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~ Author: Mark Anthony Martinez II

Wednesday April 22nd, 2026 – Benjamin Bernheim (above) is a world-renowned operatic tenor who has performed frequently at the Metropolitan Opera in productions such as Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. This evening, he made his New York solo recital debut. It seemed funny to me that such a big name had never done a solo recital in a city where he performs regularly, but I was glad to be a part of this inaugural event.

Benjamin Bernheim is particularly known for his French repertoire, and much of the night’s program consisted of that. The concert, for whatever reason, didn’t provide programs, but aside from most of the pieces Bernheim sang, I was thankfully familiar with the repertoire.

Bernheim and his collaborative pianist, Carrie-Ann Matheson, strode out onto the stage and greeted the audience. Before singing, Bernheim took to the microphone and talked to the audience about the program. Bernheim was quite entertaining on the microphone and had a playful energy that he kept up the entire night. In his introduction, he introduced Ms. Matheson, his longtime collaborator, and the two began with a set of three Duparc songs: “L’Invitation au voyage,” “Chanson triste,” and “Phidylé.”

I’m less familiar with the chanson repertoire, but Bernheim had such good diction that I could understand and follow along. One funny note: one thing that helps with following along with French mélodie is that the general rule is that all French songs are about sex. So it was easy to follow along when the lyrics are comprised of words like “...luxe, calme, et volupté.”

The crowd was hushed, and Bernheim truly showcased a measured, beautiful mezzo piano/mezzo forte in his singing. I had heard Bernheim sing the titular role in Roméo et Juliette, but this singing today was a lot more refined and expressive. What ended up happening was that when the pieces did eventually become forte, the impact was so much greater. Bernheim also had a wonderful hootiness that is so often used in French repertoire. It helps, I guess, to be a native speaker, where the sounds in the music are just a part of the language itself.

What was really beautiful to see was how different members of the audience were affected by Bernheim’s singing. One older gentleman in the same row was silently weeping during several of the songs.

Bernheim, as a singer, was quite poised and didn’t need to make histrionic gestures, as I’ve seen other singers do in solo recital. However, he didn’t need to take much space or create a lot of movement to communicate the beauty in the songs. I always feel like art songs are actually more emotional pieces than arias because they are meant more as communication than bombast, and his clear and pretty voice conveyed everything that he needed to.

What was particularly nice was that Bernheim shared the stage almost equally with Matheson. It is very easy to forget the pianist in a collaborative voice recital, but after every applause, the two came out together holding hands.

After the Duparc songs, Bernheim and Matheson briefly left the stage, then came back to do a set of arias.

The aria set started off with Lensky’s aria from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. It seemed odd to me that, in an aria set comprised totally of French pieces, it would start with a Russian one. Bernheim sang the song beautifully, adding a particular delicateness to it that I have not frequently seen.

The one minor note that I had was that although, musically, things sounded beautiful, in this particular aria there was a bit of a dissonance when you factor in that the character Lensky knows he’s about to die in a duel, but the performer was smiling happily throughout the song. Nothing major, but just a funny note, because Bernheim’s disposition seems to be very sunny in general, so it might be hard for him to escape that mindset in a song that is otherwise about despair.

In the aria set, the highlight was Bizet’s “Je crois entendre encore.” This tenor aria from the opera Les pêcheurs de perles is notoriously difficult, not because of the high notes, of which there are many, but because of the delicacy required to perform it correctly. It is almost entirely sung in piano, and the B-flat and C in the piece should ideally be done in piano as well. Legendary singers have had issues with this piece and have pitched it down in concert or in performance, but Bernheim navigated the fiendish piece with seeming ease.

He did have to clear his throat afterward and take a small break, which he acknowledged to the audience with a bit of comedic charm.

After several more sets of arias, Bernheim finished with an unusual but lovely set of contemporary French songs, not inherently classical in nature. He sang Charles Trenet’s “Douce France,” Joseph Kosma’s “Les feuilles mortes,” and Jacques Brel’s “Quand on n’a que l’amour.”

What was so lovely about these pieces was that they closed the program with some contemporary flair and made the recital not just about songs from the canon, but about living works that people grew up listening to.

~ Mark Anthony Martinez II

~ Author: Lane Raffaldini Rubin

Wednesday April 22, 2026 – How many things in our lives are over 650 years old?

On Wednesday, Trinity Church (itself a merely 330-year-old institution) hosted the singers of Chanticleer in a program of sacred and secular music by Guillaume de Machaut, the preeminent composer and poet of fourteenth-century France. Despite the fact that the invention of the printing press was still more than a century away at the time of Machaut’s death in 1377, we have a nearly comprehensive record of Machaut’s written work and on Wednesday the all-male, San Francisco-based vocal ensemble Chanticleer offered a revelatory cross-section of that body of work.

The singers entered from the back of the nave and processed down the center aisle while chanting the 10^th-century introit “Dominus illuminatio mea” (the only music of the evening not written by Machaut). It was an impressive entrance for the thirteen-man ensemble, who sang in flawless unison while walking the entire length of the church, without the benefit of the chamber music gestures and eye contact that such rhythmic unity usually demands.

The rest of the evening was dedicated to Machaut’s music, with the Messe de Nostre Dame bookending a series of profane works about courtly love. Machaut’s Messe, likely written for Reims Cathedral in the early 1360s, is believed to be the first cyclic setting of the mass—in other words: prior to Machaut, composers wrote vocal settings of individual portions of the mass’s traditional liturgy (e.g. Credo or Agnus Dei) so that, during any given mass, an assortment of various composers’ liturgical settings would be assembled and sung. Machaut’s Messe provides the entire “Ordinary of the Mass” (the liturgical portions that do not vary based on the calendar) and thus set a new standard for composers of music for the Church.

The Kyrie, the first portion of the Messe, features a spare texture and frequent melismas passed between voices. A cadence falls at the end of each line of text, lending the piece a disjointed character. The singers treat these cadences with canyonlike expansiveness, making the Kyrie like a series of horizons.

Chanticleer brough their immaculate ensemble motion to the Gloria, which was a profusion of uncannily strange modal harmonies. This movement and the Credo that follows end with long melismatic Amens, rendered particularly charming thanks to the French Latin pronunciation that the group adopted for Machaut’s sacred music.

Although the Credo is characterized by the same disjointedness as the Kyrie, Chanticleer imparted varied timbral characters to different sections of the text, as if the ensemble were an organ with varying stops pulled to produce diverse qualities of sound.

The Sanctus had a remote tonal center from the Credo before it. The homophonic textures of its opening lines were like beams of bright light, not unlike the sunny character of Mozart’s own Sanctus written four hundred years later. In the Agnus Dei the floating melodic tracery of the countertenor is joined by the warm sonority of the rest of the four-part choir, leaving the Messe to conclude with an ascending, aerial motion.

Throughout, Chanticleer brought a sense of mystery to this music, creating a sublime but enigmatic atmosphere in Trinity Church.

But between the Gloria and Credo of the mass, Chanticleer offered three extended groupings of Machaut’s courtly secular music. Each cluster was led by a lai, a lengthy monophonic setting of a poem. Machaut’s lais show the limitations of his music’s expressive and dramatic power. The issue in the Messe of the over-frequency of cadences also characterized this music, leaving it not with the vocal floridity or fluidity we associate with poetic songs of subsequent centuries but with a repetitive, even monadic cellularity.

The sound of the lais, as well as the ballades, motets, and other forms we heard, are sounds of pure abstraction—lines, columns, points, and solid fields of color—gorgeously rendered by Chanticleer but intractably foreign to our present-day ears which are accustomed to tension and release, consonance and dissonance, major and minor, narrative arc, and slippages between legible structural forms.

“Riches d’amour” came closest to the dramatic expression I’m describing. The ethereal, planetary motion of two voices (Matthew Mazzola and Tim Keeler) brought aching melancholy to this song about a man’s unrequited love for his mistress and the “bitterness” this brings him. The music ends with a harmonically unresolved cadence, adding to the grasping, unfulfilled longing of the lover.

The entire evening offered a gratifying and rare opportunity to let this 650-year-old sound wash over you. Chanticleer has given us the chance to travel to a time before the codification of common practice music—before major and minor practically became laws of nature in the West. This time travel shows us the extents to which music has evolved and grown from the liturgical and proportional experiments of clergy like Machaut into the most highly developed medium for communicating human emotions in the half-millennium that followed.

For me, this raises fascinating and unanswerable questions about the original perception of Machaut’s music: how did this music sound in the year 1377? Was it radical? natural? easy-listening? thorny and confusing? boundary-pushing?

We have scholarly ways to address those questions but, ultimately, the ear of the fourteenth-century listener—who never heard Bach, Mozart, and the rest, up through our own time—will never be retrievable to us.

~ Lane Raffaldini Rubin

Above: bass-baritone Hermann Udhe

A 1957 radio broadcast of Wagner’s DAS RHEINGOLD from The Met; it’s in surprisingly good sound for the time period.

In the cast are several singers who were Met mainstays at the time: the great Hermann Uhde is Wotan, Blanche Thebom (she of the long tresses) is Fricka, Ramon Vinay (a favored Otello and Tristan) is Loge, the monumental contralto Jean Madeira (Erda), and two formidable bassos – Dezső Ernster and Kurt Böhme – are the giants. The Rhinemaidens are lovely: Heidi Krall (under-utilized by The Met, in my opinion), the luscious Rosalind Elias, and Sandra Warfield (who married our Froh – and a future Otello – James McCracken). Less-familiar names – Mariquita Moll, Norman Kelley, Lawrence Davidson, and Arthur Budney – hold up well in their roles; Mssrs. Davidson and Budney are, in fact, quite impressive as Alberich and Donner.

Listen here.

Above, the artists of the Shanghai Quartet: Honggang Li, Sihao He, Weigang Li, and Angelo Xiang Yu

~ Author: Oberon

Sunday April 19th, 2026 – A nicely-contrasted program from the Shanghai Quartet this evening at Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. I had not heard them for a while, so it was a lovely reunion. Since my last connection, they have taken on a ‘new’ cellist, Sihao He, whose performances at CMS as a ‘free-lancer’ have been especially beautiful. In joining violinists Weigang Li and Angelo Xiang Yu, and violist Honggang Li, Sihao He brings his silken tone and deft technique into the established ‘Shanghai’ sound. His presence has a touch of mystery which makes him all the more intriguing.

I have to admit that, for my first several years of listening to chamber music, I avoided Haydn. I thought that all of his music sounded the same; such an idiotic notion. I would avoid concerts in which his was often an opening work. At some point, luckily, I finally succumbed to his mastery. I now find his music thoroughly engaging, and today’s playing of his Quartet in G-minor for Strings, Hob. III:74, No. 3, “The Rider”, gave a lot of pleasure.

Dating from 1793, the work was so nick-named because of the final movement’s allusion to the sound of galloping horses. It is considered one of the composer’s crowning achievements. While some of the composer’s earlier quartets gave prominence to the first violin, “The Rider” gives equal opportunity to all four players…and the Shanghai artists seized these opportunities, giving an impressive and engrossing performance.   

The opening Allegro has a sneaky start; soon the melodies are flowing freely, with music that calls for ample virtuosity as well as a sense of joy. Dancelike, it sets the evening merrily on its way. The ensuing Largo is a graciously lyrical interlude, its slow tempo giving it a hymn-like feeling. The cellist’s depth of tone lends a sense of grandeur, and the ending is gorgeous. The Minuet is so fresh sounding, the themes veering between major and minor. Urgent pulsing rhythms define the final Allegro con brio, loaded with scalework. A sly, sudden pause – as if the composer is winking at us – leads into a lively finale. This last movement, which has given the piece its “Rider” moniker, provides the first violinist with some brilliant passagework, in which Weigang Li reveled.

Having its CMS premiere today, Tan Dun’s Feng Ya Song  (String Quartet No. 1) was written in 1982 and revised in 2018. Composed during a tense period following China’s Cultural Revolution, it was at first labeled “spiritual pollution”. It is music that filled me with a sense – not of loneliness, but of being alone. Sighs and whispers fill the air, interspersed with dense harmonies. Chills are felt; patches of melody drift by like passing clouds. A driven, unison passage feels almost cinematic.

Following a pause, the music resumes, with certain threads from the opening movement seemingly re-woven; aloneness becomes palpable. Momentarily I fell into a dream. The final movement, a ritual song, opens dramatically. Bringing forth earlier motifs but now treated more expansively, the work reaches an austere ending. 

Following the interval, George Gershwin’s Lullaby for String Quartet (written c. 1919-20) opens delicately; rocking motifs rise from the plucked cello. The familiar melody – some tune my grandmother used to hum – emerges, bringing Sihao He’s cello to the melodic fore. A sudden unison passage feels a bit like waking the baby, but the music ends in the stratosphere, soft and serene.

Closing the evening in epic fashion was the Quartet in F-Major, Op. 96, “American”, composed by Antonín Dvořák in 1893. Thru the years since I began wandering from my unshakable operatic obsession into the realms of symphonic and chamber music, this composer has alternately turned me off and on like a light switch; I never know how I will react on a given day. Thanks to the Shanghai’s glorious playing, tonight felt like a Dvořák revelation. 

The ‘American’s’ first movement gives all four musicians a banquet of melody on which to feast; they played it to perfection. In the Lento, Weigang Li’s violin soared rapturously over a swaying rhythm before passing the melody on to Sihao He’s cello; his rich, deep playing was so savourable. The Molto vivace had a vibrancy that felt like awakening to a bright sunrise after a long, cold winter; and then, the players’ speed and brilliance in the final movement brought the audience to its collective feet. I always love gazing around this Hall during a standing ovation: so many happy faces as we unite in the love of great music.

But, there was an added treat to come: as an encore, The Shanghai Quartet gave us the cavatina from Beethoven’s Opus 130. More wonderful, engrossing music-making!

And spending the evening with a new-found friend made it all the more meaningful. 

~ Oberon

Performance photo by Stephanie Berger

~ Author: Lane Raffaldini Rubin

Tuesday April 14, 2025 – Jordi Savall led a head-scratcher of a concert titled “Songs, Battles, and Dances: From the Old World to the New” on the main stage at Carnegie Hall. He was joined by the two ensembles that he leads (Hespèrion XXI and La Capella Reial de Catalunya) as well as the Mexican baroque ensemble Tembembe Ensamble Continuo, the Canadian soprano Neema Bickersteth, and the Guadeloupean-born Franco-Swiss bass-baritone and dancer Yannis François.

It was about as multihyphenate a group of musicians as can be imagined.

The program promised to deliver “a sound journey . . . between the Old and New worlds” that “explores how music served as a tool of faith, resistance, and survival during seven centuries of global transformation.”

Admirably, this aspiration is standard fare for Savall, whose concerts tend to be fascinating curations of music from widely ranging geographies and epochs. His approach is typically archaeological and genealogical, unearthing forgotten works and composers and revealing their affiliations.

Tonight’s program, however, was a flawed collage of musical worlds that failed to communicate that lofty message.

The thread of the program began with a sequence of works nominally dedicated to peace, first among them the ironically martial fanfare “Pax in nomine Domini” that featured a marching drum, tuned bells, and brass.

The first highlight of the evening came when the theme shifted from peace to enslavement, a rather abrupt shift heralded by the darkening of the hall lights. An unaccompanied quartet of male singers, arrayed in a huddle at the side of the stage, presented the traditional Sephardic lamentation “El pan de la aflicción” (“The Bread of Affliction”) based on text from the Latin Passover Haggadah. A plangent, tugging minor-key chorale ravishingly sung by members of the Capella Reial, its text ends with hope: “This year we are slaves/next year we shall be free.”

Incongruous, then, was the choice to follow this chorale with a chivalric and profane drinking song dedicated to St. Martin and then, after that diversion, to return to music of enslavement from four centuries later and an ocean away. The soprano Neema Bickersteth joined members of Hespèrion XXI in the first of three Black spirituals that she presented over the evening.

The first, “Another man done gone” was the most compelling, both musically and thematically. This spiritual features a straightforward, repetitive text (“Another man done gone . . . I don’t know where he’s gone . . . He killed another man . . . I don’t know where he’s gone . . . But boy that man’s done gone”) that suggests the precarity and absence of justice that enslaved Black Americans faced. Bickersteth’s lovely clear tone bloomed into a more sorrowful (if still tame) vibrato at the musical high points of this simple text.

The second spiritual “Look over yonder”, performed later on in the program, began as an alluring plainchant inflected by vocal tone-bending but ossified rather quickly into a standard twelve-bar blues—an unexpected disappointment.

In “You gonna reap what you sow” Bickersteth was joined by Yannis François for a piece that bore no connection to the rest of the program, neither textually, formally, nor vocally. There are many “slave songs” that achingly (yet gorgeously) convey the human tragedy of Black American enslavement, so there is no excuse for Savall to have not identified and selected only those of exceptional musical and thematic quality. This lapse in judgment ultimately has the effect of pandering and condescending to both the audience and the singers.

The evening’s most cringeworthy moment, however, came during François’s performance of “Tonada el Congo”, an anonymous piece from around 1780 preserved in a manuscript found in colonial Peru. Its text offers the perspective of a kidnapped person, stolen and carried down the Congo River to be sold into slavery:

            They are taking me away to the sea,

            although they have no right,

            and my beloved mother

            I must leave behind.

It’s no laughing matter. But the music is celebratory in nature and François, inexplicably, adds jaunty dance steps between verses. Presumably this music was not written by (or meant to be performed by) a real-life enslaved person, but the music’s joyfulness rather than defiance or melancholy is baffling and difficult to receive without highly raised eyebrows.

Savall did offer a redemptive and genuinely moving gesture as an encore at the end of the program. Bringing the evening back to the question of peace—offering, as he called it, “a prayer for peace” in the face of today’s violence and war—the collective of ensembles on the stage presented “Amazing Grace” with Bickersteth and Savall sharing the spotlight. The expressive low register of Savall’s treble viol wove a perfect braid with Bickersteth and the other vocalists. Here, finally, we get the sense that all musics, regardless of their origins, might share the same human impulse for harmony.

~ Lane Raffaldini Rubin

Above: Flautist Sooyun Kim, pianist Ken Noda, and soprano Erika Baikoff; photo by Paul Mardy

~ Author: Oberon

Sunday April 12th, 2026 – Soprano Erika Baikoff joined a select group of artists onstage at Alice Tully Hall for an evening of music by French composers.

Camille Saint-Saëns’ Trio No. 1 in F-major for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Op. 18, dating from 1864, was the concert’s opening work. Orion Weiss was at the Steinway, joined by violinist Lun Li and cellist David Requiro.

The opening Allegro vivace presents a flow of melody, underscored with sparkling piano phrases. Things get more intense, with rich string themes and rippling scales from the keyboard. The music gets tempestuous, but soon calms.  Virtuosity is in full flourish before the movement reaches a grand finish.

The Andante commences in a misterioso mood; a poignant theme emerges, followed by some melodramatic passages. Mr. Li’s violin sings of sadness, and the Requiro cello glows, exploring tonal depths. After a brief cadenza from Mr. Weiss, the original theme returns.

Dotty piano notes and plucking strings introduce the Scherzo – a short and lively movement which gets rather rambunctious before reaching an ironic ending. The concluding Allegro is luxuriantly played; at times feeling waltzy, it has a boisterous detour and a curious conclusion.

The trio, while perfectly pleasing, seems to go on a bit longer than one might want; compared to the composer’s  most beloved works – Danse macabre, Carnival of the Animals, and SAMSON & DALILA – it is perfectly pleasing music but not truly memorable.

Henri Duparc’s gorgeous song “L’Invitation au voyage” brought forth Ms. Baikoff, accompanied by Ken Noda at the Steinway. A blonde beauty clad in a creamy white gown, the soprano has a light vibrato that gives life to the music. The voice can entice us with its delicacy…and with touches of straight-tone. Mr. Noda’s playing ravishes the ear with his silken subtleties, whilst Ms. Baikoff spins out her silvery phrases. The iconic words “…luxe…calme…et volupté…” give me a blissful frisson.     

Flautist de luxe  Sooyun Kim then joins the soprano and pianist for Maurice Ravel’s haunting Shéhérazade, dating from 1903. The texts for this three-movement piece comes from Tristan Klingsor, with whom Ravel worked closely to match melodic instincts to poetic details.   

“Asie” (Asia) is the work’s longest movement; it provides a delicious, exotic escape from European culture. Mr. Noda’s playing is simply fantastic, and Ms. Baikoff continues to seduce the ear with exquisite pianissimo top notes. The music turns briefly stormy, and then agitated. There is a sublime piano interlude, leading to the second song. 

Ms. Kim walks slowly onto the stage; clad all in severe black, which evokes a priestly dignity, she commences “La flûte enchantée ” (The Enchanted Flute): a brief, mesmerizing piece wherein a slave girl hears her lover serenading her with his flute outside her dwelling. Ms. Kim’s playing was magical; she then walked on across the stage and exited as if in a passing dream.

For the concluding L’indifférent (The Indifferent One), a languid, almost sultry atmosphere is evoked. The song, which hints at gender ambiguity and unrequited infatuation, was sung and played by Ms. Biakoff and Mr. Noda with seductive delicacy.

To end the concert, violist Matthew Lipman joined Mssrs. Li, Requiro, and Weiss for Gabriel Fauré’s Quartet No. 1 in C-minor  for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello, Op. 15. This work was three years in the making (1876 to 1879), having its  premiere in February 1880 at a concert of the Société Nationale de Musique in Paris.

This is music full of warmth and optimism, and the musicians’ playing of it was heartfelt from note one. The strings commence with a rich unison theme, whilst Mr. Weiss plays gloriously. Epic beauty seems to fill the hall; Mr. Li’s radiant tone and the velvety sound of Mr. Requiro’s cello are finely balanced, whilst violist Matthew Lipman is – as always – a treat to the ear and the eye alike. The music gets grand, and then settles into a luxurious calm.

The Scherzo opens with the strings plucking whilst the pianist rambles amiably about the keyboard; animation sets in, the music speeding along until the plucking resumes. There is a false ending, and then some cascading piano scalework.

Fauré’s harmonic innovations illuminate the Andante, drawing on the poignant cello, the ecstatic violin, and a sense of longing from the viola to create a dreamlike atmosphere. Mr. Weiss brings extraordinary delicacy to the music; there is a unison rise from the strings which carries us on to the luminescence of the pianist’s concluding measures.

The Allegro molto (the current version is an 1883 re-write of the original) has the viola, cello, and violin passing melodious fragments around, leading to an outpouring of achingly beautiful music. There is a plush cello passage, and the Li violin sails on high. Following some glimmering measures from the, the quartet reaches its splendid finish.

Above: Violinist Lun Li, pianist Orion Weiss, cellist David Requiro, and violist Matthew Lipman; photo by Paul Mardy

Fauré’s marvelous music, and the opulent playing of it, made for a perfect finish to a most enjoyable evening.

~ Oberon 

Performance photos by Paul Mardy, courtesy of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, with my thanks to Beverly Greenfield.

Above: this afternoon’s Rodolfo, tenor Adam Smith

~ Author: Oberon

Saturday April 11th, 2026 matinee – I’ve been hearing BOHEME frequently at The Met in recent seasons. The older I get the more moving I find this opera (and MADAMA BUTTERFLY, too) in its tale of love and loss. On a scale of one to ten in the heartbreak department, this afternoon’s performance scored an eleven. The singing, always engaging, was thwarted – as it is in so many Met presentations these days – by volume from the pit that even the most powerful voices in the cast could not withstand. The conductor, making his Met debut, seems not to have had time to gauge the balance of acoustics in this big barn of a theatre. As always, during the endless intervals, people stopped by to chat with me at my score desk; they all felt that the voices were too often covered by the orchestral volume.

The House was well-packed, and, as is the case so often these days, arias and duets were greeted with a few seconds of applause while – during the bows – the singers were vociferously cheered.  

The men in the cast were all winners. Adam Smith was an ardent Rodolfo, able to crest the orchestra (most of the time) with his big-lyric voice. He made wonderful use of his dynamic range, often honing down phrases with persuasive diminuendos. He harmonized the offstage ending of the love duet, though his Mimi could not sustain the phrase. Mr. Smith made Rodolfo’s despair in Act III palpable as he sang of Mimi’s fragile health. His attention to detail illuminated certain moments that most tenors throw away: his sly “Colline…sei morto?” after the philosopher had fallen down the stairs in Act I was one of many little gems. Then there was his powerful top-B at the climax of the “waltz-reprise” in Act II. Bravo!

I’d heard Davide Luciano’s Marcello and Sharpless before, and was keen to hear his mellifluous voice again. His timbre has a luxuriant glow, tinged with traces of darkness…thoroughly engrossing to hear at every moment. In the duet with Angel Blue’s Mimi in Act III, the singers poured out phrases of engrossing beauty and power, pulling back touchingly when the words called for more intimacy. This duet, and the Act IV blending of the voices of Messrs. Smith and Luciano in their brotherly musings, were highlights of the afternoon.

Edward Parks was an engaging Schaunard; in recent years I have come to appreciate this role and its importance both musically and in the narrative. Mr. Parks made a fine vocal impression.

The potent voice of Greek basso Alexandros Stavrakakis brought forth some of the afternoon’s most compelling singing. The singer’s every utterance had real impact, and his rendering of the Coat Aria was one of the most moving I have ever experienced.: a genuine basso profundo to be sure. I wanted so much to meet him at the stage door, but he somehow managed to slip by me. Next season, for sure…

In her Met debut, soprano Amina Edris scored a success with her Musetta. The soprano down-played the disruptive shrieks that some sopranos employ to get attention from the crowd at Cafe Momus. When things settled, Ms. Edris sang the Waltz with subtle seductiveness, capping it off with a striking, piano top B…very enticing. As Act III opened, the soprano dreamily repeated the theme of her famous waltz.

In the opera’s final moments, Musetta and Marcello are drawn together as he finally understands her complicated but ultimately compassionate nature. Ms. Edris made something lovely out of her little prayer for her friend Mimi; the debuting soprano was warmly cheered as she took her solo bow.  

Angel Blue’s Mimi had a spinto  glow that worked wonders when dealing with sonic onslaughts from the pit. In Mimi’s Act I narrative, Ms. Blue’s lovely tone, and thoughtful way with words made the character come vividly to life. So charming as she described Mimi’s simple life, the soprano made magic as she phrased seamlessly into the magical phrase: “Ma, quando vien lo sgelo...”: so deeply moving. The orchestra developed off-putting walls of sound as the singers voiced the ecstatic start of the love duet, but Ms. Blue again took command with “Tu sol commandi, amore!” (one of the libretto’s best lines) and again with her touching “Vi starò vicina…“. The soprano faltered a bit on the duet’s climactic, offstage note.

As the afternoon progressed, Ms. Blue sang sumptuously; as mentioned earlier, her duet with Mr. Luciano in Act III was outstanding, and the ensuing trio where Marcello and Rodolfo discuss Mimi’s health whilst she, eavesdropping, grasps her own fate, was marvelous in every line and detail. Taking me by surprise was the soprano’s digging into chest voice for “Ch’ei non mi vedi!”, revealing her desperation…I don’t recall ever having heard it done that way. Ms. Blue’s “Donde lieta usci” was so expressive, accompanied by the tonal polish of harp, flute, clarinet, and violin. Mimi and Rodolfo’s duet of regret over past arguments provided both singers with memorable moments: Ms. Blue with “Sempre tua per la vita…” and Mr. Smith with his tender”..stagion dei fiori…” 

In the final act, Ms. Blue’s “Sono andati…” was so moving, as was the heartache of Mr. Smith’s Rodolfo watching his beloved’s life slip away. Ms. Blue’s faltering lines as she sank into her final sleep were infinitely touching. 

~ Oberon

~ Author: Kevin DallaSanta

Thursday April 9th, 2026 – Led by music director Andris Nelsons, the Boston Symphony returned to Carnegie Hall on this evening: a long-planned engagement jolted by news last month of Nelsons’ dismissal.

The night was originally slated to be a straightforward offering of works by John Adams and Dvorak, part of Carnegie’s “United In Sound” festival celebrating two hundred and fifty years of American music. For Nelsons, it became a victory tour of sorts, as he received raucous applause from the audience at the Hall, and enthusiastic foot stomping from his orchestra members, who have already voiced their support publicly.

Coincidentally, the first work of the program—three scenes from Nixon in China—is also a tale of clashing leaders and media spectacle. In the opera, the Nixons proceed through their historic visit with a mix of diplomatic braggadocio, bumbling misunderstanding, and occasional self-reflection. The libretto, by Alice Goodman, is more impressionistic than narrative, and conveys a sense of uncertainty under the facade of foreign affairs.

From the three-hour opera, Boston excerpted three scenes featuring Nixon and his wife, sung by Thomas Hampson and Renée Fleming, respectively. Both are reliable soloists, and executed the difficult vocal parts with clarity and diction; in fact, Hampson performed the role at the Paris Opera last month. Inexplicably, the unfilled soloist roles were sung by the entirety of the chorus, rather than individual members.

Adams depicts the diplomatic pressure and nerves using ceaseless rhythmic pulsations. This approach requires a great deal of work from the instrumentalists, who must play repeated figures at length, all the while counting bars to their next change of syncopation. Perhaps they are the toiling laborers lauded by the communists in the libretto; or perhaps they are just unlucky.

Despite the passage of five decades since the events took place, Nixon’s boasting, obsession with TV, frequent references to the space program, and rambling inner monologue ring eerily prescient. “I know America is good at heart,” Nixon says; but the year is 1972, and the audience knows what he was really thinking.

Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony occupied the second half of the program. A perennial crowd-pleaser, the work carries itself, with its famous English horn solo and bombastic brass finale. Dvorak enthusiastically credited Native American and Black music as inspiration. Dvorak’s Ninth is also strongly associated with the City, having been commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, during the composer’s time here, and premiered at Carnegie Hall. One can find a statue of the composer in Stuyvesant Square, and a plaque on his residence nearby.

The familiar symphony can nearly play itself, but Nelsons engaged actively with the orchestra, gesturing and shaping motifs as they passed between sections. The performance was anchored by excellent timpani work from principal Tim Genis. With extensive applause, Nelsons had plenty of time to acknowledge him and other individual musicians; indeed, Nelsons seemed ready to have every member stand up in turn. His own reluctant bow, as the concertmaster remained seated, was greeted with a roar from the audience. In a rare gesture of high praise, Nelsons was repeatedly brought back onstage by rhythmic clapping, unusual for a New York audience accustomed to rushing for the train.

“In politics, perception is reality,” both for Nixon in China and Nelsons in Boston. The unusual step by Boston’s management to release a statement appears to have backfired, in the court of public opinion, and Nelsons will likely receive a flurry of invitations. In New York, at least, spirits were high and the mood was optimistic.

~ Kevin DallaSanta

Performance photo by Kevin DallaSanta

Above: composer George Floyd

Author: Kevin DallaSanta

Wednesday April 8th, 2026 – Soprano Golda Schultz joined the New York Philharmonic for a fascinating program led by conductor Kwamé Ryan. Featuring emotionally dense and intellectual works, the program explored existential themes through the lens of American composers.

Schultz was to sing three powerful works: Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915; Stravinsky’s “No Word from Tom”, from The Rake’s Progress; and Floyd’s “The Trees on the Mountain,” from Susannah.

The first, Barber’s Knoxville, is a pinnacle of American writing for voice. The text, written by James Agee, narrates a summer evening from the perspective a young child. As is the way with children, the telling is a collage of sensory impressions and feelings. But between the lines, Agee conveys a subtext of nostalgia and the child’s dim understanding of loss and growing older. Barber masterfully develops this subtext in the orchestral accompaniment, who comment from a grown-up’s perspective. They, like the audience, understand the bittersweetness of the soloist’s naive words. 

The second, Stravinsky’s “No Word from Tom,” finds the protagonist ghosted by her lover. She reflects on her plight but resolves to set out and find him. The opera, written in English and based on a set of paintings, is both praised and criticized for its neoclassicism; one could nearly mistake the aria for translated Mozart. Although Stravinsky was the only non-American composer on the program, the English language kept a sense of immediacy and tension for the evening’s existential theme.

The third, Floyd’s “The Trees on the Mountain”, is sung by a protagonist who experiences rejection from her religious community. Schultz did not sing the work in concert, due to vocal issues, but the work deserves listening on recording. Floyd’s gift for melody and sparing orchestration underscore the character’s isolation and add further heartbreak to the opera’s tragic plot.

Schultz’s voice is warm and pleasing, and her minimal vibrato emphasized the innocent nature of the characters. She performed with expressive acting, making Knoxville feel like an aria from some larger opera—a fresh and thought-provoking take. Ryan, who has won a Grammy for his conducting of new opera, provided excellent accompaniment, attuned to her nuance and deferential of the strong solo parts.

In addition to the three vocal works, the program included three instrumental works, of no less existential weightiness. The evening opened with Ives’ The Unanswered Question and closed with Barber’s Second Essay for Orchestra.

The Ives set a serious tone for the rest of the program, depicting the vain endeavor to answer the question of existence. Both Ives and Barber write rich tonal harmonies, providing a sense of familiar comfort, but use polytonality to disrupt that comfort with intrusive thoughts. The effect is like a bubble bath interrupted by a splash of cold water. The Barber is not explicitly programmatic, but its triumphant major resolution served in some respects as the “Answered Question”, concluding the program’s existential peregrination. 

In both pieces, Ryan provided close attention to detail and a sense of rhythmic vitality. These aspects were particularly key for the new work of the program: George’s Lewis’ “…ohne festen Wohnsitz” (“…without a fixed abode”), in its world premiere. 

The new work, co-commissioned by the Philharmonic, reflects Lewis’ research into the life of eighteenth-century African–German philosopher Anton Wilhelm Arno. Lewis writes: “I aim to remind listeners of our endemic condition of instability,” with concerns about colonialism, race, and institutions front of mind. The style of the piece was atonal and seemingly aleatoric—a genre sometimes called “experimental music,” which misleadingly implies that this sort of art has not been carefully cultivated across decades of composers’ efforts.

It can be helpful to interpret such atonal works in terms of sonic texture: loud crashes of sound alternate with shimmering, reflective pianissimos; and instruments produce both harsh scratches and dulcet tones. The impression is initially random chaos, but Lewis’ design gradually becomes clear, with an intentional progression of emotions.

Although the work largely defies classical conventions, Lewis does invoke a concerto model by featuring the New York quartet Yarn/Wire at the front of stage. With two keyboardists and two percussionists, the quartet dialogued with the orchestra and played three improvised cadenzas. Critics of new music will have well-worn responses to the premiere; but to stop there is to miss Lewis’ extremely active role in cultural and musical circles. By exploring the notion of “without a fixed abode,” and challenging the audience in their role as listeners, Lewis’ commission aligned with the program’s overarching existential theme.

The intellectual weight of the evening was further deepened by the presence of a Black conductor, Black soloist, and Black commissioned composer. Black music and musicians have certainly faced an existential journey, and the classical world is still struggling to reparate, even as it struggles to adapt to modernity. The works of Barber lose none of their potency over time, but the inclusion of new voices, both compositional and on stage, drew loud cheers from the audience. At intermission, Lewis could be seen in the aisle smiling and discussing animatedly with audience members. For a time, his hand is the one we can shake.

~ Kevin DallaSanta

The Gothenburg Symphony Choir and Orchestra, conducted by Johannes Gustavsson, perform Valborg Aulin’s Pie Jesu Domine .

Watch and listen here.

Read about the composer here.