Author: Philip Gardner

~ Author: Shoshana Klein

Above: composer Lera Auerbach takes a bow, applauded by the conductor, Manfred Honeck. Photo by the author.

Wednesday December 3rd, 2025 – I have (mostly) fond memories of hearing the Pittsburgh Symphony regularly when I was in undergrad – as a music student, you’re expected to attend often – what better way to learn from your teachers than to hear them perform live every weekend? 

There have been some notable roster changes since then – concertmaster Noah Bendix-Bagley left for Berlin, prompting a long search for someone to fill those large (though young) shoes. A few years ago, principal bassoonist Nancy Goeres retired – I was excited to hear her replacement, Julia Harguindey. More recently, Lorna McGhee, principal flute, left for Boston, which is a huge loss for the wind section–every time I heard her I was amazed at her tone. In much more niche news, I miss my oboe teacher, Scott Bell, trustily sitting second throughout my years there. He’s happily retired and likely busy playing Bridge. Really, much of the orchestra has turned over since 2018 or so, and not to their detriment! 

The evening’s program:

LERA AUERBACH Frozen Dreams (NY Premiere)

RACHMANINOFF Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini

SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 5

This extremely standard program started off with one thing less well–known: the commissioned piece Frozen Dreams by Lera Auerbach. The composer framed the piece in an interesting and philosophical way in the program notes – the tension between music being both static and different for every listener. The piece had great textures and rhythms – marimba or waterphone paired with string pizzicato was a great effect – and the piece used pitch bends, lots of string harmonics texturing, and some complicated hocketing – almost all executed very well. 

The Rachmaninoff started off a little stronger than I was expecting – not as timidly as it could in order to build, and not at all slow either, one of the earlier variations almost leaving the winds behind. Pianist Seong-Jin Cho was great – I don’t know of him but he seems masterful, especially with the full bodied orchestra behind him. I always forget how the familiar themes of this piece sneak their way in. The piece briefly showed off Max Blair, sounding great as always as assistant principal, as did English horn player Tim Daniels.

The flagship movement – the sappy climax of the piece – was balanced well, not at all over the top but still engaging, from both soloist and orchestra. A well-deserved encore was a delicate Chopin Waltz (C-sharp minor). Cho played it very subdued with sparingly used builds towards important moments – really a treat. 

Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony hits differed in our own brand of fascism – I always end up reading program notes, even when I know the history of a piece. These were particularly well done, explaining the controversy between this piece being a “propaganda symphony” and an act of defiance and truth in Soviet Russia. 

The first movement gives opportunities to hear most of the winds. Those who have been there forever still sound amazing and look exactly the same as I remember, and the new bassoonist and guest principal flute player sounded great.

The second movement took me by surprise – conductor Manfred Honeck took a lot of liberty with the time, stretching things and breathing a lot of life into it. Perhaps some of this was not having listened to the piece in quite a while, but it felt fresh and exciting.  

Cynthia DeAlmeida – with whom I am well acquainted and got to say a quick hello to afterward, does get a mention for her solo in the 3rd movement – very worth paying attention to (even if you’re not in undergrad trying to soak up as much oboe playing as you can), with a very present and shimmery tone. Mike Rusinek took over the solo on the clarinet with a much more translucent sound. Pittsburgh’s strength has always been its soloistic and individual solo wind players, and that certainly hasn’t changed.

The fourth movement started fast to my ear – I heard a story about Bernstein and this piece, that he misread or misinterpreted a tempo marking and ended up doing the accelerando at the end of the piece in double time (who knows if this is accurate, but it does end very fast in his recording). This interpretation started fast and ended very slowly! I always thought the speed up added to the feeling of frenzy, that there was something to cover up, emotionally – but I guess intentional slowness could do the same thing.

In conclusion, the PSO is still a wind-forward orchestra and even better than before with some turnover. I know some of my enjoyment of this concert was nostalgia, but I can’t help but be impressed!

~ Shoshana Klein

Photo by Nir Arieli

Author:  Oberon

Wednesday December 3rd, 2025 – Ephrat Asherie Dance teamed up with composer/pianist/Grammy award-winner Arturo O’Farrill for Shadow Cities, a vivid marriage of music and movement. Seven dancers and a quartet of musicians filled the hour-long run time with elements of breakdance, waacking, hip hop, and house. 

Ms. Asherie won a Bessie Award back in 2016 for Innovative Achievement in Dance. Mr. Arturo O’Farrill and his colleagues moved thru the varying moods and rhythms of the music giving the show an immediacy that seemed to envelop the enthusiastic audience and carry us on a joy-ride that ended up feeling way too brief. 

David Dalrymple’s costume designs showed off the sneaker-footed dancers in multi-coloured everyday wear, and lighting designer Kathy Kaufmann created an array of moods, incorporating shadowplay and projections of colourful squares. Boxes serve as furniture, props, and things to be tossed about.

The Company dancers are Ms. Asherie, Manon Bal, Ron “Stealth-1” Chunn, Teena Marie, Val “Ms Vee” Ho, Eriko Jimbo, and Dorren “Moglii” Smith. From the start, I was not always sure which dancer was dancing at a particular time; their photos in the program were very small, and of course my eyesight is not what it once was. At one point, I was pretty sure that the Company’s ‘swing’ dancer, Matthew “Megawatt” West was onstage. Suffice it to say, the all danced divinely…including some passages that felt like improv.

As the house slowly filled up, I was surprised to find a lot of ‘seniors’ in attendance. I had been expecting more young people, even to the point where they might stand up and start dancing along with those onstage. Instead, silence reigned – apart from frequent bursts of applause and a lively ovation at the end. 

Music and dance played equal parts in the evening’s success. Composer Arturo O’Farrill is a superb pianist, and Juan Carlos Polo’s a terrific percussionist. The versatile Larry Bustamante took up different wind instruments in the course of the evening. Eduardo Belo is probably the only double-bassist I’ve ever seen who doesn’t stay anchored to one spot. He moved about the space, mingled with the dancers, and did some steps himself – all whilst displaying his bass-playing expertise. At times, his bass seemed to become his dance partner.

The curtain rises, and for a few moments, silence reigns. The bass is heard, joined by the drummer and pianist. The music calms as a questing woman moves among her fellow dancers. A silhouette segment is visually striking. The lighting goes red, introducing a shadowdance. 

Animalistic sounds lead to an animated, jazzy trio. Mr. Bustamante showed us it’s possible to play the flute and sing at the same time. There are solo dances, and fleeting duets,and passages where everyone dances in sync. The music continues to draw us in: a percussion solo, and a piano interlude with a distinctly Baroque appeal. The sax goes wild, the pianist reaches into the case to pluck the strings, the flute gets jazzy. The dancers respond to these sounds as if the music is emanating from their souls. 

A finale seems to have been reached, but then the pianist takes up a fresh theme. The boxes, which have been a part of almost every scene of the work, are now stacked to resemble a towering skyline; a spotlight casts their shadow onto the backdrop. We are reminded that we’re in a city where dance – and music – never sleep.

~ Oberon

Margaret Jane Wray, a singer who appeared in both mezzo-soprano and soprano roles during her career, has passed away at the age of 62. A native of Texas, she made her operatic debut with the Houston Grand Opera and went on to be a Met Auditions Finalist in 1985 and to receive the Richard Tucker Award in 1989.

Ms. Wray made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1987 as Annina in TRAVIATA and went on to sing nearly 100 performances with the Company thru 2010. Her roles ranged from the Mother’s Voice in HOFFMANN, Inez in TROVATORE, Berta in BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA, the Sandman in HANSEL & GRETEL, the Priestess in AIDA, and Helmwige in WALKURE to Gutrune, Ortrud, Santuzza, and Amneris. 

She was a notable Sieglinde, though she never sang the role at The Met. Her career took her to Carnegie Hall, La Scala, L’Opera in Paris, and the opera houses of Munich, Berlin, Brussels, Toulouse, Frankfurt, Nice, and Seattle. 

I saw her in several of her Met roles, and also as Hippolyta in MIDSUMMER NIGHT’s DREAM at Glimmerglass Opera in 1987.

In 2005, Margaret Jane sang the 3rd Norn in GOTTERDAMMERUNG with Seattle Opera. Her sister Norns were Ewa Podles and Stephanie Blythe, and Robert Spano was the conductor:

Watch and listen here.

The above quote, ascribed to Richard Strauss, is said to have originated during a rehearsal for the world premiere of Strauss’s ELEKTRA, in which Ernestine Schumann-Heink was cast as Klytemnestra and the composer was conducting.

Perhaps it was the beginning of a trend towards conductors allowing opera orchestras to swamp the singers…a trend much in evidence at The Met these days.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sunday November 30th, 2025 matinee – This will be brief, since I did not stay for the entire opera. Having found much to admire in Daniele Rustioni’s conducting of DON GIOVANNI on November 15th, I was curious to hear what he might do with LA BOHEME. The cast featured singers I love: Juliana Grigoryan as Mimi, Stephen Costello as Rodolfo, Mané Galoyan as Musetta, Alexander Köpeczi as Colline, Iurri Samoilov as Schaunard, and Donald Maxwell as Benoit/Alcindoro. New to me was the excellent and big-voiced baritone David Bizic as Marcello.

As the first act progressed, it became evident that the conductor was not particularly interested in supporting the singers. Like other current Met conductors, he seemed intent on grabbing every chance to have the orchestra play loud and fast, sometimes covering the voices. 

Oc course, there were beautiful moments along the way: Costello’s hauntingly prophetic “Che visa da malata…” when he first gazes at Mimi, and his ravishing pianissimo (down to a whisper) at the end of his aria; Ms. Grigoryan’s narrative was so appealing, especially at “Ma quando vien lo sgelo“, wherein she took her time, luxuriating in the  lovely warmth of her timbre. But the intro to the love duet was too grandly played from the pit, spoiling the poetry of the couple’s first exchanges of affection. Mr. Costello harmonized on the duet’s final note…something I wish more tenors would do.

The tenor sang lovingly as he introduced Mimi to his comrades at Cafe Momus, and Mssrs. Köpeczi and Samoilov (who have more to sing in this scene than one might think) excelled. Ms. Galoyan, arriving at Momus, eschewed the usual screeching that many Musettas use to attract attention; her Waltz was caressingly sung, with a spectacular diminuendo on the top-B as the end. Then Mr. Bizic showed us the value of a powerful voice as he reprised the waltz theme…Bravo! The marching band and the pit players provided a noisy finale to the scene, at time slightly out of sync. 

In the last minutes of the Momus ecene, I decided not to stay for the rest of the opera…there would be a 45-minute intermission coming, followed by a 30-minute one after the tavern scene…and then there was to be a “Curtain Chat” after the opera ended, meaning a long wait at the stage door to meet these people who had given us a beautiful BOHEME…despite the intrusive music that sometimes rose from the pit.

Back on November 8th, I’d been at a BOHEME conducted by Keri-Lynn Wilson; on that afternoon, I was happy to experience a performance where the voices never seemed to vanish behind a wall of orchestral sound. Talking to some of the singers after the show, they had kind words for Ms. Wilson. I couldn’t help but wish that she had been on the podium this afternoon.

~ Oberon

At a 1974 performance of Strauss’s ARIADNE AUF NAXOS at the New York City Opera, the tenor singing Bacchus began running out of steam as the opera reached its finale. Just as it seemed he might not make it thru the arduous final bars of his role, soprano Johanna Meier started singing the lines with him.

All’s well as ends well.

Antonietta Stella is Cio-Cio-San in a 1958 radio broadcast from The Met of Puccini’s MADAMA BUTTERFLY.

Listen here.

CAST:

Cio-Cio-San – Antonietta Stella; Pinkerton – Eugenio Fernandi; Suzuki – Margaret Roggero; Sharpless – Clifford Harvuot; Goro – Alessio De Paolis; Bonze – Ezio Flagello; Yamadori – George Cehanovsky; Kate Pinkerton – Madelaine Chambers; Commissioner – Calvin Marsh

The conductor is Dimitri Mitropoulos

Although I didn’t get to the Old Met until 1963, when Stella and Fernandi were no longer singing there, I saw most of the other singers in this BUTTERFLY cast numerous times in the ensuing years. Ezio Flagello was a perfect Leporello in my first-ever Met performance, and Calvin Marsh was Leporello that same night.

~ Author: Oberon

Sunday November 23rd, 2025 – Violinist Benjamin Beilman and pianist Gloria Chien presenting a program of works ranging thru three centuries tonight at Alice Tully Hall. Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center is focusing on the violin this season – their Winter Festival is entitled ‘Violin Celebration’ – and tonight’s Beilman/Chien concert might be thought of a delicious prelude to the festival: it was one of the finest violin recitals of my many years of experience.

The violin itself was the focal point this evening, and, after his opening piece, the violinist gave a heartfelt speech extolling the magical instrument that he plays: the fabled Bartolomeo Giuseppe Guarneri ‘del Gesù’, 1740.

The evening opened with Eugène Ysaÿe’s Sonata in D-minor for Violin, Op. 27, No. 3, “Ballade”. Composed in 1923, this single-movement solo work is in two sections: a sort of recitative that gives way to an Allegro. The Lento opening a has yearning quality before a livelier feeling develops into the  Allegro section, wherein Mr. Beilman reveled in the music’s virtuoso demands. His playing – from poignant to passionate – was alive with fabulous tone quality, perfect dynamic control, and remarkably fluent technical prowess. His performance elicited a lively ovation from the crowd; the evening is off to a marvelous start.

Béla Bartók’s Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano, BB 85, was written a year before the Ysaÿe. A single low note from Ms. Chien at the Steinway opens the sonata. The music is full of mood swings, from mysteriously weighted to vigorous folk-dance motifs. Ms. Chien’s playing, veering from dreamlike to the edge of wildness, perfectly merges with the Beilman sound: by turns soulful and sprightly. The sonata’s understated ending was so expressively rendered by the two artists, with the violin ethereally on high.

Karol Szymanowski composed his Nocturne and Tarantella for Violin and Piano, Op. 28, in 1915. The Nocturne opens with a mystical piano introduction, the violin entering low and pensive before ascending to some high trills; here Ben Beilman’s control was strikingly in evidence. Now the Tarantella strikes up: Spanish and Italian influences are evident, but also – oddly – traces of old Asian harmonies. The dance begins wildly, lulls into a more thoughtful mood, then on to an epic finish. 

I have yet to hear a Chris Rogerson piece I didn’t like. Tonight, having its New York premiere, was the composer’s Arietta for Violin and Piano…and it’s another winner. Mr. Rogerson – unlike many comtemporary composers – is not afraid of melody, nor of sentiment. The Arietta has a dreamy start as a lovely theme emerges. Both musicians summon their most poetic sounds, with Ben in the highest range especially exquisite. There’s a pause, and then Ms. Chien sets up a low, steady piano figuration over which Ben takes up a new flow of melody. The music becomes ecstatic, then tranquil. There’s a piano solo before the piece ends softly. The composer joined the players onstage, to enthusiastic applause.

The concert ‘s finale was César Franck’s Sonata in A-major for Violin and Piano, which dates from 1886. This piece was inspired by the marriage of violinist Eugène Ysaÿe to Louise Bourdeau, in the same year.

Franck originally planned a slow, thoughtful start to the piece, but Ysaÿe thought a more upbeat tempo would be better, so it became an Allegretto…though preserving a dreamy quality as well. Silken playing from both violinist and pianist was simply gorgeous as the familiar theme – to be heard throughout the piece – blossomed. Brief solo piano interludes feel like small poems in Ms. Chien’s interpretation. 

Passion marks the second movement; Ben’s playing is captivatingly expressive, and a sense of drama never flags. The signature theme is heard on high, and the movement ends after an agitato interlude.

Sometimes described as Wagnerian in its wistful, Tristanesque feeling, the unusual Recitativo-Fantasia third movement refers to the ever-essential theme, now re-imagined. A violin mini-cadenza brings Ben to a sweet melody that turns expansive: at once incredibly tender and sad. A slow build-up evaporates into a shimmering motif from the piano; the violin singing hauntingly overall. Now the great theme sounds magnificently before fading away as if in a dream.

The familiarity of that theme is reassuring, and in the final movement, the playing of it is exceptionally pure and clean…following an interlude from Ms. Chien’s keyboard, the heart-stopping beauty of the theme is presented one more time, searlingly played by Mr. Beilman: simply grand.

A full-house standing ovation greeted the players as they came out for a bow, Ms. Chien in a beautiful plum-coloured frock and Mr. Beilman such a dapper gentleman. Further down our row, violist Matthew Lipman joined in applauding his colleagues after their outstanding performance. A Paganini encore, masterfully played, again let us savour the sound of the Bartolomeo Giuseppe Guarneri ‘del Gesù’…285 years old, and now in the hands of a 21^st century Master.

~ Oberon

Above: Maestro Dima Slobodeniouk and violinist Augustin Hadelich onstage at David Geffen Hall; photo by Brandon Patoc

~ Author: Lane Raffaldini Rubin

Saturday November 22nd, 2025 – On Saturday night, the New York Philharmonic wrapped up a run of performances featuring American-German violinist Augustin Hadelich and Russian-born Finnish conductor Dima Slobodeniouk. Hadelich, who will return to David Geffen Hall in January to present an Artist Spotlight recital, tonight played Samuel Barber’s affable violin concerto. The rest of the program focused on Finnish music, with the New York premiere of the decade-old Stonework by Sebastian Fagerlund, and Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2.

Samuel Barber wrote one of the least hubristic concertos in the violin literature, foregrounding melody and interplay between the soloist and the orchestra rather than virtuosic display. Hadelich’s playing and stage presence suit the piece very well, despite a number of moments when he was overpowered by the Slobodeniouk and the Philharmonic. Geffen Hall is not acoustically generous to violin soloists, a fact which a conductor more experienced in this hall may have more deftly addressed.

Hadelich gave the opening solo of the first movement a darker tone than is typically heard and allowed his sound to bloom into a full, even primaveral sweetness. He maintained the intensity of his tone and vibrato across the full range of the instrument, which had the effect of bringing a lovely satin tone to the usually more metallic upper reaches of the violin.

Hadelich received an extended, warm ovation from the audience and played his own arrangement of Orange Blossom Special, a popular fiddle tune by Ervin T. Rouse that Johnny Cash later immortalized in concerts and recordings. Hadelich’s version featured many of the bravura techniques that Barber’s concerto lacks and showed off his brilliant skill. The crowd was audibly entertained and impressed.

Stonework was written as a standalone tone poem in 2014-15 and later became the first in a trilogy, followed by Drifts (2017) and Water Atlas (2017-19). Fagerlund’s music tends toward the vast, the evocative, and the cinematic. Slobodeniouk’s hurried starting tempo proved too active for the atmospheric music that opens the piece, a smattering of sharp attacks over a continuous chord across the orchestra. Presumably these figures are meant to conjure sparking flints, an effect hindered by what became a uniform blanket of sound from the orchestra.

In one passage that unleashes the full forces of the brass and percussion, producing an impressively towering sonority from the orchestra, Slobodeniouk could have managed a better balance across the orchestra so that the intricate material in the strings would have been intelligible. For the first time in my listening life, here we had too much cowbell. A soft, sustained section lent the second half of the piece a sense of mystery and cinematic texture that built in tension and direction to the end.

Fagerlund’s vision of an abstract Finnish landscape was set against Sibelius’s own from a century earlier, which Slobodeniouk approached with technicolor vibrance starting with the very first contoured hillocks in the strings that open the first movement. Slobodeniouk ran the risk of over-determining the shapes of each phrase, but the reward was a superbly crafted first movement. The strings sounded consistently opulent and each capacious brass passage was accompanied by a satisfying sense of arrival.

Slobodeniouk kept this up in the second and third movements as well. In the second movement he drew out earthy, Stravinskian sounds from the double-reeds and brass and he made the downright weird scribbles of fast notes in the strings at the very end of the movement make sense with a fast, thundering energy.

But Slobodeniouk’s pacing couldn’t sustain this arc all the way through the piece. The fourth movement seemed gushy and maudlin in contrast to the craftsmanship of the prior movements and the orchestra pulled stubbornly against some of his desired tempos. It was a disappointing way to end, after Slobodeniouk had demonstrated his ability to draw out superb detail and longer dramatic arcs from the Philharmonic.

~ Lane Raffaldini Rubin

Author: Mark Anthony Martinez II 

Wednesday November 19th, 2025 – The Voices of Ascension Gala this year took place at the Museum of the City of New York and was a splendid affair, filled with interesting people and beautiful music. The Gala had two special guests who were being honored at the event: Anthony Roth Costanzo (photo above), countertenor opera star and also the General Director and President of Opera Philadelphia, as well as Alexandra Munroe, Senior Curator at Large, Global Arts, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation; Chair, Aspen Music Festival and School.

The event started with a cocktail reception where the attendees mingled and chatted while the night’s honorees flitted around chatting amongst the crowd. Everyone was in a festive mood, and some of the outfits that people wore truly seemed like they had come straight off a runway in terms of how daring and avant-garde they were.

Once the party aspect of the gala had settled down, the musical portion of the night began. The audience sat on the ground floor of the museum, below the spiral staircase, as both Costanzo and Munroe were honored with lifetime achievement awards.

The program was an eclectic mix of Renaissance to modern pieces that highlighted the many things that Voices of Ascension has to offer.

The program started with a piece, El Grillo, by composer Josquin des Prez, a Renaissance composer from what is now modern-day France. The piece was performed by a quartet of singers from Voices of Ascension: Liz Lang (soprano), Kirsten Sollek (contralto), Chad Kranak (tenor), and Joseph Beutel (bass-baritone).

The piece was jaunty and very characteristically medieval—but in the best way. The singers performed with such energy that the music was truly brought to life. The quartet was so animated with their singing that what could have been just a choral work became a real performance.

The next piece performed was a new composition that had its world premiere at the gala. The piece, Mine Ear, My Eye, My Hand, was composed by Nico Muhly and written in honor of Alexandra Munroe. The piece was again performed beautifully by the quartet of singers and provided a nice counterpoint to the medieval piece just performed.

The next piece was a cello and voice duet called Changing Light by Kaija Saariaho. The artists in this piece were Alice Teyssier (soprano) and Dr. Tommy Mesa (cello). The piece was interesting and used a good deal of extended vocal technique on the part of Teyssier. At times, it seemed baroque in styling but definitely ventured further into a more modern soundscape than the preceding modern piece.

After Changing Light was performed, the quartet of a cappella singers returned to sing a piece called TaReKiTa by Reena Esmail. The piece derives its name from the Indian drum, the tabla, and the sounds that it makes. The piece’s text was entirely based on the phonemes from the title itself—Ta, Re, Ki, Ta. It was an interesting percussive song that explored how the human voice could connect to such a different type of instrument and emulate it.

The penultimate piece was a classic: Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1. Mesa returned to perform the cello masterpiece wonderfully. The mini concert was able to move through so many different genres and eras of music so well, and having a perennial classic like this was a great way to anchor all the other pieces.

The final piece was perhaps the most anticipated, because one of the guests of honor, Costanzo, performed Vivaldi’s Sol da te, mio dolce amore from Orlando Furioso. Costanzo will be performing a pastiche opera from Vivaldi’s works at Opera Philadelphia in the coming year, so this might also have been a preview of that new (and old) piece.

Costanzo is at home in this baroque aria and performed deftly and beautifully. I’ve heard several countertenors over the years, and Costanzo certainly ranks among the top. He sounds so natural in a way that is often hard to achieve with countertenor repertoire and worked so well with the instrumentation. On a fun note, the flutist who performed the lion’s share of the instrumental melody was Ms. Teyssier, who performed the modern vocal piece earlier in the concert.

Once the piece, and the concert, was over, the audience gave a warm applause and ovation for the musicians and honored guests of the night.

~ Mark Anthony Martinez II