Sound Insights from Carnegie Hall

Fun with Folklore Urbano

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:00:00 +0000

This October, Folklore Urbano performed a Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concert, presented by The Weill Music Institute, at PS/MS 161M Harlem. The event was part of a free community arts fair that also featured local arts organizations, including the Apollo Theater, Community Works, Dance Theatre of Harlem, and others.

Click to view a slide show »

Applications for The Academy nearing deadline

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:00:00 +0000

This year, The Academy, a two-year leadership program, will select up to 20 of the world’s finest young professional musicians, offering professional experiences that include ensemble performances in Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School and Skidmore College; school partnerships within the New York City public school system; residencies at Skidmore College; and the opportunity to propose and develop community-based group projects.

Applications for the 2010–2012 Fellowship are available now and must be submitted electronically by 11:59 PM, on December 1, 2009. Apply now »

A video introduction to The Academy.

More video
Watch a video featuring musicians from The Academy performing the first movement from Brahms's Clarinet Quintet at WNYC's Jerome L. Greene Space »

Sneak peek: Handel's Messiah

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Composed in a three-week burst of inspiration, Handel’s Messiah endures as the composer’s most popular and well-known work. Controversial in its infancy for its theatric portrayal of the life of Jesus Christ, Handel’s oratorio is a fusion of religious reverence and secular drama that has established itself as an iconic part of holiday tradition. Despite its ubiquity, this music evades cliché through compelling musical force and manages to captivate listeners anew each year.

Excerpt from Handel's Messiah, ("Hallelujah!")

Related events: December 11, 2009 Les Violons du Roy

John Adams on El Niño

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:55:00 +0000

John Adams grew up in the 1960s, surrounded by music from disparate corners of the spectrum—Stockhausen to John Cage, Jimi Hendrix to The Rolling Stones. He explains that drawing his subject matter from contemporary life for his Christmas oratorio, El Niño, shouldn’t be cause for alarm.

Footage from The Making of El Niño, available at arthaus-musik.com.
Used courtesy of Arthaus Musik.

Soundbyte: Dorothea Röschmann

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Schumann’s song cycle Frauenliebe und -leben (Woman’s Love and Life) is sometimes viewed as a famously sexist work—a poem about a woman’s life and love, written and set to music by men. Jeremy Geffen, Carnegie Hall’s Director of Artistic Planning, describes how the subtlety and depth of a performer like Dorothea Röschmann, combined with Schumann’s talent for writing for both the human voice and the voice of the piano, can create something that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Related events: December 5, 2009 Dorothea Röschmann / Malcolm Martineau

From where I sat

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:04:00 +0000

Steven Reineke, who began his tenure as music director of the New York Pops at the start of this season, recalls his first time on the stage at Carnegie Hall:

I will never forget the first time I set foot on the stage of Carnegie Hall. I was a 17-year-old trumpet player, performing in a music festival with the Dayton Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. It was Mother’s Day 1988 and my first time in New York City. The energy and electricity I felt on the stage were palpable. That moment—preserved in the Playbill and on the ticket stub I still have, and in my memories of playing Smetana’s Die Moldau—helped shape the rest of my life.

In the mid-‘90s, I began returning to Carnegie Hall on a regular basis with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, where I served as principal arranger. I had the privilege of sitting in the audience and hearing many of my arrangements and original compositions played in this glorious hall. At that point, I chuckled to myself, “The only thing I have left to do is conduct a concert here.”

Little did I imagine then that The New York Pops would invite me to conduct the orchestra’s 25th Birthday Gala in April 2008, almost 20 years to the day from the first time I stood on the stage. The feeling this time was sheer ecstasy. Now, it is my great honor to be the new music director of the incredible New York Pops, and to call Carnegie Hall home.

Reprinted in edited form courtesy of Playbill®

Playbill® is a registered trademark of Playbill Incorporated.

View a New York Pops concert preview video for the 11/20 Too Marvelous for Words: Celebrating Johnny Mercer event »

Related events: November 20, 2009 New York Pops

New music at Carnegie Hall

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:42:00 +0000

New and innovative music has long been a part of Carnegie Hall's artistic fabric—the world premieres of such now-standard works as Dvořák’s "New World" Symphony and Gershwin’s An American in Paris, for example, took place right here. Julia Wolfe’s Steel Hammer, an exciting new composition based on the legendary tale of John Henry, will receive its New York premiere this month in Zankel Hall, and December will bring the U.S. premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s ET LUX, a piece that joins the growing list of new works commissioned by Carnegie Hall.

View a behind-the-scenes video of Bang on a Can and Trio Mediaeval rehearsing Julia Wolfe’s Steel Hammer on Carnegie Hall's official Facebook page »

Soundbyte: Beethoven's song of thanksgiving

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:00:00 +0000

Beethoven’s 16 string quartets are each a Mount Everest of the string quartet genre, the pinnacle to which other composers aspired. (Both Mendelssohn and Bartók composed in Beethoven’s shadow and were keenly aware of his influence.) The Mendelssohn String Quartet ends its 30–year career with a final performance at Carnegie Hall on December 3, including a pivotal quartet from Beethoven’s late period, Op. 132. Jeremy Geffen, Carnegie Hall’s Director of Artistic Planning, explains why a chance to hear Op. 132 should never be missed.

Related events: December 3, 2009 Mendelssohn String Quartet

For Unto Us a Child is Born: An American Composer Reinvents the Nativity

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Every holiday season, New York concertgoers can take their pick of Messiahs, Christmas Oratorios, and other Baroque yuletide staples. Though perennial favorites, this music is also over 250 years old, written for European audiences accustomed to mixing music and their Christian faith.

While there are some fine American carols and truly classic novelty Christmas songs, the US has no homegrown oratorio tradition to draw on during the holidays. One American composer has started to change this with a poignant reworking of the musical form that adapts Christian themes to address the cultural attitudes of the last decade.

For millions of people around the world, the arrival of the year 2000 marked the beginning of a wondrous new time defined by both the promise of redemption and the possibility of catastrophe. When John Adams accepted the commission from the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris to write a work for the new millennium, he turned to the Christmas story to capture this sense of awe in the face of a fresh start, and wrote El Niño.

Instead of relying on a single New Testament text, Adams and longtime collaborator Peter Sellars culled together a bilingual libretto for El Niño from a host of sources, including the Bible and the apocryphal Pseudo-Matthew, as well as Spanish-language poetry from celebrated Latin American poet Rosario Castellanos and 17th-century nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

This combination of sacred and secular voices, crossing temporal and political borders, speaks of a particular hope for the millenial future that marginal voices will be heard more prominently, that dualities once thought to be inviolable are reconciled.

Adams’s setting of Castellanos’s “La anunciatión”—a new mother’s frank, sensual expression of the contradictory emotions she feels as she holds her newborn—puts the female experience of childbirth front and center, bringing a perspective to the Christmas story that is often overlooked.

“As beautiful as the telling is in the New Testament, it is nevertheless an imagined secondhand experience, written by men,” says Adams. “But our texts have at their core poetry by women, and the intensity of their imagery and feeling imparts a special authenticity to the work.”

Reprinted in edited form courtesy of Playbill®

Playbill® is a registered trademark of Playbill Incorporated.

Bernard Labadie on Bach's Christmas Oratorio

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Bernard Labadie, Music Director and Conductor of Les Violons du Roy, is a self-described "Bach man." He explains that in the Christmas Oratorio, Bach pulls all the stops and becomes the greatest musical evangelist the world has ever known.

Milton Nascimento celebrates the 25th anniversary of his Carnegie Hall debut

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:59:00 +0000

Milton Nascimento made his US debut in as grand a fashion as any artist could ever hope for: a midnight concert at Carnegie Hall in the hot summer of 1984.

“Outside, there were two posters up advertising upcoming shows,” Nascimento remembers. “There was one of me, and one of Frank Sinatra! I was floored that I had earned a place next to him—I must have taken a thousand pictures of those posters side by side,” he sheepishly admits.

Milton Nascimento is an artist who understands the value of time. A megastar in his native Brazil, the 67-year-old singer-songwriter has been an indelible and stunningly prolific force in shaping the sound and soul of his homeland. His performance at Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage with his quartet on November 18 marks an important milestone anniversary in his career: his Carnegie Hall debut 25 years ago.

America first took notice of Nascimento in 1974 with the release of Native Dancer. Though billed as a solo album by American jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter, it was in truth a joint collaboration between Shorter and Nascimento, whose famed falsetto nimbly soared into the stratosphere as the music guilelessly leaped between genres. To this day, Native Dancer is still shorthand for a beguiling and fresh-sounding blend of jazz, Brazilian pop, and even rock.

Nascimento remembers the electricity in the audience as he came on stage for his Carnegie debut. “It was the middle of the night, during a very hot June,“ Nascimento continues, “and the audience was just so excited. I’ll always remember that atmosphere.” The midnight Carnegie show was momentous for American fans—legendary, in fact.

Still, Nascimento points out that the American public’s knowledge of Brazilian music, and of Nascimento’s incredible impact since his self-titled debut album appeared in 1967, has increased exponentially in the ensuing quarter century. “In America,” the singer-songwriter muses, “there’s been a better perception of my music since 1984. Before that, everyone I met, including the press, would simply ask me, 'What’s your music all about? Where does it come from?’ After my work with Wayne, I think it became very clear what it was all about.”

Even today, innovation, exploration, and a spirit of collaboration are the touchstones of his work. On last year’s Novas Bossas (Blue Note), Nascimento teamed with Tom Jobim’s son and grandson, along with drummer Paulo Braga, to revisit Tom’s iconic bossa nova legacy as well as some of his own material. In 2007, he joined French brothers Lionel and Stéphane Belmondo for Belmondo & Milton Nascimento (B-Flat Recordings), a project that recast Nascimento’s own early catalog in plusher orchestral settings.

A gracious collaborator and mentor, Nascimento enjoys working alongside younger talent. “I am so impressed with young American vocalist and bassist Esperanza Spalding,” he says. “When she was in Brazil, she came to see me. We have a lot in common—she also has a very broad way of listening and playing.”

At an age when many other musicians would already be resting easily on an extraordinary body of work, Nascimento continues to enrich his own experience—and that of his listeners as well.

—Anastasia Tsioulcas
Reprinted in edited form courtesy of Playbill®

Playbill® is a registered trademark of Playbill Incorporated.

Related events: November 18, 2009 Milton Nascimento

China in your neighborhood

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:58:00 +0000

The Zhang Family Band performs traditional Chinese music that is deeply rooted in the daily life of Chinese villagers. During the Ancient Paths, Modern Voices festival, NY audiences had a chance to see the group perform at the Abrons Arts Center at Henry Street Settlement, located in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The event was part of Carnegie Hall’s Neighborhood Concert Series, presented by The Weill Music Institute. Learn more about free Neighborhood Concerts »

The Zhang Family Band performing at the Abrons Art Center at Henry Street Settlement. Video produced by Kornhaber Brown
© 2009 Carnegie Hall Corporation

Sneak peek: Mahler's Song of the Night

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:00:00 +0000

With its tenebrous opening and its two “night music” movements, Mahler’s Seventh Symphony often explores dark corners of the soul; perhaps not surprisingly, it was premiered during a period of grief and upheaval in Mahler’s life that included the death of his four-year-old daughter and his resignation from the Vienna Opera, as well as the diagnosis of a heart ailment that would eventually cause his death. Yet the darkness is counterbalanced by light—most strikingly in the finale, which radiates light and triumph. Read more »

Excerpt from Mahler Symphony No. 7 (V. Rondo-Finale)

Related events: November 19, 2009 The Philadelphia Orchestra

Bernard Labadie on Handel's Messiah

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:49:00 +0000

Bernard Labadie, Music Director and Conductor of period performance group Les Violons du Roy, describes his own personal history with Handel's most beloved oratorio, and explains why his group is still excited to play it after all these years.

Christoph Eschenbach's international life in music

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:27:00 +0000

Christoph Eschenbach recalls some humourous memories about his early mentor, the notorious Cleveland Orchestra Music Director George Szell—a relationship which in turn inspired Eschenbach to shepherd up-and-coming artists.

Related events: November 19, 2009 The Philadelphia Orchestra

Bernard Labadie: King of Baroque

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:17:00 +0000

In preparation for the upcoming performances of Les Violons du Roy and La Chapelle de Québec at Carnegie Hall, Music Director and Conductor Bernard Labadie sat down for a one-on-one interview with Jeremy Geffen, Carnegie Hall’s Director of Artistic Planning. In the following excerpts, Mr. Labadie offers his insights into two of Baroque music’s masterpieces: Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio:

This might seem surprising since I’ve been a Baroque man for as long as I can remember, but Messiah was not part of my musical upbringing. The Christmas Oratorio was what I grew up with. I remember when I was young, and I asked for the recording and the score of Handel’s work, one of my aunts said, “Oh, no—it’s way too serious for a young man.”

I came to the Messiah quite late. When I started working on it in 1987, I was a bit puzzled in the beginning because I had been used to hearing it in performances that were done with massive orchestras and massive choruses at rather slow tempos. I was under the impression, like so many people, that the Messiah was this grand thing.

It’s actually built like an opera, with many characters sung by the different singers and by the chorus. One has to bear in mind that it is among the first oratorios that Handel wrote when he had to abandon opera, and it shows the opera composer at work.

Of course now, for me, it is ingrained in my mind and soul as a Christmas piece, but it’s much more than that. Christmas is only one part of the story; it has a much wider scope—not only in terms of storytelling, but also in terms of emotions, or of “affects,” as we 18th-century people put it.

We see Handel at work, using a text that initially should not be considered dramatic at all. It is really excerpts from the Scriptures, expertly assembled by Charles Jennens. As opposed to Bach, Handel always starts in a subdued way. He builds it up the way he builds the tension in an opera.

Bach doesn’t do that. Even as an organist, the first thing Bach wanted to do when he was trying out a new organ was to pull out all of the stops and see if its “lungs” were good. He did that as a composer as well. He always used all of the instruments available in the very opening of a piece, and he definitely did that in a brilliant manner in the Christmas Oratorio.

After five minutes of each piece, you’re already confronted with two completely different worlds from two composers who were exact contemporaries, who were born only a few hundred kilometers apart, and who never met. This is, for me, quite fascinating. You realize that these two people were not on the same boat, so to speak. But they were looking for the same proverbial port, and somehow they arrived at the same place from two completely different directions. The impression of greatness and of fulfillment in that journey is amazing in both pieces.

Reprinted in edited form courtesy of Playbill®

Playbill® is a registered trademark of Playbill Incorporated.

Sneak peek: Esperanza Spalding

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:52:00 +0000

Since taking office earlier this year, President Obama has hosted several live music events at the White House. But only one artist has been invited to perform twice: Esperanza Spalding, the bassist and singer from Portland, Oregon, who has taken the jazz world by storm. Read more »

From Esperenza Spalding, Montuno Producciones

Related events: November 11, 2009 Esperanza Spalding

Intersecting lines: Schoenberg and Kandinsky

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:00:00 +0000

After the concert, he began to paint. Vasily Kandinsky returned from a recital of Arnold Schoenberg’s music on January 2, 1911, dashed off two charcoal sketches, and the next day finished the full-color oil canvas Impressions III (Concert). Two weeks later he wrote to the composer, starting one of the most remarkable exchanges in the whole of 20th-century cultural history:

Please excuse me for simply writing to you without having the pleasure of knowing you personally. I have just heard your concert here [in Munich] and it has given me real pleasure … What we are striving for in our whole manner of thought and feeling have so much in common that I feel completely justified in expressing my empathy. In your works, you have realized what I, albeit in uncertain form, have so greatly longed for in music. The independent progress through their own destinies, the independent life of the individual voices in your compositions, is exactly what I am trying to find in my paintings.

Among the works Kandinsky heard that evening were the Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11, which Peter Serkin performs in December. The music eschews the organizing hierarchies of the Western tonal system, and Kandinsky heard this abandonment of convention as the credo of a kindred spirit who liberated sound in the same way that he freed color, shape, and line from representation in his painting. For Schoenberg, the free-floating harmonies of atonality were but the means to an end—a way to tap in to a primal creativity:

Art belongs to the unconscious! One must express oneself! Express oneself directly! Not one’s taste, or one’s upbringing, or one’s intelligence, knowledge, or skill. Not all these acquired characteristics, but that which is inborn, instinctive … This is my belief!

Instead of planning out the pieces, Schoenberg composed in the moment during a spontaneous burst of inspiration in 1909, a year that saw him complete another intuitively composed masterpiece, the Five Orchestral Pieces, Op. 16, which the Vienna Philharmonic brings to Carnegie Hall in January.

The correspondence between Kandinsky and Schoenberg provides a way into this music that, a century after it was written, still challenges listeners. On a program with other classical pieces, Schoenberg’s musical language sounds shockingly different. His works make more sense compared with those of painters, playwrights, and intellectuals Schoenberg rubbed shoulders with in Europe.

Take Schoenberg’s sensationalistic, lurid 30-minute monodrama for soprano and orchestra, Erwartung (Expectation), which the composer also wrote in 1909, using the fractured musical language of atonality to depict the frantic breakdown of a troubled woman. Carnegie Hall audiences get two chances to hear it this season: this month with the Berliner Philharmoniker and in the spring with the MET Orchestra.

In Erwartung, a woman, haunted and deranged, wanders through a forest and stumbles across the body of her dead, faithless lover. Did she kill him? Is she hallucinating? Is the entire nightmarish scenario a representation of the female psyche? To contemporary eyes and ears, the psycho-sexual tension seems unnecessarily morbid, but in fin-de-siécle Vienna, where Schoenberg lived and worked, the psychological impact of sexual desire was positively de rigeur.

Erwartung’s libretto is by a young medical student, Marie Pappenheim, who may have found inspiration in Anna O., subject of a case study in Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer’s 1895 Studien über Hysterie (Studies on Hysteria). Descending into madness, Anna O. “lost her command of grammar and syntax,” Freud and Breuer record. Likewise, Schoenberg’s atonal, athematic music exudes a sensibility without sense. It is rumored that Ms. Pappenheim was a relation of Anna O. (whose real name was Bertha Pappenheim).

In 1909, Expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka tried his hand at playwriting with Mörder, der Hoffnung der Frauen (Murderer, the Hope of Women), which received its premiere at the Vienna Kunstschau. It was a bizarre, violent, misogynist allegory for the battle of the sexes that resonates with Otto Weininger’s scandalous 1903 book Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character). Both Kokoschka and Schoenberg had tortured personal relationships with women, and while art should never be reduced to biography, their sexual anxieties surely inflamed their passions. The world itself seemed to go mad in 1914 as war engulfed Europe, and the unthinking expression of visceral emotion no longer promised liberation but guaranteed destruction. In the wake of World War I, Schoenberg, Kandinsky, and other artists tamed the impulsive abstraction in their works and pursued more systematic, rigorous means. Kandinsky developed a geometric style that nevertheless maintained a spiritual core, while Schoenberg developed his 12-tone compositional technique in works such as the Piano Suite, Op. 25 (1921–1923), and the Piano Concerto, Op. 42 (1942). In his final letter to Schoenberg, Kandinsky recalled their early correspondence in the “vanished epoch” at the turn of the century. “How wonderfully life pulsated then, what quick spiritual triumphs we expected.” He concluded with an ambivalent conviction: “Even today I expect them, and with the most complete certainty. But I know that a long, long time will still be necessary.” Schoenberg penned no reply.

—Elizabeth Bergman
Reprinted in edited form courtesy of Playbill®

Playbill® is a registered trademark of Playbill Incorporated.

Elizabeth Bergman earned her PhD in musicology from Yale University, and has authored numerous award-winning books and articles.

Brahms und Berliner

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:00:00 +0000

The innocence, joy, and romance of the Brahms Second Symphony still resonate with us in the 21st century. As part of the Berliner Philharmoniker's joint Brahms-Schoenberg exploration, it's joined on their November 12 program by two electrifying works that could only have been written in the modern era. Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony resembles a miniature Mahler symphony, and in Erwartung, an opera for a single singer, Schoenberg said he tried “to represent in slow motion everything that occurs in a single second of maximum spiritual excitement.” Read more »

The Berliner Philharmoniker perform an excerpt from Brahms's Second Symphony. Watch the complete video at the Berliner Philharmoniker's Digital Concert Hall. Used courtesy of the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Related events: November 12, 2009 Berliner Philarmoniker

Soundbyte: Luca Pisaroni

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:03:00 +0000

Bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni makes some surprising repertoire choices for his Carnegie Hall recital debut on November 13, including songs by Schubert, Rossini, Meyerbeer, and Liszt. Jeremy Geffen, Carnegie Hall's Director of Artistic Planning, tells us how rare it is to hear a recital that includes this particular collection of composers, especially with a singer who is so completely committed to the repertoire.

Related events: November 13, 2009 Luca Pisaroni / Vlad Iftinca

Soundbyte: Shanghai Symphony Orchestra

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:48:00 +0000

The Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1879, is the oldest orchestra in China. Because of colonial influences in Shanghai at the turn of the 20th century, much of the standard Western orchestral literature was first performed in China by the Shanghai Symphony. Jeremy Geffen, Carnegie Hall’s Director of Artistic Planning, describes the influence that Music Director Long Yu has had on the ensemble and why it’s important for New York audiences to hear what Chinese orchestral musicianship sounds like.

Related events: November 10, 2009 Shanghai Symphony Orchestra

Sneak peek: Milton Nascimento

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:47:00 +0000

“Beyond jazz, beyond pop, in its own special orbit, lies the Nascimento sound.” To that sentence, written 25 years ago by Mark Ginsburg for Milton’s Carnegie Hall debut, the same writer now adds, “beyond time.” On the list of intoxicating Brazilian musical forms (including bossa nova, Tropicália, Brazilian popular music, and samba), and the extraordinary musicians who helped create them (such as Tom Jobim, Vinicius de Moraes, João Gilberto, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque, and Elis Regina), there’s one famous name that stands alone: Milton Nascimento. Read more »

Milton Nascimento performing an excerpt from "Cravo e Canela"
From the album Lo Borges Clube Da Esquina
Blue Note Records

Related events: November 18, 2009 Milton Nascimento

The return of Alfred Brendel

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Considered one of the world’s most thoughtful interpreters of Classical and Romantic piano literature, pianist Alfred Brendel returns to New York for the first time since retiring from public performance in 2008.

On Thursday, November 19, he begins a four-day residency, lecturing on performance practice, interpretation, and process, at The Juilliard School. On Sunday, November 22, a free concert features young artists from Juilliard and The Academy, who perform vocal, chamber, and solo music of Schubert, in a concert programmed and coached by Mr. Brendel.

Sneak peek: Sara Tavares

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:00:00 +0000

On her albums, Cape Verdean singer-guitarist-composer, Sara Tavares, is enticing, to say the least. But live, she’s irresistible. “Her voice can caress phrases with the breathy ease of a Brazilian pop singer or take on a sharper African edge,” says the New York Times. Local audiences will get a chance to hear for themselves on November 13, when the songstress performs at Carnegie Hall. Read more about Cape Verdean music »

Excerpt from Sara Tavares's "Balancê".
World Music International

Related events: November 13, 2009 Sara Tavares

In the artist's own words: Chen Shi-Zheng

noreply@blogger.com (Carnegie Hall) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:00:00 +0000

A Chinese Home receives its world premiere at Carnegie Hall on November 3, with Kronos Quartet and Wu Man. Conceived by David Harrington, Wu Man, and Chen Shi-Zheng, the director and visual designer. Chen Shi-Zheng discusses his vision for the work:

When I came into this project at the beginning, David and Wu Man had already talked a lot about the music that would make up A Chinese Home. We spent a week going through all the music together, making selections, and trying to make sense of the story behind it all. I realized in this process that the music that David and Wu Man collected and liked was really about China in the 20th century. David was fascinated by the revolutionary music and 1930s Shanghai music, as well as traditional music, so I thought that we could create a suite, putting all the music together in chronological order in four parts. We start at the beginning of the 20th century—timeless, traditional China—then move to urban China of the 1920s and ’30s. Then we enter the era of Mao and the emergence of Red China, and end with modern China.

I went to China to shoot the video and collect the images. While shooting the video, I thought about this piece like a travelogue, where we bring you to the old China and then come back, leading you through 20th-century China through the images. What you see is a montage of artifacts produced in the 20th century: old movie footage from 1930s Shanghai, The East Is Red spectacle, Maoist opera.

Wu Man and I are from the same generation, and I feel that this piece is quite close to how we grew up in China, how much we remember—especially the Cultural Revolution. That period is very vivid. The same songs were constant for us, the soundtrack of our lives. And Mao’s image was predominant, the only thing we knew, and so in Part III of A Chinese Home, Mao’s voice overrides all the music and his image dominates. I wanted to give a sense of what you would have faced if you lived through that period.

Wu Man is the person on stage that embodies the process of change in China. She starts as just a presence, in a robe like everybody else, and then she develops into a Shanghai lady, and then she changes into Red Guard. Her presence is very important in order for our audience to realize what’s changing in Chinese history—not just through the costumes, but also by the attitude, the persona, and the body language, all in relation to the music. We want to give you a sense of Wu Man and Kronos revisiting a certain period of China, to give an understanding of how they behave, how they play the music, how the music sounds in relation to the film behind you.

What I do mostly now is create new works, so I quite enjoy working with artists like Kronos and Wu Man. They’re always trying to create something new, trying to break a certain kind of formality and convention. We are trying to find a new way to tell a story, to link all this fascinating music. In that process, A Chinese Home has become a kind of composition, something that we hope has momentum and emotion and impact.

Related events: November 3, 2009 Kronos Quartet / Wu Man