LINCOLN CENTER

David Koch Theater
New York City Ballet

A Midsummer Night's Dream - Balanchine

Carolyn and I saw and enjoyed NYCB's Balanchine's choreographed Midsummer Night's Dream a few years ago.  It's a big, fun story.  But, what we both were struck by was the Pas de Deux in the 2nd act.  It was so simple and beautiful.  There were no big, fast, high, leaps or movements, just a man and a woman gently being, walking together in unadorned balletic fashion.  Carolyn and I knew at that very moment that we'd just seen something special.

Here it is! So simple, so beautiful.

This is not the pas de deux I am referring to but it's from the ballet...

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

• Music by: Felix Mendelssohn
• Choreography by: George Balanchine
• Principal Casting: TITANIA: Teresa Reichlen; OBERON: Daniel Ulbricht; PUCK: Troy Schumacher (replaces Sean Suozzi); HIPPOLYTA: Megan LeCrone; THESEUS: Silas Farley; TITANIA’S CAVALIER: Russell Janzen; HELENA: Lauren King; DEMETRIUS: Zachary Catazaro; HERMIA: Erica Pereira; LYSANDER: Chase Finlay; BUTTERFLY: Indiana Woodward; BOTTOM: Cameron Dieck; DIVERTISSEMENT: Sterling Hyltin, Amar Ramasar

Enter the enchanted land of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a lush forest besieged by quixotic love triangles and feuding fairy kingdoms, awash with magic at every turn.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/arts/dance/review-a-midsummer-nights-dream-nodding-off-with-the-mortals.html?_r=0

Review: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ Nodding Off With the Mortals

The evergreen sweetness of George Balanchine’s 1962 ballet of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” has many sources. There’s the Mendelssohn music that Balanchine chose, abuzz with summer sounds and the confusions and harmonies of love. There’s Balanchine’s expert storytelling, with its honeyed comedy and deft interweaving of fairies and mortals. There’s the embodiment of so many of those fairies by children (students from the School of American Ballet), one of the most enchanting uses of children in all of ballet.

Yet this “Dream,” in which fairies and mortals alike are frequently dozing off or being put to sleep by magic, can itself drift toward sleep. And so it was at the David H. Koch Theater on Tuesday, when New York City Ballet began its annual weeklong run of the work.

Tyler Angle and Tiler Peck in George Balanchine’s ballet, recorded in 2015.
By NEW YORK CITY BALLET on May 25, 2016. Watch in Times Video »

The sedative ingredient was hard to identify. As conducted by Andrew Litton, the music was newly vibrant: agile in its scurrying, full-bodied in its braying and sweet thunder, hushed in its lullabies. And apart from Andrew Veyette, who looked uncharacteristically sloppy in Oberon’s fearsomely fast and difficult solos — dampening their usual jolt of excitement — the performances were good, if not especially inspired.

This cast does have special graces. Taylor Stanley, who was just promoted to principal, is especially good as Bottom, funny and touching even with his face hidden in the head of an ass. And the all-dance second act, the slightly dull wedding party that happens after the story has been wrapped up, is justified and lifted to another plane by Tyler Angle and Tiler Peck’s as-good-as-it-gets rendition of the pas de deus.

This sublime duet, Balanchine’s harmonious rebuke to the foolish entanglements of Shakespeare’s lovers, is all about intimacy and trust. Mr. Angle and Ms. Peck, sturdy but never stolid, keep afloat on a singing line through balances, low lifts and quarter turns, sustaining an ideal of love into the gentle ecstasy of the final dips.

Soon afterward, we return to the forest and the fairies and fireflies at dusk. The final image is supposed to be of Puck in flight, but on Tuesday, something happened with the harness and the ropes, and Antonio Carmena’s Puck stayed grounded, accidentally emblematic of an evening a little short on enchantment.

MUSEUM

Battle Ship Intrepid

It's a beautiful day outside and a perfect opportunity to get on the Hudson River (just a bit) and see the Intrepid and its "guests".

"New York City’s Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum Complex is an educational and cultural non-profit institution centered on the aircraft carrier Intrepid. The mission of the Museum is to promote the awareness and understanding of history, science and service through its collections, exhibitions and programming in order to honor our heroes, educate the public and inspire our youth. Join us for a dynamic, interactive and educational journey for all ages."

We had a 2 hours, private tour of the ship regarding its role in the Pacific Oceans during World War II.  It was very well presented by an enthusiastic, well informed scholar on the ship.  Learned a lot.

A look at what is there...

A US Navy ship arriving in NYC for Fleet Week.  Those white dots are sailors and behind them are Marines.  Impressive.

Marine Quarters on the Intrepid.

PERFORMANCE

Carnegie Hall
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra

Rene Fleming - Soprano

Everything we see in New York City is a treat but this performance is at the top of the list.  Strauss's "Four Last Songs" has been one of my very favorites for many years.  To hear it performed by Rene Fleming and the Met Orchestra is a dream performance.

ALL-R. STRAUSS PROGRAM
Don Juan
Four Last Songs"
Meinem Kinde"
"Liebeshymnus"
"Das Bächlein""Ruhe, meine Seele"'
"Die heiligen drei Könige aus Morgenland"
Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30

"A disciple of Richard Wagner—in whom he declared “music reached its greatest capacity for expression”—Richard Strauss pushed Wagnerian lushness and chromaticism to a glorious extreme that became a cul de sac. By the early 20th century, the “modern” school of Wagner was as dated as the “conservative” school of Brahms. It is certainly hard to see how anyone—except Strauss himself in Also sprach Zarathustra and Ein Heldenleben—could outdo the Wagnerian fireworks of Don Juan, the first of Strauss’s tone poems to be performed.

Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs) are the final creations of a composer who knew he was at the end of his life. Knowing these songs are final testaments makes them uniquely poignant, but without their dramatic circumstances, they would still be among the composer’s most exquisite creations. Prior to the Vier letzte Lieder of 1948, Strauss wrote more than 200 lieder. Of those on this afternoon’s program, he wrote the majority before 1906 for his wife, Pauline, who sang them, he always maintained, better than anyone. He composed for other favored singers as well, sometimes reworking early songs originally for piano accompaniment into full orchestral versions, sometimes beginning with the orchestra and condensing to piano later.

Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra influenced two of the most glorious musical works of the late 19th century, Strauss’s tone poem of the same title and Mahler’s Third Symphony, both completed in 1896. In the case of Strauss’s work, the influence seems almost palpable—an astonishing display of orchestral color and technology. From the blazing fanfare over a shuddery organ pedal—surely one of the most imposing openings in music—to the enigmatic ending, Also sprach Zarathustra is a mesmerizing work, one that combines visceral power with surprising delicacy."

Resting cellos.

You have the words so here's the music. Well worth the time... Listen.

A complete performance of Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra closed the program.

Russian Tea Room

THEATER

Minskoff Theater
The Lion King

We first saw in London, England.  It was wonderful then and there and it will be wonderful in New York.

STORY 
of The Lion King

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A lively stage adaptation of the Academy Award-winning 1994 Disney film, The Lion King is the story of a young lion prince living in the flourishing African Pride Lands. Born into the royal family, precocious cub Simba spends his days exploring the sprawling savanna grasslands and idolizing his kingly father, Mufasa, while youthfully shirking the responsibility his position in life requires. When an unthinkable tragedy, orchestrated by Simba’s wicked uncle, Scar, takes his father’s life, Simba flees the Pride Lands, leaving his loss and the life he knew behind. Eventually companioned by two hilarious and unlikely friends, Simba starts anew. But when weight of responsibility and a desperate plea from the now ravaged Pride Lands come to find the adult prince, Simba must take on a formidable enemy, and fulfill his destiny to be king. A vibrant and exciting tale from the great creatives at Disney, The Lion King is a story of love and redemption that nobody should miss.

CRITICS’ REVIEWS 
for The Lion King

Read More 

The breathtakingly staged Broadway adaptation of Disney's king of the cartoon jungle is an instant theater classic.

Review by Chris Willman from Entertainment Weekly

Awe-inspiring! Broadway theater is alive again. [Julie] Taymor's imaginative ideas seem limitless. it's a gorgeous, gasp-inducing spectacle. Most important - against all odds - it has innocence. The show appeals to our primal, childlike excitement in the power of theater to make us see things afresh.

Review by Richard Zoglin from Time Magazine

PERFORMANCE

Carnegie Hall
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra

James Levine, Music Director Emeritus and Conductor
Evgeny Kissin, Piano

Glinka - Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila
Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto No. 2
Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 6, "Pathétique"



"It’s an evening abundant with passion, melodic splendor, and dazzling color—elements that make Russian music thrilling. Glinka’s energetic Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila sets the stage for his festive grand opera. Superstar pianist Evgeny Kissin is on hand for one of most beloved concertos in all music: Rachmaninoff’s famous Piano Concerto No. 2. The program concludes with Tchaikovsky’s impassioned Symphony No. 6, “Pathétique.”

You must watch this short video...

The hall this evening will be filled with Russians.  On a previous occasion when we heard Kissin we sat right across the aisle from Mikhail Baryshnikov.


MIKHAIL GLINKA Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila

Glinka’s reputation as the father of Russian art music was cemented through the posthumous gratitude and acknowledgment he received from many famous Russian composers of the generations that followed. Ruslan and Lyudmila, composed between 1837 and 1842,is the second of Glinka’s two operas and is based on Pushkin’s poem of the same name. Though the full opera has achieved a comfortable place in the repertoire only in its native land, its infectiously energetic overture is a popular concert piece the world over.



SERGEI RACHMANINOFF Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18

For several years following the disastrous premiere of his First Symphony in 1897, Rachmaninoff found efforts at composition futile and distracted himself with other activities. His cousins eventually sent him to a specialist in hypnosis; after a few months of treatment, Rachmaninoff was considerably improved, and he traveled to the Crimea and then to Italy, returning to Russia bearing detailed sketches for a piano concerto. By December 1900, the concerto’s last two movements were finished, and Rachmaninoff played them in concert. Encouraged by the reception, he finished the first movement on May 4, 1901, and introduced the complete work the following November to thunderous acclaim.


PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 74, “Pathétique”

Tchaikovsky called this his most “sincere” symphony, and indeed it brought a new emotional honesty to music. The gloom of the outer movements—made all the more convincing by the groping toward light in the inner ones—is gripping and emotionally real. The darkness of this symphony (dubbed the “Pathétique” by Tchaikovsky’s brother) looks forward to desolate moments in Mahler, Shostakovich, and others, yet the work carries a feeling of profound isolation. In Lawrence Gilman’s words, it remains “a lonely and towering masterpiece. Where, indeed, is there anything at all like it?

THEATER

St. Ann's Warehouse
A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams


“Ms. Anderson is at her very best in Benedict Andrews’ ferocious new production of Tennessee Williams’ immortal play...


Ben Foster is] the first Stanley I have come across to erase memories of the part’s stage and screen originator, Marlon Brando...less about the character’s pectorals and more about his battered pride”-THE NEW YORK TIMES


“Benedict Andrews’ version steams off the stage with pain, excitement and clamour”-THE OBSERVER


“Foster as Stanley matches Miss Anderson blow for blow in their big showdowns…Kirby is touchingly vulnerable as Stella”-SUNDAY TELEGRAPH


“Gillian Anderson is simply unmissable, Benedict Andrews' direction is admirably thoughtful and bold... Vanessa Kirby eloquent, Ben Foster explosive, and there’s a lovely measured Corey Johnson”
-EVENING STANDARD


Arguably, St. Ann’s Warehouse is the only NY theater capable of staging Benedict Andrews’ maverick production of A Streetcar Named Desire, featuring Gillian Anderson, Ben Foster, Corey Johnson and Vanessa Kirby. With its transparent, revolving set, all conversations are overheard, there’s nowhere to hide and the ensuing tragedy purposefully spins toward its inevitable last line. The New York Times called the production “a wounding portrait of communal loss.”

This American Premiere marks the first collaboration between St. Ann’s Warehouse and London’s Young Vic.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/theater/review-streetcar-named-desire-gillian-anderson-ben-foster.html?smid=tw-nytimesarts&smtyp=cur&_r=1

Review: A Darwinian ‘Streetcar’ With a Feminist Streak

It really is a jungle out there, Blanche, that same cruel, do-or-die world described by Darwin. And while it’s noble of you to plead with your sister not to “hang back with the brutes” — to choose the aesthetes over the animals — you surely know it’s a waste of breath.

The New Orleans neighborhood where Blanche DuBois comes calling so disastrously in Tennessee Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” has never seemed quite as atavistic as it does in Benedict Andrews’s compellingly harsh revival, which opened on Sunday night at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. This production pits a fully adrenalized Gillian Anderson, as Blanche, against Ben Foster, as her adversarial brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, in a riveting study of the survival of the fittest.

Even if you are unfamiliar with the plot, you shouldn’t have trouble predicting its outcome. Mr. Foster’s slyly commanding Stanley — a performance that makes the specter of Marlon Brando, who created the part, temporarily retreat into the dusk — is obviously the younger, stronger and more confident of the two.

But Ms. Anderson’s Blanche has her own arsenal of weapons, and though they may be outdated, she puts up a vigorous defense. This fading feline beauty is clearly fated to lose, but she’s also going down fighting, tooth and manicured nail.

This brave new “Streetcar,” which originated at the Young Vic in London, takes a lot of presumptuous risks, yet most of them pay off, at least for as long as you’re watching it. Mr. Andrews, whose wild and divisive production of Jean Genet’s “The Maids” was in New York two summers ago, has dared to reset Williams’s masterpiece in the 21st century.

That means no picturesque French Quarter squalor. Magda Willi’s wall-less revolving set — which gives us a drone’s-eye-view of every angle of the two rooms shared by Blanche’s younger sister, Stella (a terrific Vanessa Kirby) and her husband, Stanley — has the generic starkness of an Ikea-furnished starter apartment for newlyweds. Blanche’s tight, short, flashy wardrobe (Victoria Behr is the costume designer) wouldn’t look out of place in a television pilot for “Real Housewives of New Orleans.” And ear-grating electronic music is blasted between scenes.

Yet in bringing us into the present, Mr. Andrews is also leading us into a timelessly primeval world, observed with an anthropological clarity. The New Orleans glimpsed beyond the walls of the Kowalski’s home is inhabited by men and women who scrap, prowl, bloody one another’s noses and mate like alley cats.

There is little conjuring of the illusions that Blanche says she lives by, and she registers more as a stretched-thin pragmatist in fight-or-flight mode than the usual windblown butterfly. Even when Jon Clark’s lighting plunges us into darkness, the show always seems to be happening beneath the glare of the bright, naked bulbs that are anathema to our shadow-seeking heroine.

Such an interpretation largely strips “Streetcar” of its poetry. And there were certainly moments when I missed that poetry. But I was also willing to trade the delicate lyricism of Mr. Williams and Blanche for genuinely original insights into a play I’ve seen many times.

In particular, you become conscious of a prescient feminist streak in “Streetcar,” a piercing awareness of a society that values its women according to youth and attractiveness. In this context, Blanche’s obsession with looking pretty acquires a sad emotional weight that tips into existential panic. “People don’t see you — men don’t — don’t even admit your existence unless they’re making love to you,” she says to Stella. “And you’ve got to have your existence admitted by someone.”

That’s a pretty realistic appraisal, coming as it does from a woman who has always relied on the kindness — and interest — of the male sex. And as Ms. Anderson says these lines, and others like them, a sense of Blanche as a desperately plotting strategist comes to the fore.

Best known for her television appearances as the coolly intelligent detectives on “The Fall” and “The X-Files,” Ms. Anderson endows Blanche with a self-preserving skepticism that is starting to lose its edge and a calculatedly feminine, shrilly Southern persona that feels thoroughly of the moment. This is the first Blanche I’ve encountered who specifically evokes women of my generation, like those former popular girls you come across at high school reunions, teetering on stilettos between husbands and highballs.

This Blanche is forever positioning herself as an object of masculine desire. (Watch her undulating half-naked behind a semitransparent curtain while Stanley and his pals play poker.) Her sense of sex as a weapon, on the one hand, and a necessity, on the other, is beautifully conveyed in her defensive scenes with Mitch (the excellent Corey Johnson), her diffident suitor, and her aggressive encounter with the delivery boy (Otto Farrant), who summons the ghost of the young man to whom she was briefly and ruinously married.

And though she may be forever trying to convince her sister to leave the barbaric Stanley, you also feel she’s competing with Stella for his attention. In vain. As embodied by Ms. Kirby, the pregnant Stella glows with the confidence conferred both by new life and her sexually charged relationship with her husband.

The physical interdependence between this pair has seldom felt so thick, and when Mr. Foster cries out the immortal mating call, “Ste-ll-a!,” with a mix of childlike anguish and grown-up longing, you know why Ms. Kirby comes running. Mr. Foster, seen on Broadway in “Orphans” in 2013, provides an effortlessly natural Stanley, unencumbered by the usual preening self-consciousness. He also manages to evoke a type of man we’ve seen a lot of in recent months — the working-class guy who says he’s voting for Donald Trump because he wants America to be strong and virile again.

Contemporary parallels recede, though, as the struggle between Stanley and Blanche acquires momentum. Mr. Andrews has done a masterly job of arranging the play’s central antagonists, so as the set revolves, we’re always aware of their positions in relation to one another, as they take stock of their respective strengths and weaknesses.

It’s not easy to keep your balance on a moving stage, or in a changing world. Ms. Anderson’s Blanche becomes increasingly unsteady on the perilously high heels she wears. Mostly, this unusually dynamic “Streetcar” plays more on our nervous system than with our hearts. But when Blanche finally goes down for the count, it’s impossible not to feel a choking rush of compassion for a valiant, misguided fighter who never stood a chance.

LINCOLN CENTER

David Koch Theater
New York City Ballet

Click on the Pink title to see more of each ballet.

Serenade

• Music by: Peter Ilyitch Tschaikovsky
• Choreography by: George Balanchine 
• Principal Casting: MAY 17, : Sara Mearns, Tiler Peck*, Megan LeCrone, Jared Angle (replaces Zachary Catazaro), Adrian Danchig-Waring (replaces Ask la Cour)
  
  The first ballet Balanchine choreographed in America, Serenade is a romantic work of immense sweep, set to a transcendent Tschaikovsky score.

Hallelujah Junction

• Music by: John Adams
• Choreography by: Peter Martins
• Principal Casting: MAY 17: Lauren Lovette, Gonzalo Garcia, Daniel Ulbricht
  
  Martins’ Hallelujah Junction is a living locomotive of propulsive vitality, set to a pulsing John Adams score played by two onstage pianists.

Duo Concertant

• Music by: Igor Stravinsky
• Choreography by: George Balanchine 
• Principal Casting: MAY 17: Sterling Hyltin, Robert Fairchild

Set to onstage piano and violin accompaniment, Duo Concertant is a lively dance for two, ending with a poignant play on light and shadow.

Western Symphony

• Music by: Traditional American melodies orchestrated by Hershy Kay
• Choreography by: George Balanchine
• Principal Casting: MAY 17: Abi Stafford, Taylor Stanley, Brittany Pollack* (replaces Ana Sophia Scheller), Jared Angle, Teresa Reichlen, Andrew Veyette

Western Symphony is a rodeo of frisky fillies with a spirited ending that captures the entire cast of over 30 dancers onstage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/19/arts/dance/review-taylor-stanley-at-city-ballet.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share&_r=0

Review: Taylor Stanley Rises in City Ballet’s ‘Hallelujah Junction’

Peter Martins, the ballet master in chief of New York City Ballet, loves to give his dancers happy surprises. On Tuesday evening, moments before the curtain rose on “Hallelujah Junction,” Mr. Martins’s brisk, galvanic work set to John Adams, he promoted Taylor Stanley, one of its leads, to principal dancer. Filling in at the last minute for an injured Gonzalo Garcia, Mr. Stanley was making his New York debut in the role, at the David H. Koch Theater.

Mr. Martins’s decision was spontaneous, a City Ballet publicist said. But it makes sense: The debonair Mr. Stanley has an affinity for speed and drama and has been frequently featured in the ballets of Justin Peck, the company’s resident choreographer. His sharp attack was apparent in “Hallelujah”; later that night, in “Western Symphony,” George Balanchine’s 1954 homage to the Wild West, he showed some spunk, loosening up to find the cowboy within.

In that ballet, which remains a delight, Brittany Pollack made her debut in the second movement opposite Jared Angle, gamely leaping headfirst into his arms with little fear and an ever-gleaming smile. (Her perpetually happy expression can seem one-note.) In the final movement, the willowy Teresa Reichlen, though she faltered uncharacteristically in her fouetté turns, and a devilish Andrew Veyette imbued their frisky pas de deux with a spirit that showed they weren’t just executing moves, but reacting to each other.

The program, which included Sterling Hyltin and Robert Fairchild in an admirable rendition of Balanchine’s 1972 “Duo Concertant,” led with his “Serenade.” It, too, featured a debut, this time by Tiler Peck in the role that is traditionally called the Russian girl. In 2004, Ms. Peck made a glittering impression in the part at her School of American Ballet workshop performance.

This time, she brought a lilting, sleek maturity to the role, which gave breadth to her turns, at times so fast that she seemed to lift off the floor in a swirl of pale blue tulle. There was dramatic sensitivity, too, especially when she brushed the back of her hand against her forehead and fell to the floor.

Later, the Waltz girl, portrayed by the ravishing, space-gulping Sara Mearns, echoed that moment when she dropped to the floor herself; in “Serenade” especially, the scope of her dancing is full of suspense, tender, electric. As the Dark Angel, Megan LeCrone took a spectacular spill herself — this time it wasn’t intentional, but in that moment she held nothing back. So what if dancers fall when they dance like this? The performance was alive.

THEATER

Theater for a New Audience
The Father

Today we see The Father and in 3 weeks we see A Doll's House.

Theatre for a New Audience Sets New Opening Nights for THE FATHER and A DOLL'S HOUSE

The Father and A Doll's House, Theatre for a New Audience's two plays in rotating repertory directed by Arin Arbus featuring Maggie Lacey and John Douglas Thompson at Polonsky Shakespeare Center, 262 Ashland Place, have new opening dates: The Father, now in previews, will open Wednesday, May 25, at 7:30pm and A Doll's House will begin previews Tuesday, May 10, at 7:30pm for an opening Tuesday, May 24, at 7:30pm.

(The release date for both shows in a single review is Wednesday, May 25, after 10:00pm.)
Theatre for a New Audience's production of August Strindberg's The Father is a new version by Scottish author David Greig commissioned by Theatre for a New Audience. Maggie Lacey plays Laura and John Douglas Thompson is the Captain. A Doll's House is an adaptation by Thornton Wilder not seen in New York since its Broadway premiere in 1937. Ms. Lacey plays Nora and Mr. Thompson is Thorwald.

These plays, presented in repertory for the first time by an English-language theatre, are both directed by Arin Arbus, Associate Artistic Director of Theatre for a New Audience.

Jeffrey Horowitz, Founding Artistic Director for Theatre for a New Audience, explained, "Ibsen and Strindberg were great rivals. To say they disliked each other is an understatement. Ibsen wrote A Doll's House first and, of course, its central character is Nora, Thorwald's wife. Strindberg wrote The Father in response and its central character is Adolph, the Captain and husband to Laura. Written in the l9th century at the beginning of women's emancipation, the two plays present stark contrasts about marriage and relationships between the sexes."

RECITAL

Carnegie Hall
Yuja Wang - Piano


Brahms - Ballade in D Minor, Op. 10, No. 1
Brahms - Ballade in D Major, Op. 10, No. 2
Schumann - Kreisleriana, Op. 16
Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat Major, Op. 106, "Hammerklavier"


"With impeccable technique and tremendous musical sensitivity, few artists generate as much electricity as Yuja Wang. The New Criterion wrote of her playing, “crystalline, sensitive, and musical … utterly composed, with hands and mind in balance.” She returns to Carnegie Hall for a recital you simply cannot miss."

Compare Yuja Wang's program with Murray Perahia's we heard last Sunday, May 8th.  Both are playing two different Brahms pieces and both are playing the Beethoven "Hammerklavier".  Lots of "big music".


JOHANNES BRAHMS Ballade in D Minor, Op. 10, No. 1; Ballade in D Major, Op. 10, No. 2
Brahms, like Schumann, had a strong affinity to the characteristically Romantic genre of the short instrumental character piece. The closely related tonalities and motivic kinship of these two early ballades suggest that they were intended to be heard as a pair. The grim D-Minor Ballade was inspired by “Edward,” a traditional Scottish ballad about a son who murders his father, while its D-major companion evokes a more wistful mood.



ROBERT SCHUMANN Kreisleriana, Op. 16

German Romantic writer E. T. A. Hoffmann, who created the memorable character of the half-crazed Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler, was Schumann’s soulmate and literary counterpart. Kreisleriana pays homage to its namesake in the form of eight fantasy-like pieces that also reflect the contrasting personalities of the composer’s fictional alter egos: the impulsive Florestan and the dreamy Eusebius.



LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat Major, Op. 106, “Hammerklavier”

This monumental—and notoriously difficult—sonata marked a watershed in Beethoven’s artistic development. With its soaring rhetoric and penetrating introspection, the “Hammerklavier” anticipates the musical language of the composer’s so-called late period. The centerpiece of the work is the intensely ruminative Adagio sostenuto, which German critic Paul Bekker famously called “the apotheosis of pain, of that deep sorrow for which there is no remedy, and which finds expression not in passionate outpourings, but in the immeasurable stillness of utter woe.”

LINCOLN CENTER

David Koch Theater
New York City Ballet

Bringing Balanchine’s prismatic genius into the spotlight, these three works are at turns virtuosic, streamlined, and romantic.

Ballo della Regina

• Music by: Giuseppe Verdi
• Choreography by: George Balanchine
• Principal Casting: MAY  12: Megan Fairchild, Anthony Huxley*, Brittany Pollack, Sara Adams, Alexa Maxwell, Emilie Gerrity (*First time in role)

The jaw-dropping technical feats of Ballo della Regina’s choreography were originally devised to challenge the lead ballerina, who must exhibit carefree joyousness while performing steps that push the limits of physical possibility.

Kammermusik No. 2

• Music by: Paul Hindemith
• Choreography by: George Balanchine
• Principal Casting: MAY 12: Sara Mearns, Zachary Catazaro (replaces Ask la Cour), Teresa Reichlen, Jared Angle

Requiring great energy, speed, and precision, the striking choreography in Kammermusik No. 2 echoes the intricacies of its modernist score with jagged lines and stylized gestures.

Vienna Waltzes

• Music by: Johann Strauss II, Franz Lehár, Richard Strauss
• Choreography by: George Balanchine
• Principal Casting: MAY 12: Savannah Lowery, Russell Janzen*, Sterling Hyltin, Gonzalo Garcia, Georgina Pazcoguin, Taylor Stanley, Lauren Lovette*, Chase Finlay*, Maria Kowroski, Amar Ramasar (*First time in role)

A work of monumental scale with a magnificent finale, the five-part Vienna Waltzes is set in moonlit Austrian forests and the regal ballrooms of Vienna.

THEATER

The Pearl Theater
The Ding Dong

“HILARIOUS!”

-The New York Times

DRAMA LEAGUE NOMINATION

Kelley Curran, The Dingdong

”THE STAGE SIZZLES TO LIFE EVERY TIME CURRAN TURNS UP!”

-Time Out New York

“FARCE REQUIRES DEXTEROUS, PRECISE PERFORMANCES, AND THIS CAST IS UP TO THE CHALLENGE; BRAD HEBERLEE IS ESPECIALLY EXCELLENT IN HIS MULTIPLE ROLES. YOU WON’T REGRET YOUR EVENING IN THE HOTEL ULTIMUS—BUT KEEP AN EYE ON YOUR SPOUSE, AND YOUR HAT.”

-The New Yorker

Vatelin is a faithful husband—mostly. Lucy is a faithful wife—kind of. And their “fidelity” is about to be put to the test when a series of importunate suitors and femme fatales invade their little world. Following the misadventures of one madcap night in a Paris hotel, Feydeau’s farce dances us into a world where opening the wrong door in the dark of night leads to mayhem, laughter, and, maybe, a few home truths about the secrets to a happy marriage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/19/theater/review-the-dingdong-offers-frothy-lingerieand-frisky-behavior.html?_r=0

Review: ‘The Dingdong’ Offers Frothy Lingerie and Frisky Behavior

A slammed door is as essential to a French sex farce as fizz to Champagne, cream to a chocolate éclair, rose to a Chanel perfume. But in the opening moments of Mark Shanahan’s occasionally hilarious and mostly harmless “The Dingdong,” presented by the Pearl Theater Company, poor Lucy Vatelin (Rachel Botchan) just can’t get her door closed. Much as she prods and pulls, there’s a lecher in the way.

The rakish Dr. Potegnac (Bradford Cover) has followed the demure Lucy home and assailed her with various lewd proposals. But Lucy isn’t listening. She prides herself on her fidelity to her husband, Vatelin (Chris Mixon), and believes that he holds her in the same regard. If he were ever untrue, however, “I’d take a lover in a heartbeat,” she tells Potegnac.

Potegnac then invites her to catch Vatelin in several compromising positions at a nearby hotel that night. A feisty Italian, a battling Hungarian, a brazen American, a virginal bellhop and many other characters end up traipsing through that suite.

Mr. Shanahan, a longtime actor, has adapted the play from Georges Feydeau’s 1896 farce, “Le Dindon.” He has clearly taken some liberties (or is there an exact French cognate for “horndog”?) and forwarded the action 40 years, yet retained the essential plot — of a wife who swears she’ll pay her husband in kind if she finds he’s a cheat. (The French title, which literally refers to a young turkey, is often translated as “Sauce for the Goose.”)

Five actors play 13 roles. Mr. Cover and Kelley Curran, who enacts four characters with four different accents, manage the task with the most variety and verve, though Brad Heberlee works wonders with an absurd fake mustache. Much of the design, which includes costumes by Amy Clark and a fairly flexible set by Sandra Goldmark, is frisky.

For the farce to work ideally, you would have to feel real concern for the Vatelins and real alarm over the threats to their marriage. But under Hal Brooks’s direction, there’s little emotional center, and the precision of the pacing comes and goes. With all the one-liners and quick changes and frothy lingerie and funny accents, however, you might not notice.

As in many a classic farce, semi-scandalous encounters and near trysts can’t shatter the bourgeois marriage at the play’s core; they even strengthen it. However lascivious in its come-ons and varied in its penis jokes, “The Dingdong” is ultimately conservative in its conclusions: a tease of a play.

LINCOLN CENTER

Alice Tully Hall
Young Concert Artists Series Gala

"Young Concert Artists’ track record for spotting the best new talent in classical music is legendary.”
– The New York Times

“Brilliant, ravishing, dazzling, enormously exciting! We should be grateful to this series for getting us as worked up over young artists as we do!"
- High Fidelity/ MusicalAmerica

“YCA’s track record in singling out the stars of tomorrow is mind-boggling!”
– The Washington Post

“Attending the debut of an unknown musica is often a risk at best. However, with young Concert Artists, music lovers can know without a doubt that they are hearing la crème de la crème from around the world.”
– The Huffington Post

“The Young Concert Artists Series sparkles with talent.”
– The New York Times

Review: Young Concert Artists Gala Offers Stars in the Making

By JAMES R. OESTREICHMAY 11, 2016

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The soprano Julia Bullock performing Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, led by Michael Stern, on Tuesday at Alice Tully Hall. CreditHiroyuki Ito for The New York Times 

With gratifying predictability, Young Concert Artists once again showcased three performers clearly bound for stardom in its annual gala concert on Tuesday evening at Alice Tully Hall. Over 55 years, the organization’s track record in fostering the careers of rising performers has been remarkable, and it only distinguished itself further here.

By far the safest bet was Julia Bullock, 29, an American soprano who won first prize in the 2012 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, among several other awards. She has already established a career that many a veteran might envy, having recently sung the lead in Peter Sellars’s production of Kaija Saariaho’s “La Passion de Simone” for the Berlin Philharmonic’s Orchestra Academy, a role she will repeat next month at the Ojai Festival in California.

Here Ms. Bullock sang Samuel Barber’s masterpiece from 1947, “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” based on a highly atmospheric text from the prologue to James Agee’s novel “A Death in the Family.” She rendered the gorgeous yet not oversweet melodies beautifully, but there was much more than mere vocal allure: superb diction and a compelling stage manner that would have communicated much of the meaning even if the words had not registered so clearly.

Photo

The violinist Aleksey Semenenko performing Mozart’s Concerto No. 5 with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Alice Tully Hall. CreditHiroyuki Ito for The New York Times 

Aleksey Semenenko, 27, a Ukrainian violinist and another winner in the 2012 auditions, opened the concert with an elegant account of Mozart’s Concerto No. 5 and was also notable for a lively stage presence. He played with almost unfailing purity of tone, but also with wonderful spontaneity and humor.

Mozart supplied many odd little flourishes in this work and Mr. Semenenko adopted Robert Levin’s latter-day cadenzas, yet the impetus in all of these seemed to be coming from Mr. Semenenko himself; if you didn’t know better, you might have thought that he was making them up on the spot.

Yun-Chin Zhou, 26, a Chinese pianist and the first-prize winner of the 2013 auditions, provided the capper with Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 3, and it was sensational. Mr. Zhou negotiated Prokofiev’s prickly passagework at blistering speeds with immaculate fingering. As bravura pianism, the performance was brilliant and told much, though it gave little idea how Mr. Zhou might fare in more lyrical or Romantic fare. What’s more, for all of Mr. Zhou’s huge technique, his sound was not notably large, even in this intimate hall.

The Orchestra of St. Luke’s displayed its usual versatility throughout, conducted by Michael Stern, the music director of the Kansas City Symphony, who had also obviously worked fruitfully with the soloists. Of the many fine individual contributions from the orchestra, note should be made of the playing of Stephen Taylor on oboe and English horn, especially in some glorious Barber moments.