LINCOLN CENTER

David Geffen Hall
New York Philharmonic

Jaap van Zweden - Conductor

Shostakovich/Orchestra Barshai - Chamber Symphony
Beethoven - Symphony No. 3, Eroica

"Feel the power of Beethoven’s Eroica, forever linked to Napoleon — nearly its dedicatee — until he crowned himself emperor. His moral compass thus betrayed, the enraged composer’s dedication would instead celebrate “the memory of a great man.” Jaap van Zweden also conducts music by Shostakovich, who labored under the tyranny of Stalin’s regime."

RECITAL

Marble Collegiate Church
Monday Noon Concerts

CONCERT

Carnegie Hall
The MET Orchestra

Valery Gergiev - Conductor
Daniil Trifonov - Piano

Schumann - Piano Concerto
Schubert - Symphony No. 9, "Great"

"The stars align on the Carnegie Hall stage when The MET Orchestra—praised for its “lush, shimmering sound” and “superb” playing (The New York Times)—is conducted by a podium giant, Valery Gergiev. Called “eclectic, wizardly, unsurpassable” by The New Criterion, Gergiev brings trademark intensity and precision to an evening of thrilling music."

LINCOLN CENTER

Alice Tully Hall
Young Concert Artists Gala

Peter Marino, Guest of Honor
Katharine J. Rayner, Gala Chair

Anthony Trionfo, flute
Ibert: Flute Concerto

SooBeen Lee, violin
Chausson: Poème, Op. 25

Nathan Lee, piano
Mendelssohn: Piano Concerto No. 1
in G minor, Op. 25

The Orchestra of St. Luke’s conducted by Teddy Abrams
Dinner and Live Auction to follow in the Grand Foyer

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/10/arts/music/susan-wadsworth-young-concert-artists.html

After 58 Years, Classical Music’s Star-Maker Says Goodbye

By

May 10, 2019

Susan Wadsworth, who founded Young Concert Artists in 1961 to discover and promote new talent, is stepping down this year.Celeste Sloman for The New York Times

Susan Wadsworth, who founded Young Concert Artists in 1961 to discover and promote new talent, is stepping down this year.Celeste Sloman for The New York Times

In the early days of Young Concert Artists, which Susan Wadsworth founded in 1961 to foster fresh talent in classical music, the organization’s recitals were presented in an Armenian restaurant in Greenwich Village. The owner, a music lover, was happy to have the space turned into a makeshift concert hall on days the restaurant was closed, to showcase the gifted performers Ms. Wadsworth had a knack for discovering.

Young Concert Artists has come a long way since those early days. Now, the winners of its annual auditions process — usually four to six — are presented in recital at important halls in New York and Washington, and are provided with a few years of management and guidance, too.

“Susan identifies talent quickly and then wants to help nurture and develop it with care,” the soprano Julia Bullock, a winner in 2012, said in an email.

The results speak for themselves: Among the more than 270 alumni, most largely unknown when they won, are major artists like Ms. Bullock; the pianists Richard Goode, Emanuel Ax and Jeremy Denk; the violinist Pinchas Zukerman; the cellists Fred Sherry and Carter Brey; the soprano Dawn 

Upshaw; and the composers Andrew Norman and Kevin Puts.

Young Concert Artists presented the soprano Julia Bullock, a winner of its auditions, in recital in 2014.Ruby Washington/The New York Times

Young Concert Artists presented the soprano Julia Bullock, a winner of its auditions, in recital in 2014.Ruby Washington/The New York Times

After 58 years, Ms. Wadsworth, who turns 83 on Sunday, will step aside as director; the Young Concert Artists season ends on Thursday with a program of three recent winners playing concertos with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Alice Tully Hall. While she will continue as an artistic adviser, the composer Daniel Kellogg is taking over as president.

Ms. Wadsworth spoke about the organization and her legacy in a recent conversation. Here are edited excerpts.

What was your vision for Young Concert Artists at the beginning?

When I was a student at [what was then called] Mannes College of Music, I was blown away by a few very talented people there, and I quit thinking that I would become a performer. But I kept in touch with these musicians. “When can I hear you?” I’d ask. There really was very little like that back then.

From the beginning, my musical talent seemed to manifest itself in discerning that spark, that talent in others. At Mannes, a friend asked me to listen to this young pianist. It was Richard Goode, who was 14. He played a Schubert sonata and there was this intense concentration, perfection of phrasing, everything was expressive. He was inside the music.

Those kinds of qualities have always moved me. I was on a grants panel for the N.E.A. once, and we were listening to tape recordings. And we didn’t know who anyone was. A recording of a Rzewski piece began with just a repeated note. I heard two bars. This pianist is fantastic, I thought. There was just this quality. And it was Anthony De Mare [who became a YCA winner in 1986]. Finding these musicians who are communicating music with such youthful brilliance and passion and insight, it’s just the most thrilling thing in the world to me.

Once we started, I felt I had something going with the concerts, but it was just a series. I had to do more. So I started booking them. In the fourth year I got a fantastic assistant and she ended up booking like crazy. That’s how the management division started. We’re a smaller organization and we take people from every instrument, and voice, and string quartets, and ensembles. But the purpose is to let them be heard.

A major New York recital can be a lot of pressure. There’s a nice homey quality about YCA events at Merkin Concert Hall.

Our series is exciting and important, but it’s also done in a comforting way, I think. My feeling for the artists is not only professional. I just adore them. And that relationship lasts throughout their lives. Because YCA helps them at a time when they are vulnerable, when they aren’t sure if they’re that great, and we give them nurturing and exposure and the chance to perform.

“From the beginning,” Ms. Wadsworth said, “my musical talent seemed to manifest itself in discerning that spark, that talent in others.”Celeste Sloman for The New York Times

After someone wins the auditions, for how long do you manage them?

The contracts are for three years, minimum. But usually it’s four or five or sometimes more, depending on how it goes. But at a certain point we have to edge them out of the nest. That’s always sad, but usually a good thing.

You started choosing composers as winners in 1994. How did that begin?

One of the alumni mentioned it to me as something we should do. Then I talked about it with the board, and everyone wanted to. We get composers to send recordings of their music and scores. I don’t think I am qualified to judge a composer. But I sit with the other musicians and the interesting thing is that my feeling agrees with theirs. What I judge on is whether the piece feels organic, rather than someone just playing around with sounds.

And now Daniel Kellogg, a composer, is taking over. That’s a big change.

The board did not want me involved with the choice. But he and I are going to work together quite a lot. He has been living in Boulder as a professor at the University of Colorado. So I’m touched and thrilled that he is picking up his family and moving here.

This is a little like asking a mother to pick a favorite child, but are there artists you remember because winning the auditions really made a difference for them, and for you?

Well, sure. Jeremy Denk said our choosing him really changed his life. He was in academia, and I kind of challenged him to get out and do what he could do. He was accompanying a violinist, who sent a tape with Jeremy accompanying him. I said, “Who’s that pianist?” I got him to come and play. Pinchas Zukerman, I met when he was 14 and I managed him until he was 18. It’s been a wonderful friendship all these years.

The season ends on Thursday with a gala program of three recent winners playing concertos at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center; yca.org.

CONCERT

Carnegie Hall
Chris Thile, Nickel Creek, Punch Brothers

"For the first time, Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers appear on the same bill for an evening that features the two main branches of Chris Thile’s musical family tree."

Nickel Creek

"Nickel Creek is the Grammy Award–winning roots-music trio of violinist Sara Watkins, mandolinist Chris Thile, and guitarist Sean Watkins. After the close of its Farewell (For Now) tour in 2007, which culminated at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Nickel Creek was not actually contemplating a breakup, as many in its large fan-base feared. The still startlingly young band-mates simply needed some time to grow up—musically and personally—away from the glare of the spotlight they’d shared since they were kids. Sara and Chris were merely eight years old when they and 12-year-old Sean played their first gig as Nickel Creek at a San Diego pizza parlor, having been brought together by a mutual music teacher. Chris’s dad played bass. After 10 years of work on the contemporary bluegrass circuit, the prodigious trio landed a deal with the independent Sugar Hill Records, championed by violinist Alison Krauss, who would produce Nickel Creek’s first two Sugar Hill releases, its self-titled 2000 debut, and the 2002 follow-up This Side, which garnered a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album.

Nickel Creek’s third studio album, 2005’s Why Should the Fire Die?, was a more ambitious effort, prefiguring the expansive solo work to come individually from these musicians. It was produced in part by Eric Valentine, whose credits in punk, alt rock, and pop made him the least likely—but somehow just right—candidate for the job. In 2014, Nickel Creek released its most recent album, A Dotted Line, again with Valentine, and embarked on a sold-out 25th anniversary tour."

Punch Brothers

"Punch Brothers are the quintet of mandolinist Chris Thile, guitarist Chris Eldridge, bassist Paul Kowert, banjoist Noam Pikelny, and violinist Gabe Witcher. Says The Washington Post, “With enthusiasm and experimentation, Punch Brothers take bluegrass to its next evolutionary stage, drawing equal inspiration from the brain and the heart.” The quintet’s latest album, All Ashore, was released in July 2018 on Nonesuch Records and won the 2019 Grammy Award for Best Folk Album. The Independent called All Ashore “an album of rich instrumentation and understated beauty that reveals deeper nuances on each and every listen.”

As Thile says, the album is “a meditation on committed relationships in the present day, particularly in the present climate.” He continues, “We were hoping to create something that would be convincing as a complete thought—in this case as a nine-movement, or nine-piece, thought—though it’s rangy in what it’s talking about, and in the characters who are doing the talking …”

Punch Brothers returned to the same room at United Recording Studios (formerly Ocean Way) in Hollywood, where they had recorded both The Phosphorescent Blues and their 2010 Jon Brion–produced Antifogmatic. Thile says they felt they had “established a rapport” with the space; the same “level of trust and love that breeds confidence” also led them to produce the album themselves for the first time."

CONCERT

Carnegie Hall
Les Violons Du Roy & La Chapelle De Quebec

Les Violons du Roy
La Chapelle de Québec
Bernard Labadie - Founding Conductor and Music Director of La Chapelle de Québec
Lydia Teuscher - Soprano
Iestyn Davies - Countertenor
Robin Tritschler - Tenor
Matthew Brook - Bass-Baritone

Bach - Mass in B Minor

"Bach’s monumental Mass in B Minor is one of the uncontestable masterpieces of the choral literature. All of Bach’s hallmarks are present: intricately woven counterpoint; brilliant orchestral writing, like the joyous trumpet and drums punctuating the exuberant Gloria and Et resurrexit; profoundly expressive solo vocal passages; and an overall dramatic power that unfailingly uplifts the spirit."

RECITAL

Merkin Recital Hall
Tuesday Matinées

Chrystal E. Williams - Mezzo-soprano

Robert Schumann - Frauenliebe und Leben
Lorca - Selections from Canciones Españolas Antiguas
Britten - A Charm of Lullabies
Gershwin & Kern - Spirituals

“Smoothly meshed technique with a sense of spontaneity and discovery” – Baltimore Sun

First Prize and Audience Choice winner at Sweden’s Wilhelm Stenhammar International Music Competition and a winner of Astral’s National Auditions.

Listen to the beauty of the human voice and marvel...

RECITAL

Tuesday Noon Music
The Church of the Transfiguration

Accordion Ensemble

RECITAL

Marble Collegiate Church
Monday Organ Recital Series

LINCOLN CENTER

David Koch Theater
New York City Ballet

All Balanchine

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  Scotch Symphony

  • Music by: Felix Mendelssohn
  • Choreography by: George Balanchine
  • Principal Casting: APR 30, MAY 4 mat: Ashley Bouder, Joseph Gordon*, Bailey 
  • Jones*, Christina Clark* (replaces Sasonah Huttenbach), Mira Nadon*, Alec Knight*, Lars Nelson* (replaces Christopher Grant)
  • MAY 8: Sterling Hyltin*, Anthony Huxley*, Alston Macgill*, Christina Clark (replaces Sasonah Huttenbach), Mira Nadon, Lars Nelson*, Ralph Ippolito*
    *First Time in Role
     

  A scenic escapade in the Scottish Highlands, this charming Balanchine ballet features brisk footwork and a wistfully romantic pas de deux.

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    Duo Concertant

    • Music by: Igor Stravinsky
    • Choreography by: George Balanchine 
    • Principal Casting: APR 30, MAY 4 mat: Megan Fairchild, Anthony Huxley
       

    An animated dance for a neoclassical couple, the dancers periodically stop and listen to the onstage musicians before ending with a poignant scene in a pool of light on a dark stage.
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    Sonatine

    • Music by: Maurice Ravel
    • Choreography by: George Balanchine
    • Principal Casting: APR 30, MAY 4 mat: Lauren Lovette** (replaces Tiler Peck), Gonzalo Garcia
      MAY 8: Megan Fairchild, Taylor Stanley
      **NYC Debut
       

    The polished simplicity and emotional interplay of the rarely-seen Sonatine evokes the elegance of the French artists on which it was made.
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    Stravinsky Violin Concerto

    • Music by: Igor Stravinsky
    • Choreography by: George Balanchine
    • Principal Casting: APR 30, MAY 4 mat: Sterling Hyltin, Russell Janzen* (replaces Ask la Cour), Maria Kowroski, Adrian Danchig-Waring
      MAY 8: Lauren Lovette, Joseph Gordon*, Sara Mearns, Aaron Sanz**
      **NYC Debut, *First Time in Role
       

    The outer sections of Stravinsky Violin Concerto are carefully-woven masterpieces of symmetry that peel away to reveal two of Balanchine’s most ingenious and unique pas de deux.
    
    
    
    
    

    
    

    

    
    

    
    

    

    
    

    

    
    

    

    
    

    

    
    

    

    
    

    

    
    

    

    
    

    

    
    
    
    Just out side on the Lincoln Center Plaza...