seating, in front of the library is about to open to the public.

And the whole campus now has free WiFi.

Among other changes to come are the openings of the new visitor space and discount-ticket hub in the former Harmony Atrium, between 62nd and 63rd Streets, and of WNET’s glass-walled public-television studio, on Broadway and 66th Street, next to Alice Tully. By 2011 a new pedestrian bridge will span 65th Street; conceptual designs have been approved.

In the David H. Koch Theater, home to New York City Ballet and New York City Opera, the work has been expanded to add two side aisles to the orchestra level. While the opera has been displaced by the construction — which includes a larger orchestra pit and new seats — the ballet is managing to perform around the renovation work. The theater officially reopens in November.

But the redevelopment is not without remaining challenges, including how to pay for it all. Having raised $940 million, Lincoln Center has $235 million more to go. The center’s constituent groups, which are sharing the cost, have $100 million left to raise.

While eliciting contributions is now more of an uphill climb than when the plans were conceived, Mr. Levy said he remained optimistic. “The economic climate has made the balance of the fund-raising slower,” he said. “People feel they need a little more time to make an initial gift or a supplemental gift. But the reception has been positive.”

“We’re going to raise every penny of this money,” he added. “We’re confident about that.”

One fund-raising effort is centered on the new Columbus Avenue staircase and promenade, which Lincoln Center is naming after Beverly Sills, the soprano who died in 2007. In her years on the campus Sills presided as chairwoman of Lincoln Center and of the Metropolitan Opera, led the New York City Opera and served on the board of Lincoln Center Theater. Donors are being encouraged to make gifts in her honor.

Another way that Lincoln Center will help pay the bills is by turning over its plazas and theaters to the Fashion Week tents that for the last 16 years have filled Bryant Park for a week each February and September. The fashion shows will move in September 2010, and while Mr. Levy would not disclose the value of the five-year agreement, he said it would be “very meaningful for the upkeep of the campus.”

That leaves Avery Fisher Hall. The British architect Norman Foster won the competition to redesign the inside in 2002, and the New York Philharmonic board approved his plans in 2005, but since then the redesign has stalled. Lincoln Center is in discussions with the Philharmonic to frame a new constituency agreement — the current one expires in June 2011 — after which they will address a renovation, Mr. Levy said.

“Even though we’re on one 16-acre campus, the life of each of these institutions is organic, and they’re ready when they’re ready,” he added. “I think it’s a mistake to force this. It’s such a major commitment of time and sweat equity, such a displacement and sacrifice for employees and audiences.”

Zarin Mehta, president of the Philharmonic, said the orchestra would proceed when the timing is right. “The renovation of the hall, whichever form it takes, will have to take place,” he said. “This is economically not the best time to do anything.”

Mr. Levy suggested that the choice of architect and the scope of the renovation, which had been limited to the building’s interior, should be revisited in light of the campus’s new aesthetic, by Diller Scofidio & Renfro.

“I think we need a fresh look on how best to approach it in light of all that’s happened,” Mr. Levy said. “There are new board members at the Philharmonic, and we’ve learned a lot about architecture ourselves. We’ve visited a lot of halls. We’re smarter and better prepared clients. In light of that we’ll sit down together and take a look.”

Mr. Mehta does not seem to share this view. “The choice of Foster was made by a joint committee of the Philharmonic and Lincoln Center, and the discussion of anything else has not taken place,” he said. “I see no reason to change.”

More Osmo, please!!!! A Conductor Arrives, With a Nymph Who Flees

Having listened to Osmo Vensca and The Minnestoa Orchestra on Public Radio for years myslef, I can only imagine that this was one amazing evening! I wish I had been there!

May 6, 2009

Music Review | Minnesota Orchestra ~ NY Times

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

Ever since the Finnish conductor Osmo Vanska became the music director of the Minnesota Orchestra in 2003, he has been inspiring the players, delighting critics and ushering in an era of growth and dynamism for this 106-year-old ensemble.

The only worry voiced by audiences in the Twin Cities is that some other American orchestra may try to steal him. When he arrived in Minneapolis, Mr. Vanska announced his intention to make the orchestra one of the best in America, whatever that means.

The secret is out. Mr. Vanska, lanky and exuberant at 56, led the Minnesotans in an impressively played and exciting program of Sibelius and Beethoven at Carnegie Hall on Monday night.

The program opened with an engrossing account of “The Wood Nymph,” a rarely heard Sibelius tone poem, completed in 1895 when the composer was 30. This was the work’s first hearing at Carnegie Hall. Based on a poem by Viktor Rydberg, it tells of a handsome young man, heading for a party one evening, who wanders into mystifying terrain, where he encounters an alluring wood nymph and falls for her immediately.

At the start of the 25-minute score, the orchestra’s mellow brass and rippling strings played a robust march that evokes the hero bounding through the woods. Yet strangely obsessive triplet-figures in the violins suggest that even in this early work the visionary Sibelius of later years was lurking.

In one dreamy passage, thick, pungent string chords and a rapturous cello solo convey the man and the nymph in a scene of romantic bliss. But the nymph never returns, and the misery of the distraught man, who lives out his life alone, came through here in the vivid and intense performance of this volatile and finally bittersweet work.

Mr. Vanska’s Finnish background may give him an edge in conducting Sibelius. Still, nationality is overrated as a key to insight, as the charismatic Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos demonstrated in a magnificent account of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto. It is hard to play this teeming 35-minute work, especially the rhapsodic 16-minute first movement, with the requisite expressive freedom, while also bringing coherence to the music. Mr. Kavakos made that balancing act seem utterly natural in his commanding yet intimate performance, aided sensitively by Mr. Vanska and the orchestra.

In the final movement, a robust, earthy and fitful dance, Mr. Kavakos showed what it means to be a pro. The chin rest on his violin came loose. So during a free moment he switched violins with Jorja Fleezanis, the concertmaster, and continued playing the piece with her instrument. She tried to fix the violin during the concerto but could not.

After the performance, during the enormous ovation, Mr. Kavakos gave a big hug of contrition to Mr. Vanska and a big hug of solidarity to Ms. Fleezanis. He even played a quietly brilliant encore, “Remembrances of Alhambra” by Francisco Tarrega, on the borrowed violin.

The ovation for the bracing, fresh and texturally transparent account of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony that ended the concert was also ecstatic. For me the performance was perhaps too exacting and emphatic. But it was a pleasure to hear the piece played with such rhythmic vitality and scrupulous attention to detail, free of an interpretive agenda.

Mr. Vanska and the Minnesotans have won deserved acclaim in the last few years for his recordings of the complete Beethoven symphonies on the Bis label — just another hallmark of the still-new Vanska era at the Minnesota Orchestra.

Honoring the Leaders and Mission ~ American Composers Orchestra

May 4, 2009

Music Review ~ NY Times

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

The American Composers Orchestra practices truth in advertising. As its name implies, its mission is to perform new, recent and neglected works by American composers. On Friday night at Zankel Hall it offered a program of premieres by Lukas Ligeti and Derek Bermel and the New York premiere of the Guitar Concerto by Robert Beaser. A piece from 2007 by the Austrian composer Thomas Larcher was slipped in, proving that this open-minded orchestra is willing to reach beyond America for a worthy piece now and then.

But the other purpose of the evening was to honor artistic leaders who have been crucial to the orchestra’s success: Mr. Beaser, its artistic director; Mr. Bermel, just finishing his tenure as composer in residence; and Dennis Russell Davies, the conductor laureate, who founded the orchestra 32 years ago and looked elated to be back.

Mr. Bermel’s work, “A shout, a whisper, and a trace,” was particularly effective and often exhilarating. Mr. Bermel draws from myriad genres: jazz, rock, gospel, cerebral modernism, you name it. That his interests are so wide-ranging could prevent him from forging a distinctive voice were his ear not so keen and his technique so assured.

Mr. Bermel says that this 20-minute piece was inspired by his reflection on Bartok’s final five years, as a transplant to New York. Though relieved to have left Hungary, his homeland, under the Nazis, Bartok maintained a personal connection to his musical roots.

Mr. Bermel’s piece begins with earthy, foursquare tunes and rhythmic riffs that seem reminiscent of Bartok works that incorporate Eastern European folk music. The tunes alternate with clattering instrumental outbursts that could be frenzied ritornellos in a neo-Baroque concerto.

As the piece unfolds, it is fun to imagine what sources Mr. Bermel may have had in mind: brass chorale touched with tartly jazzy harmonies; Coplandesque modal musings; a ruminative middle movement with dense, blurry impressionistic string chords. But the allusions somehow enhance the voice that comes through. The music is strangely alluring and constantly surprising.

Mr. Ligeti’s “Labyrinth of Clouds” is a 25-minute concerto for marimba lumina, an unusual electronic instrument. By playing on its surface with mallets and adjusting levers, Mr. Ligeti, who performed the solo deftly, evoked a prepared piano, the metallic tones of a zither and all manner of electronic beeps and static.

The music is rich with atmosphere, piled-up harmonies and Minimalistic patterns. The element of confrontation between a soloist and an orchestra that has long been characteristic of the concerto genre does not much interest Mr. Ligeti here. For the most part the solo was folded into the overall orchestral sound, except during a cadenza, partly improvised, that was riveting.

As for prepared pianos, Mr. Larcher used one (a Steinway fitted with rubber pieces, screws and a metal ball to slide atop the strings) in his “Böse Zellen” (“Malignant Cells”) for piano and orchestra. He performed the solo part. After the marimba lumina, the prepared piano sounded endearingly old-fashioned. But Mr. Larcher used it with enormous imagination to create waves of clanking percussion, perpetual-motion drum toccatas and more.

Mr. Beaser’s Guitar Concerto was written for the soloist, Eliot Fisk, an old friend and Yale classmate. That Mr. Fisk had great input into the piece’s composition was a wise move; the writing for guitar was very effective, with spiraling passagework, oscillating chords and poignant melodies. For me, the music was too safely neo-Romantic and, at 30 minutes, self-indulgent.

Mr. Davies, still wiry and youthful at 65, drew colorful and compelling performances from the excellent players.