Leonard Link

"The Turn of the Screw" presented by Opera Moderne at Symphony Space

Symphony Space, the fine facility on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is home - among many other groups - to Opera Moderne, which specializes in chamber opera of reasonable recency.  Last night they presented "The Turn of the Screw," a chamber opera by Benjamin Britten based on a ghost story by Henry James.  With a handful of props, imaginative costumes and projections, they managed to put on a creditable production of this challenging opera.  The well-rehearsed chamber ensemble was well -directed by Pacien Mazzagatti, and the stage direction by Luke Leonard efficiently presented the ghostly story.

The cast seemed well up to the challenges.  Glenn Seven Allen, as Peter Quint, and Elspeth Davis, as Miss Jessel (or, rather these performers impersonating the ghosts of same) were suitably haunting and gave a spark of excitement every time they appeared on the stage.  Their balletic doubles, Jay Gaussoin and Ruth Shepard, added true menace to the action.  Anna Noggle starred as the governess, and coped valiantly with the technically challenging role.  Julia Teitel as Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper, projected a wide range of emotions through her gestures and song.  The two children, Miles and Flora, were exceptionally well captured by Benjamin P. Wenzelberg and Vivan Krich-Brinton.

Indeed, the only real fault one could find would be with whoever was running the projected titles.  I'm not sure whether this was a case of inadequate rehearsal, inattention, or merely an inability to hear what the singers were singing from the back of the hall, but the projections frequently fell out of sync with the stage action.  Since the opera was sung in English, this was not too much of a problem, as Britten has the knack for setting English in a way that is usually understandable without the aid of titles.  But having titles projected that don't match what is being sung can be a distraction.

This was my first time attending a performance by Opera Moderne, but I do not intend it to be the last.

In Avery Fisher Hall (Lincoln Center), a Few Feet Makes a Big Difference

Last night I attended the NY Philharmonic's performance in Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, and experienced how dramatically the sound can differ based on a slight adjustment in seating.  The acoustic quirks of that hall are notorious. 

My regular subscription seat for my Saturday night series is in 2nd Tier, Box 4, and I find the sound there to be rich, deep, and reasonably well blended.  For last night's concert, however, I had used the vouchers that the NY Phil sends to early subscription renewers to get a pair of free tickets, and began the concert sitting at Orchestra level, Row CC, Seat 10.  The sound was awful. Even though the orchestra used nine double basses for the opening Dvorak Carnival Overture, the sound from my seat lacked depth and richness, the strings were regularly swamped by brass and percussion, and at times I felt like I was listening to an old monaural LP or an AM radio broadcast.  The effect was raucous, to say the least.  Things were a little better in the Bartok Violin Concerto No. 1, featuring concertmaster Glenn Dicterow, as it is largely a quieter piece, but still the strings sounded thin and lacking in depth from where I was sitting.

I noticed that the seats in Row CC on the aisle, nos. 2 and 4, were vacant, so moved there during intermission.  A move just a few feet towards the center of the hall worked wonders for the Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4. for this piece, the string section seemed slightly smaller than for the Dvorak - at least, they were only useing 8 double basses - but now the string sound was rich and full and there was substantial presence from the lower strings, as well as a much better balance of strings against winds and percussion.  I was startled at how much difference a shift of just a few feet in seating made.  Another startling acoustical anomaly of Avery Fisher Hall.

As to the orchestra's performance, it was interesting to hear the Tchaikovsky again so soon. I attended the first performance by the orchestra of the Tchaikovsky symphony on May 3, when the Dvorak and Tchaikovsky surrounded the world premiere of Magnus Lindberg's Piano Concerto No. 2.  The symphony was on that week's subscription concerts, then featured frequently in the orchestra's west coast tour during the intervening weeks, and then was brought back for this week's subscription concerts, this time following the Bartok Violin Concerto (which was also played on the tour).  I wouldn't compare the two Dvorak performances I heard because of the drastic deficiencies in sound last night for the Dvorak from where I was sitting.  But comparing the Tchaikovsky was quite interesting.  On May 3, I had a sense that much of the rehearsal time had gone to the Lindberg premiere, and the symphony, while well-played, was not really distinctive.  But last night, after they had played this symphony together on tour for two weeks, there was a much higher level of individuality to the performance.

I think this is one of the great values of touring for an orchestra.  They usually prepare a select list of pieces for the tour, varying them from concert to concert, but the result is that they play the same piece repeatedly over several weeks, digging deeper and deeper.  The conductor, in this case Alan Gilbert, undoubtedly finds new things as the sequence of performance unfolds, little interpretive touches, that build up over the repeated performances.  The orchestra, confident to begin with as this team of super-virtuosi must be in a standard repertory work like Tchaikovsky 4, become more and more comfortable playing the piece together and more and more responsive to where the conductor may want to take them.  I wouldn't say that last night's performance was startlingly different from what I heard weeks ago, but I would say that it seemed a more deeply meaningful performance, having benefited from the repetition.

When I mentioned to somebody that I was going to hear last night's program, 2/3 of which I had heard played several weeks ago, the question was "why would you want to do that?"  The answer is clear; because in these circumstances, the second performance is likely to be different and more interesting than the first.  And so it was.

And I learned something.  Avoid Row CC seats toward the wall....!!!

Jeremy Denk's Recording-Release Event at Le Poisson Rouge

The brilliant pianist Jeremy Denk has initiated a relationship with Nonesuch Records, and celebrated their first release - a Ligeti-Beethoven recital - with an event this evening at Le Poisson Rouge, the Greenwich Village hot spot for music. 

The recording showed up at J&R Music last week, and as a big-time Denk fan I had to acquire it, even though I knew I would be hearing him play must of the album tonight.  It is good, really good, so good that when I returned home this evening I gave the Etudes from the Second Book a second spin - these were the ones he didn't play tonight. 

The recordings has an interesting and effective layout: Ligeti's First Book of Etudes followed by Beethoven's Piano Sonata, Op. 111, followed by the Second Book of Etudes (minus the last one that Ligeti wrote).  Ligeti's "wildness" places Beethoven's "wildness" in vivid relief, and when the second book starts up after the quiet ending of Beethoven, the flow is quite natural.

At tonight's event, Denk played the First Book of Etudes, interspersing a "mystery number" prior to the last of them.  I didn't recognize the mystery number, which sounded to me a little like Scarlatti heard through a late romantic prism (Busoni?), but then afterwards he announced that it was a Liszt transcription of a Bach piece.  Figures!  Then he played the Beethoven, and one of the Ligeti etudes from Book II as an encore.

I can highly recommend the recording.  It is addictive!  And anyone turned on by this pianist has to have his marvelous self-produced recording of the Ives Piano Sonatas as well.

NYC Opera Concludes Truncated Season with Telemann Discovery

In 1978 the long-lost manuscript of Georg Philipp Telemann's opera, Orpheus, resurfaced.  NYC Opera selected the neglected piece to close its 2012 season of wandering, coming to rest in the tiny auditorium of El Museo del Barrio on 5th Avenue at 104th Street.  The venue was a discovery for me - and, in the end, a bigger discovery than the opera.

I generally enjoy Telemann's music.  His concerti, sonatas, and sacred and secular choral music are all quite rewarding, if not in the league of his contemporary J.S. Bach in terms of depth of development and motivic genius.  But, at least based on this experience, I would not judge Telemann an exceptional composer for the operative stage.  There were a few effective moments, but on the whole the music was less than stellar, leaving one to conclude that history has not judge Telemann unfairly by failing to accord him honors for writing operas.

On the other hand, City Opera did a fine job with the material they had.  The staging was minimalist - no sets, just lighting effects and props, but all handled with such ingenuity that nothing seemed lacking.  The setting was contemporary.  The scene in which Orpheus confronts Pluto in his quest to reconnect with his dead love, Eurydice, is set in corporate headquarters, Pluto a blustering CEO with cellphone in hand, minions arrayed at desks clacking away on the keyboards of their laptops!  The plot is a silly riff on the ancient Orpheus legend; it occurred to me that the connection of this opera to the ancient Orpheus story is somewhat like the connection of PDQ Bach's spoof opera, the Abduction of Figaro, to the Mozart originals that inspired it.  Credit set and costume designer David Zinn, lighting designer Donald Holder, and production director Rebecca Taichman.

The singers were wonderful.  I was especially impressed by the male leads, Daniel Teadt as Orpheus and NIcholas Pallesen as Pluto.  Conductor Gary Thor Wedow led a spirited small orchestra in the improvised pit. 

For next year, City Opera has again announced a short spring season, this time alternating between Brooklyn Academy of Music and City Center on 55th Street, which post-renovation will be a more comfortable place to hear opera than it was when NYCO started out there half a century ago.  But I'm almost saddened that they are not repeating the experiment of El Museo del Barrio.  The setting is perfect for chamber opera.

A Fitting End for Peoples' Symphony "Marlboro" Season

For its 2011-12 season, Peoples' Symphony Concerts celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Marlboro Music Festival by booking exclusively individuals or groups that have had the Marlboro summer experience.  It was most fitting that this season ended with the participation of Peter Serkin, eminent concert pianist and son of Marlboro co-founder Rudolf Serkin.  Serkin joined with the Shanghai String Quartet for a rousing rendition of Dvorak's Piano Quintet.  During the first half of the concert, the Shanghais played Beethoven's First String Quartet (Op. 18, No. 1) and Bartok's 3rd Quartet (Sz. 85).  Thus we had a nicely diversified program stretching in compositional time from 1801 through 1927.  Although it was written so long ago, the Bartok Quartet has enough advanced harmonic thinking to remain challenging for an audience in 2012.

I thought the Beethoven was deliciously rendered, warm and graceful.  The Bartok was on the more acidulous side.  Unlike some quartets, that may luxuriate in the potentially lush textures of the first part and its recapitulation after the scherzo-like second part, the Shanghai Quartet presented a more astringent tone quality, which worked in its own way.

This has been a marvelous season - not surprisingly, in light of the excellence of the Marlboro program and the people who are invited to participate in it.  Peoples' Symphony usually includes a "Music from Marlboro" concert as one of its seasonable offerings (they had two of those this season), and I'm sure they will keep bringing back the Marlboro folks, who are always welcome.

PSC will be sending out its renewal announcements in June.  I can't wait.... this is the greatest bargain in NYC for anybody who loves chamber music.

"Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" at City Center Encores!

I attended the Saturday matinee performance of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes", the 1949 Broadway musical (Music by Jule Styne, Lyrics by Leo Robin, Book by Anita Loos and Joseph Fields, adapted from Ms. Loos's novel of the same name), semi-staged by New York City Center Encores! as the last show of their 2011-12 season.  It was a brilliant closing for the season, because this is an absolutely lovely show and all the elements came together for a truly memorable theatrical experience.

Megan Hilty assumed the role of Lorelei Lee, made famous in the film version of this show by Marilyn Monroe but originally created on stage by Carol Channing.  I can't praise Hilty highly enough to do justice to what she achieved in this role.  The singing, dancing and acting were all stunningly good.  Her co-star, Rachel York, was also superb as the girlfriend, Dorothy, who accompanies Ms. Lee on her nautical excursion from New York to France.  Indeed, I couldn't identify any weak link in this cast.  Even the generally non-singing part of the U.S. Olympic team members, headed by Luke Hawkins and Eric Bourne, made a great impression through their dancing, calisthenics, and dashing Olympian builds.

Dancing was at the heart of everything in this show, and choreographer Randy Skinner did a great job of keeping the stage alive.  But then, all the technical aspects of this production were superb - sets (John Lee Beatty), costumes (David C. Woolard), lighting (Peter Kaczorowski), sound (Scott Leher), dialogue scripting for the semi-staged production (David Ives), stage directing (John Rando), musical direction (Rob Berman), and the entire crew keeping things moving in a fast-paced production.

Indeed, this was such a splendid production, so well cast and performed, that I could hope somebody who attended would want to transfer it to a Broadway run.  The main barrier, I suspect, would be putting together and supporting the very large cast necessary.  There were fourteen actors whose parts were substantial enough to be featured, and another twenty or more in supporting roles.  For a Broadway production one would need to go to fuller sets, and - unfortunately, given the economics of today's Broadway theater - would probably have to cut down the size of the orchestra.  It probably wouldn't be commercial.  But seeing a production like this reinforces what's missing on Broadway today. 

One might compare the current production "Nice Job If You Can Get It," where a faux-Gershwin musical has been constructed by cherry-picking numbers for a variety of shows and writing a modestly entertaining book to tie them together, with a cast featuring a big-name but rather obvious weak link, the big name's inclusion undoubtedly being a key to getting the financing to put it on.  This Encores! production of Gentlemen featured many solid Broadway troopers who have performed in plenty of big shows, but none of whom is yet in that "big name" category that would spur investors for a Broadway run.  More's the pity, because they were all superb.

And, with the season over, one can do a quick post-mortem on the renovation of City Center.  From my perspective, it is a big success.  The seating is much more comfortable, the facilities are now modern, clean and functional, and the great acoustics have been preserved.  Everything is easier on the eye, clean and freshened up with excellent colors and fabrics.  Compliments are certainly in order.

New York Concert Diary - May 1 - 5, 2012

Once again, I've had so many concerts to attend over a short period of time that I have fallen behind in writing about them individually, so herewith a quick summing up:

May 1 - Matthias Goerne, baritone, and Leif Ove Andsnes, piano, in recital at Carnegie Hall, Stern Auditorium.  Goerne and Andsnes carefully selected from among the songs of Gustav Mahler and Dmitri Shostakovich to create a thematic recital , intermingling selections from Mahler's Knaben Wunderhorn and Ruckert settings with songs from Shostakovich's collection using Russian translations of poetry by Michelangelo Buonarroti, the common theme being death as contemplated from different times in life.  The result was a rather "heavy" evening of portentous verses and generally sober music, with only occasional glimmers of relief and transcending mood.  These were expert performances that preserved the mood and gripped the listener, but by the end one was emotionally wrung out.  No light contrast for an encore: Beethoven's "An die Hoffnung" preserved the mood of the concert.  Seeing Goerne literally enact these songs with his body language was an important aspect of the event.

May 3 - New York Philharmonic, Alan Gilbert conducting, with Yefim Bronfman as piano soloist for the world premiere of Magnus Lindberg's Piano Concerto No. 2, written over the time of his "composer-in-residence" service at the NYP, now coming to an end.  Gilbert surrounded the piano concerto with an overture (Dvorak's Carnival, Op. 92) and a symphony (Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 36).  The apparent disconnect between the 19th century mainstream classics and the piano concerto was not as great as one might have anticipated, for Lindberg has written a surprisingly listener-friendly piece in an almost grandly romantic style.  This sounded very different to me from his other works that have featured on Philharmonic programs over the past three years, sounding at times like a strange mixture of Ravel, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev... indeed, many of the giants of early to middle 20th century concert music seemed to be present, at least by proxy, and yet the piece had its own original core.  Bronfman was heroic.  I had just heard his Carnegie Hall recital a few weeks earlier and had been overwhelmed by his Prokofiev 8th Sonata.  To follow so soon with a world premiere of a long, difficult piece was worthy of enthusiastic cheers.  The Dvorak was noisy, as it should be, and full of high spirits.  The Tchaikovsky symphony was also full of high spirits.  Despite the disruptions in the composer's life around the time of its composition -- his ill-fated marriage and subsequent nervous breakdown intervened in the process -- the piece emerged triumphant, although sometimes it is hard to tell whether the jollity of the finale is forced through gritted teeth as Tchaikovksy puts a folk-song through numerous repetitions, ever more frenetic.  The orchestra was in top form, preparing to take this program on the road for a West Coast tour that will include premiere performances of the Lindberg Concerto in L.A. and S.F. 

May 4 - Metropolitan Opera: Benjamin Britten's "Billy Budd," with David Robertson conducting, Nathan Gunn in the title role, Jahn Daszak (Met debut) as Captain Vere, and James Morris as the Master-at-Arms, John Claggart.  I first saw this 1978 John Dexter production when it was new, and the Met's rendition at that time really put the opera on the international map, whereas previously it had found little favor outside of Britain.  The piece is very challenging for opera audiences, featuring an all-male cast, the claustrophic world of a naval ship at sea, and a grim tale of evil destroying good.  The composer and his librettist collaborators, E.M. Forster and Eric Crozier, recast the original Melville novella into a flashback by the elder Captain Vere recalling the fateful days of Billy Budd's brief service and execution.  The May 4 performance was the first of a short revival, the work not having been given at the Met since the 1990s.  Nathan Gunn has made a triumph of the lead role in productions elsewhere, and he continues to sing it quite wonderfully, but he is now a bit mature, in my opinion, to be playing the beautiful young innocent who is called "Baby" by his shipmates.  That doesn't quite wash, through no fault of Mr. Gunn, who energetically dashes about the stage.  Mr. Daszak as the captain was superb, and Mr. Morris as the evil Claggart was ... the embodiment of evil.  All the other shipmates made a fine contribution with brilliant stage direction by David Kneuss.  The Met chorus did a great job of cleaning the decks while singing the ominous chorus and enlivening the off-duty sea chanty songs.  And here is a great mechanical set that works!!

May 5 - Back to the Metropolitan Opera for Leos Janacek's "The Makropoulos Case," with Jiri Belohlavek conducting a stellar cast headlined by Karita Mattila as Emilia Marty, the 300+ year-old opera singer whose secret drives the musings of a colorful assortment of characters.  Janacek based his opera on a play by Karel Capek that marks a rare venture into science fiction for early-20th century opera.  The Met production, by Elijah Moshinsky, dates from 1996, and seems to have updated the action of the play, perhaps to the 1960s or thereabouts, judging by the costumes, the design of the law office in Act I, and the rotary telephones on display.  This requires a bit of adjustment of arithmetic on dates, but does no real violence to the story.  I found Act I a bit overlong with much exposition, but Acts II and III were absolutely gripping - even over-the-top.  I dozed through parts of this opera back when I saw the production in its initial Met presentation, but not this time, and Mattila had much to do with that, super-charging the stage every time she appeared.  This one is a must-see.

May 5 - Finally, concluding an intense musical stretch, I was at Washington Irving High School Saturday night for the Peoples' Symphony Concert series's last presentation of the Tokyo String Quartet, a group that has announced plans to retire after the 2012-13 season.  For the first part of the program, they played Josef Haydn's String Quartet in Eb, Op. 76, No. 6, and Claude Debussy's String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 10.  After intermission, they were joined by Israeli pianist Alon Goldstein for Johannes Brahms's Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34.  Despite the very conservative program (which could have been presented as early as 1893, the date of the latest composition, the "early" Debussy quartet), this assemblage of the works of three of music's greatest geniuses held me spellbound.  Why is the Tokyo retiring?  They are playing at the top of their game.  The Haydn was trim and propulsive, the Dvorak shimmering with the special instrumental effects creating glorious sonic textures, and the Brahms - with the added dose of youthful enthusiasm from Goldstein - lived up to its reputation as one of the most perfect examples of German romantic chamber music.  (There are many competitors for the title, but I think that Brahms was the greatest chamber music composer of the 19th century.)    A welcome treat was an encore performance of the scherzo from Dvorak's Piano Quintet, a piece that will be heard in full at the last PSC program on May 19 when Peter Serkin will collaborate with the Shanghai Quartet in a program that also includes Beethoven's first string quartet (Op. 18, No. 1) and Bartok's 3rd Quartet.

PSC remains one of the great bargains of NYC.  Anybody who loves chamber music (and is willing to put up with the hard wood seats of Washington Irving High School's acoustically wonderful auditorium) should sign up on their website to receive an announcement for the next season.  Single tickets are still available for the May 19 concert, which should be a thriller!

The American Symphony Orchestra's "Crumb" Concert at Carnegie Hall

Last night the American Symphony Orchestra made history - and paid tribute to an important figure in 20th century American music - by presenting a concert at Carnegie Hall entirely devoted to the music of George Crumb.  Mr. Crumb, who was born in 1929 in West Virginia, made a big splash on them musical scene in the 1960s and 1970s with such works as "Ancient Voices of Children," "Black Angels" (for amplified string quartet), and "Echoes of Time and the River," which won the Pulitzer Prize in Music for 1968 after a 1967 premiere performance by the Chicago Symphony.  Despite these achievements, and a major premiere of a commissioned piece, "Star-Child", by the NY Philharmonic in 1979, Crumb's music has not attained repertory status and public performances of his orchestral works are rare.

It turns out that ASO Music Director Leon Botstein has a very personal connection to this music and this composer.  As a student at the University of Chicago, he attended rehearsals for the premiere of "Echoes of Time and the River" and got to know the composer, which whom he maintained contact over the years.  In the program note for the concert, Botstein write: "If I may be permitted a personal note, this concert is the realization of a dream I have harbored for a long time."  Botstein goes on to explain the connection.  In his view, "George Crumb has taken his place alongside the greatest of American composers.  His unmistakable American voice and intuition for innovation, all in a manner immune from commerce and the politics of fame, has earned him international renown."  I think perhaps there is a little special pleading going on here, given the limited attention Crumb's music has received.  One can assemble a relatively large representation of his music on recordings, but not so large as to justify Botstein's claims - if one measures "international renown" by lots of performances around the world and multiple recordings of major works. 

On the other hand, recordings can't do justice to Crumb's music.  One of his major innovations is to reject the view of the symphony orchestra as a static institution.  He adds instruments to those normally encountered, has performers use the instrument in unconventional ways, introduces innovations in seating as well as coordinated movement among the musicians, and writes music that might be described as rejecting traditional conceptions of what a musical composition should be.  In a sense, "Echoes" is more of a theater piece than a musical composition in the traditional sense, not because it has characters and a plot but because it has the orchestra enact some sort of ceremonial event in a series of "processionals".  We don't really know what the ceremonial event is about on any specific level, but we do know that something is going on that commands attention.  There are no "tunes" in the conventional sense.  Instead we experience interesting juxtapositions of sounds, moods and colors, and lots of activity. 

The first work on the program, Variazioni for Large Orchestra, is the product of Crumb's student years, and is a more conventional sort of piece, although even here there are the signs of the composer would subsequently emerge from his influences and do something original.  It was interesting to hear the influences that earlier 20th century music had on the young student, who scored this for a huge orchestra and indulged in captivating rhythmic contrasts from one variation to the next.  At the end of the piece, Botstein, perhaps regreting that his favorite variation had not come off well enough, quickly cut off applause and announced that they would "repeat our favorite variation" as a sort of unrequested encore, which they did to great effect.

"Echoes of Time" and "Star-Child" are very different pieces, but clearly emanate from the same musical intelligence in their eschewal of the traditional music of theme & variation, instead presenting a sort of collage of sound.  As noted above, "Echoes of Time" is characterized as a series of processionals, and has musicians parading about the stage at various times while they play.  "Star-Child" involves choral forces and a soprano soloist (the adventurous Audrey Luna on this occasion) as well as a trombone soloist (not specifically identified in the program, but presumably ASO principal Richard Clark), and subdivides the forces into autonomous bodies with three assistant conductors leading their disjunct adventures.  I was reminded of "The Unanswered Question" by Charles Ives, to which the music played by the strings bore a close resemblance, and as well of the finale of Ives' 4th Symphony, which layers different bodies of musicians proceeding at different tempi atop each other.  There were some very effective moments in this piece, although I found my interest lagging towards the end.

Overall, it was a most satisfactory concert, and certainly the composer, who was in attendance, seemed very gratified by all the work that went into it and by the enthusiastic response of the audience.  And, of course, we now have a recorded medium in which Crumb's music can more effectively be conveyed - digital video.  Just hearing his work on a traditional audio recording could not begin to convey the scope of what he has devised; at least when a visual medium is added, with the possibility of surround sound, one might come closer to making it possible for people to become more intimately acquainted with his music through repeated listening, which is probably the most valuable service that recording can do for newer, unfamiliar music.

It would be great of some enterprising recording company could undertake to make available audio/video recordings of Crumb's music!  Until then, those of us who were there last night will have to subsist on our memories....

Celebrating Kevin Puts - The 2012 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Music

I was delighted to see the announcement that Kevin Puts will receive the Pulitzer Prize in Music this year for his opera "Silent Night", which premiered at the Minnesota Opera last year.  Although I haven't seen or heard this opera, I have become very well acquainted with lots of music by Kevin Puts over the past few years, and I hope that this award will result in many more performances as well as incentivizing some enterprising group to stage the opera in NYC.

I first heard of Mr. Puts when I attended a NY Philharmonic Summertime Classics concert several years ago, at which he enjoyed a premiere of a new piece written for the Philharmonic, conducted by Bramwell Tovey. 

An on-line search at that time did not turn up many opportunities to hear other music by him, but now the assiduous collector can find quite a bit. 

At last count, my recordings collection includes 17 different compositions by Kevin Puts, ranging from works for solo piano through chamber music up to some exciting orchestral compositions. 

My favorite as of now is his Violin Concerto, recorded in Fort Worth at its world premiere by the orchestra's concertmaster and musical director, and released on the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra's own house label, during a time when Kevin Puts was their composer-in-residence.  The same disc also includes his Symphony No. 3, subtitled "Vespertine."  Both are fine works, but the concerto has the edge in terms of originality and emotional weight. 

Another fine orchestral work is "Network," a short tone poem performed by Paavo Jarvi and the Cincinnati Symphony on a disc of American works released by the orchestra on its own label.  (The best place to find lots of interesting new music these days is on artist-run labels.)

From among the chamber music works, I would especially recommend the Three Nocturnes for Clarinet Trio, released recently by the Verdehr Trio as part of their series of commissioned works, "The Making of a Medium." 

Mr. Puts has found a champion in the marimba virtuoso, Nakura, who has recorded several of his works.

I understand from comments on the composer's website that an entire disc of his music is in the works from Naxos, and I hope they will move that along to profit from the publicity generated by the Pulitzer. 

Congratulations to Kevin Puts!  I hope lots of people discover his wonderful music as a result of this prize.

Jonathan Biss Recital at Peoples' Symphony Concerts

This afternoon, Jonathan Biss played a piano recital at Town Hall in Manhattan under the auspices of Peoples' Symphony Concerts.  This was the last concert of the season on PSC's Festival Series at Town Hall on Sunday afternoons.  This year's concerts were all dedicated to commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Marlboro Music Festival by featuring musicians who have participated in Marlboro.

Jonathan Biss began going to Marlboro as a teenager, and has returned in recent years as a professional concert and recording artist.  (He's about 30.)  I've heard him play several times at PSC and have some of his recordings.  He rates highly in my book.  I feel a bit of a connection here, since one of the first concerts I attended by the Boston Symphony when I moved to the Boston area for law school featured his mother, Miriam Fried, as soloist in the Brahms Violin Concerto. (This was several years before Mr. Biss was born.)  When he emerged on the scene as a performer, I took a special interest as a result. 

I had a mixed reaction to this afternoon's recital.  I couldn't help making comparisons to the piano-playing I heard last night from Yuja Wang at the NY Philharmonic.  There is a bit of apples and oranges in this, of course, since she was playing a concerto - Prokofiev No. 3 - and he was playing solo music in different halls and by different composers.  But from a broad perspective, I would have to say that Wang has the more solid, polished technique, while Biss is at this stage in his career the better musician. 

Wang played the Prokofiev concerto, a celebrated giant-slayer, almost note-perfectly.  Indeed, I've been a fan of the piece for almost half a century and know it very well, and I only heard one little misfire: a wrong hand placement on one chord during the super-fast finale of the last movement.  On the other hand, I thought there was lots of technique on display but lots of room for growth in terms of interpretive judgment.

This afternoon, I couldn't held noticing that Biss's playing in the Beethoven sonatas (Nos. 5, 14 and 26 dispersed through the program) included some painful wrong notes in a few spots, and a few points that sounded more like banging than loud playing.  On the other hand, in all the pieces on the program, I had the feeling of intense, mature musical engagement.  That is, the occasional wrong note is not as important as making a coherent musical statement, getting to the heart of the music, and there Biss beats Wang by an appreciable margin.  (She's a bit younger than he is - at least a few years - so this may be a function of time and experience as much as anything else.)

Taken on its own, this was a fine recital by Biss, thoughtfully laid out to intersperse some prime Janacek - "In the Mists" - between two Beethoven sonatas in the first half, and beginning the second half with a new piece written for Biss by David Ludwig, "Lunaire Variations."  The formal program concluded with Beethoven's Sonata No. 26, with a brief Schumann encore, a movement from Kreisleriana.

Mr. Ludwig's piece was introduced from the stage by the composer, which was helpful to me and I'm sure the rest of the audience, as the brief biographical note in the printed program said nothing about the piece!  Mr. Ludwig was inspired by the centenary of Arnold Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire" to write a set of piano variations based on motifs from that work, specifically the final "book" of poems set by Schoenberg.  On first hearing I found the music to be quite interesting, being aided as well by being able to follow the score (using my opera glasses) from the prime seat I enjoy for these events.  I hope that Biss keeps the piece in his repertory and plays it often, because I suspect that over time he will find ways to make it increasingly effective as a musical statement.  And I hope he gets to record it, because I think working it up for a recording will help him to find many more things in the piece, and I think that getting to hear it repeatedly in a recording would help me to hear more things in it!

As to Biss's Beethoven, it is solid, serious, and very mainstream in terms of tempi.  Definitely worth hearing.  I think we are spoiled by recordings, with their multiple takes and patches, to expect technical perfection that is almost impossible to achieve in the context of a recital, and I expect that Biss's recordings of these sonatas as part of the Beethoven project he has undertaken will have all the insights but not the tiny technical flaws.  (Indeed, I noted that in the last movement of Sonata 26, the wrong notes in the exposition were cured in the repeat of the exposition, which was note perfect.)