PERFORMANCE

Merkin Hall
The Marble Choir

Aaron Copland - In The Beginning; Helen Karloski, mezzo-soprano
Eric Whitacre - Water Night
Stephen Paulus - Evensong
Howard Helvey - Shenandoah

"There is a harmony that lies beyond that which human voices alone can create; it is the mystical blending of wordless melodies sung by all the earth that surrounds us.  All Nature Sings will celebrate this “music of the spheres” with Aaron Copland's a cappella masterpiece, In the Beginning, featuring mezzo-soprano soloist Helen Karloski.  The concert also features choral works of American composers Eric Whitacre (Water Night), Stephen Paulus (Evensong), Frank Ticheli (Earth Song), Howard Helvey (Shenandoah), Daniel Elder (Lullaby), and others."

The choir at our Church, Marble Collegiate, is wonderful.  This is from a service.  We hear this quality singing every Sunday!

Please, listen.

Another...

PERFORMANCE

The Great Hall at Cooper Union
Anonymous 4 with Bruce Molsky

As much as anything, we bought these tickets to see The Great Hall at Cooper Union.

Go to this site to see the importance of The Great Hall in American history...

Another site on The Great Hall

Anonymous 4 commemorates the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War’s end. They relate through song the experiences of men and women from both the North and South—the agony of separated lovers, mothers and sons; the fears of those left at home; the death of Lincoln…. It all comes to life in songs long gone or still with us today.

website: anonymous4.com

Concert Program

4-23-15 Anonymous 4 with special guest Bruce Molsky program (PDF)

Artist Bio

Renowned for their unearthly vocal blend and virtuosic ensemble singing, the four women of Anonymous 4 combine historical scholarship with contemporary performance intuition to create their magical sound. Their programs have included music from the year 1000; the ecstatic music and poetry of the 12th-century abbess and mystic, Hildegard of Bingen; 13th-century chant and polyphony from England, France, and Spain; American folksongs, shape note tunes, and gospel songs; and works newly written for the group. Anonymous 4 has performed for sold-out audiences on major concert series and at festivals throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East; and has made 20 best-selling recordings for harmonia mundi usa.

Review: Civil War Songs of Memory and Loss, at Cooper Union

War anniversaries have kept musicians busy lately. The centenary of the outbreak of World War I was commemorated last summer with a gala concert by the Vienna Philharmonic in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, followed by a flurry of performances of Britten’s War Requiem across Europe. Elgar, Beethoven and Shostakovich will figure prominently on programs commemorating the 70th anniversary of V-E Day next month.

On Thursday the vocal ensemble Anonymous 4 offered a very different musical tribute, this one devoted to the men, women and children affected by the American Civil War, which ended 150 years ago. Joined by the bluegrass singer and multi-instrumentalist Bruce Molsky, the quartet performed songs, hymns and fiddle tunes from its new CD “1865,” weaving them into a memorial wreath that was fresh, humble and deeply poignant.

The concert was performed in the Great Hall of the Cooper Union in the East Village, where Lincoln gave a celebrated speech in February 1860 that electrified listeners and energized his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. The show was presented by Music Before 1800, a series enjoying its 40th anniversary this season.

For this program, the members of Anonymous 4 — Ruth Cunningham, Marsha Genensky, Susan Hellauer and Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek — sifted through thousands of songs that were in circulation during the Civil War in letters and broadsides, song sheets, program bills and soldier’s memoirs. Their selection includes overlooked gems like Henry Clay Work’s “The Picture on the Wall,” a haunting evocation of a parent’s moonlit communion with the ghost of a fallen son, as well as familiar tunes returned to their original context. Who knew that Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender” borrows the melody of the Civil War love song “Aura Lea”?

Anonymous 4, which will disband at the end of the 2015-16 season, has built a stellar reputation on performances of medieval music. The ensemble’s glassy vocal blend, lit up by a tone that is pure without being puritanical, has also made it a partner of choice for contemporary composers. Here the singers brought that same poise and expressivity to their arrangements of backcountry tunes and hymns, some performed in rich five-part harmony (with Mr. Molsky adding warmth to the bass line), others supplemented with instrumental accompaniment on guitar, banjo or fiddle.

If the ethereal beauty of Anonymous 4’s singing ennobled some of the meeker selections, Mr. Molsky added idiomatic immediacy. The most affecting songs were those in which he sang, accompanying himself on the fiddle, as in Stephen Foster’s plangent “Hard Times Come Again No More.” Instrumental solos, including a fiery rendition of the Appalachian fiddle tune “Camp Chase,” named after a prisoner-of-war camp in Ohio, served as a reminder of the therapeutic and soul-sustaining functions of music in times of war.

This music possesses a quality of wholesome innocence, which sometimes sits oddly alongside the lyrics, with their evocations of battleground suffering and home-front grief. But in their measured restraint, songs like “Tenting on the Old Camp Ground,” with an antiwar text by Walter Kittredge, achieve their own poignant dignity, cut from a similar cloth as Lincoln’s speeches. This restrained music, presented here, never fully reflects the horrors of Gettysburg — unlike the work of 20th-century composers, who found forms of expression as brutal as the wars they lived through.

PERFORMANCE

MERKIN Merkin Concert Hall
What Makes It So Great?

The Songs of Stephen Sondheim

Only a handful of artists in the 20th century redefined their fields as completely as Sondheim redefined musical theater, yet his fundamental temperament is almost directly at odds with the upbeat aesthetic of the Broadway musical itself.

“Ambivalence is my favorite thing to write about, because it’s the way I feel, and I think the way most people feel.” How did Sondheim turn this ambivalence into the most important theater music of the last 50 years? Join Rob Kapilow and singers, Sally Wilfert & Michael Winther, to explore Sondheim's magical art of ambivalence in music from A Little Night Music, Follies, Sunday in the Park with George and Company. 

Kapilow – conductor, composer, author and NPR music commentator – unravels and explores great musical masterpieces with audiences and performers on stage, asking what makes great music great? He takes listeners inside the music, unraveling, slowing down and recomposing key passages to hear why a piece is so extraordinary. Next, the piece is performed in its entirety, followed by a Q&A with the audience and performers.

The 2014-15 series begins on October 20 with an exploration of “Spring” and “Summer” from Vivaldi's Four Seasons and continues with Beethoven's Appassionata piano sonata, Mendelssohn's Octet for strings, and the songs of Stephen Sondheim performed by soprano and tenor.

Characterized by his unique ability to create an “aha” moment for his audiences and collaborators, whatever their level of musical sophistication or naiveté, Kapilow’s work brings music into people’s lives, opening new ears to musical experiences and helping people to listen actively rather than just hear. As the Boston Globe said, “It’s a cheering thought that this kind of missionary enterprise did not pass from this earth with Leonard Bernstein. Rob Kapilow is awfully good at what he does.”

“Rob Kapilow's commitment to bringing the joy and wonder of classical music to audiences of all ages and backgrounds makes him an excellent partner for Kaufman Music Center," says Lydia Kontos, Kaufman's Executive Director. "We're excited that in addition to Merkin Concert Hall audiences, our students at Lucy Moses School and Special Music School will have this opportunity to hear great music with new ears."

What Makes It Great? made its debut on NPR’s Performance Today over 20 years ago, and soon developed into a full-length concert evening that has sold out regular subscription series in places as diverse as Kansas City, MO and Cerritos, CA, as well as at New York’s Lincoln Center, the Celebrity Series of Boston, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the National Gallery of Canada and the Toronto Symphony.

Kapilow has appeared on NBC’s Today Show in conversation with Katie Couric; he presented a special What Makes It Great? event for broadcast on PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center; and he has written two highly popular books published by Wiley/Lincoln Center: All You Have To Do Is Listen, which won the PSP Prose Award for Best Book in Music and the Performing Arts, and What Makes It Great? (2011), the first book of its kind to be especially designed for the iPad with embedded musical examples.


Here's the Wikipedia site that tells the story of the song.

The story of the song...

Frank Sinatra singing the song...

MUSEUM

JP Morgan Library & Museum
The Rose Haggadah

Hebrew Illumination for Our Time: The Art of Barbara Wolff offers startling illuminations—recent gifts to the Morgan—created by this contemporary artist. The ten folios of "You Renew the Face of the Earth" illustrate passages from Hebrew Psalm 104, a celebration of all creation, with images illuminated in silver, gold, and platinum foils. In the seventeen bifolios comprising the Rose Haggadah, Wolff, while rooted in the tradition of illustrated Haggadot, presents a modern interpretation of the texts used at the Passover Seder.

Here is a link to the exhibit...

A short video showing the artist and her techniques.

It was a magnificent piece of art.  Then in the center exhibit, the museum displays medieval illuminated manuscripts from their permanent collection and they, too, are just wonderful.

The pictures seen here are larger than the very small, actual works.



We walked to the Morgan and Spring is finally here!  The picture with the flowers are in Herald Square on 6th Avenue just outside our door.

PERFORMANCE

Morgan Library & Museum
The Sarajevo Haggadah: Music of the Book

Merima Kljuco - Composer and Accordion
Seth Knopp - Piano
Bart Woodstrup - Artist

"A multimedia work composed by Merima Ključo, Sarajevo Haggadah: Music of the Book traces the incredible journey of this most treasured 14th-century Hebrew illuminated manuscript. Inspired by the musical traditions of Spain, Italy, Austria, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ključo collaborates with artist Bart Woodstrup and pianist Seth Knopp to present a multimedia performance exploring the Sarajevo Haggadah as a symbol of diaspora and return. A discussion with Merima Ključo and Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and author of People of The Book, the historical novel that inspired this production, will follow the performance. This New York premiere concert coincides with the exhibition Hebrew Illumination for Our Time: The Art of Barbara Wolff, and is cosponsored by the Centro Primo Levi New York (www.primolevicenter.org).

The Sarajevo Haggadah performance was commissioned by the Foundation for Jewish Culture's New Jewish Culture Network, a league of North American performing arts presenters committed to the creation and touring of innovative projects, and developed in residence at Yellow Barn. The New Jewish Culture Network has received major support from the Howard and Geraldine Polinger Family Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Anne Abramson Foundation, the Arnow Family Fund and other donors.

The exhibition Hebrew Illumination for Our Time: The Art of Barbara Wolff will be open at 6 p.m. for concert attendees"

This was a very powerful performance by a pianist, an accordionist, and a video media artist.  It was based on a book I read several years ago, People of the Book.

LINCOLN CENTER

Avery Fisher Hall
New York Philharmonic

A rehearsal...

Listen to the two soloists... Listen.

Alan Gilbert - Conductor
Lisa Batiashvili - Violin
Francois Leleux - Oboe

Bach - Concerto for Violin and Oboe
Thierry Escaich - Concerto for Violin and Oboe (U. S. Premier)
Shostakovich - Symphony No. 10

Artist-in-Residence Lisa Batiashvili and her husband, François Leleux, perform Bach’s sublime Concerto for Violin and Oboe, and Thierry Escaich’s work inspired by it. Plus: Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony, called “heart-pounding [and] intense” by The New York Timesthe last time the Philharmonic performed it. Alan Gilbert conducts.

We are learning to appreciate and enjoy Shostakovich.  He make a full orchestra "work."  Great sounds!

NY CULTURE

How a Happy Marriage Sounds

Violinist Lisa Batiashvili and oboist François Leleux play with the N.Y. Philharmonic

By CORINNE RAMEY

April 9, 2015 8:07 p.m. ET

The repertoire for violin and oboe is relatively small. So when violinist Lisa Batiashvili and oboist François Leleux perform together, the married couple often turns to an old favorite.

“The first piece we started playing together is the Bach double concerto,” said Ms. Batiashvili. “It’s followed us through our relationship and our life together.”

Both members of the classical-music power couple have busy, and separate, international solo careers. Ms. Batiashvili, who at age 16 was the youngest-ever competitor and second-prize winner in the prestigious Sibelius Competition, is this season’s artist-in-residence at the New York Philharmonic. Mr. Leleux is also a conductor and professor at Munich’s Hochschule für Musik und Theater.

She records for Deutsche Grammophon, and he for Sony Classical. He has appeared on her albums, and she on his.

This week, that Bach concerto emerged once again at a notable moment for the couple: Mr. Leleux’s first concert with the New York Philharmonic was on Wednesday, and Ms. Batiashvili’s 50th appearance with the orchestra on the following day. In addition to the Bach piece, the couple gave the U.S. premiere of Thierry Escaich ’s “Concerto for Violin and Oboe.” The concerts, conducted by music director Alan Gilbert, continue through Saturday.

When asked about the Bach earlier this week, backstage after a rehearsal at Avery Fisher Hall, Mr. Leleux leapt out of his chair. “Let me show you something!” he said, running to the other room.

He brought back his well-worn score to Bach’s concerto. On the taped-up title page was a handwritten list of more than two dozen dates and places where the couple had performed the work.

“So we start in ’04—she was pregnant with Anna,” said Mr. Leleux, pointing to the first notation. His finger inched down the page. “Here, Lisa was pregnant with Louis.” Several inches later: “We played it in the [BBC] Proms and at a wonderful festival in Amsterdam.”

In addition to performing Bach, both musicians advocate for new music and work with composers to enlarge the musical options for their unusual pairing, said Ms. Batiashvili.

The couple showed high interest in the inner workings of Mr. Escaich’s piece, which uses melodic fragments from the Bach concerto.

“It’s not just ‘I ask you for a commission,’ ” said Mr. Escaich. “They wanted to know what do you do, how you transform that. They asked questions before, during and after.”

Ms. Batiashvili, 36 years old, was born in Tbilisi, in what is now Georgia, and Mr. Leleux, 43, is from northern France. The couple met briefly when she was a teenager and he played in an orchestra with her father; but they didn’t get together until after meeting in a chamber-music festival in Finland, in 2002.

Georgia remains important for both musicians: She has family there, and both have worked to further music education and access to instruments in the country.

“It’s very important to give the message to the young people in Georgia that people should take responsibility for themselves,” said Ms. Batiashvili, adding that the Soviet system made it impossible to do so.

The couple now lives in Munich with their children, ages 6 and 10. “It’s a chess game, but it’s worth it,” said Mr. Leleux of the work-family juggle, as his daughter fiddled with an iPhone on a nearby couch. Ms. Batiashvili said she tries to restrict her travel to just eight to 10 days a month, and a nanny and grandparents help with child care.

“People think that because we are traveling musicians, we never see our kids,” said Ms. Batiashvili. “But we have more flexibility. We try to do our work when the kids are in school.”

Still, the career of a classical artist can be all consuming, Mr. Leleux said: “Music is a like a jealous woman.”

“I’m the nice girl,” said Ms. Batiashvili, with a laugh. “But it’s true, because in some ways when you’re with music, you have to be 100%. You cannot give 95%.”

The cellist Sebastian Klinger, a friend and regular collaborator, described chamber-music rehearsals with the couple as more musical collaboration than verbal discussion, and “basically, just fun all the time.”

“He’s extremely communicative and very inspired, always,” said Mr. Klinger, of the oboist’s seemingly endless enthusiasm—for everything. “I never saw him when he was not inspired or having energy.”

Upon meeting Ms. Batiashvili, “you think she’s more calm,” Mr. Klinger said. “But there’s quite a strong flame in her, musically and personally. You cannot always see it if you just talk to her, but it comes out immediately on stage.”

At the end of the conversation, Mr. Leleux became concerned for his wife’s image in an impending article. “There will be a picture, I guess?” he said. “If you say 50th concert, they’ll think she’s 70.”

Ms. Batiashvili, who made her debut with the Philharmonic in 2005, appeared unperturbed.

“It’s like a family thing,” she said, of those 50 concerts. “Also, my family is here. It all feels so close.”

It's starting to become Spring here!  From Union Square...

THEATER

The McKittrick Hotel
Ghost Quartet

I cannot explain this performance and give it justice.  There were four singers and musicians who performed a song cycle about death and ghosts.  Fifteen minutes of the show was in complete darkness.  There was a point in the show in which the performers passed out bottles of Bourbon and glasses and encouraged everyone to drink up.

The New York Times gave it "The Critics' Pick."

It was creative, shocking, alarming, pretty, and fun.

There was a full time piano, a full time cello, and then various other instruments throughout the performance.

Read the NYTs review by its theater critic, Ben Brantley, and see if it can can relay some of what the evening was about.


A visual preview...

THEATER | THEATER REVIEW

The Finest of Dead People

Dave Malloy's ‘Ghost Quartet’ at the Bushwick Starr

NYT Critics’ Pick

By BEN BRANTLEYOCT. 9, 2014

Spirits rise in all sorts of ways in “Ghost Quartet,” a rapturous little show that asks the musical question: “If you could be any kind of dead person, what kind of dead person would you be?”

After due consideration of assorted supernatural species, including the currently in-vogue zombies and vampires, the answer arrives in soaring song in this four-person production, which opened on Wednesday night at the Bushwick Starr in Brooklyn. One would only want to be a ghost, of course, the kind that goes “hoo, hoo, hoo” all night.

To say that’s what “Ghost Quartet” does is a more or less accurate but far from complete description of its inebriating effect. Written and composed by Dave Malloy — the rollicking talent behind the hit Off Broadway popera “Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812” — this happily haunted song cycle speaks in many styles.

The voguish term “mash-up” doesn’t begin to capture its breadth or its quirky sincerity. Performed by four singer-musicians (including Mr. Malloy, at the piano), “Ghost Quartet” uses languages as varied as gospel, folk ballads, honky-tonk anthems of heartbreak, electropop, doo-wop and jazz à la Thelonious Monk. These tongues are given voice by instruments that include the cello, dulcimer, metallophone, erhu, Celtic harp, autoharp and pretty much every form of percussion available.

As for its plot, well, after a while, you’ll stop trying to disentangle its threads and sources. (James Harrison Monaco is the dramaturge.) Among the works cribbed from and made reference to are the “Arabian Nights”; the Japanese Noh drama “Matsukaze”; Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”; the animated movie “Frozen”; Grimmsian fairy tales; grisly urban legends; and 19th-century broadsheet songs that wailed about bloody murders and their otherworldly aftermaths.

Mr. Malloy finds more than one common denominator in these disparate strands, which are entwined as intricately as the melody lines in close harmony. Many of the stories cited involve dead sisters, for one thing. But most important, they all address our irresistible urge to scare and tease ourselves with meandering tales from the crypt, preferably in the company of good friends and strong drink.

Both are made available during “Ghost Quartet,” which has been directed with unobtrusive cunning by Annie Tippe. The small upstairs space that is the Bushwick Starr has been transformed into a cozy many-carpeted parlor, just the sort of place you might choose to hunker down for a long chin wag on a wet, dark night.

No matter where you’re seated, you’ll be in proximity to the cast: the ursine Mr. Malloy, Brent Arnold, Brittain Ashford and the brandy-voiced Gelsey Bell. (Ms. Ashford and Ms. Bell both appeared in “Natasha, Pierre.”) They, in turn, will be happy to introduce you to their “Four Friends.” That’s the title of a song that hymns the warming comfort of four different labels of whiskey, to which audience members are encouraged to help themselves.

You may well find intoxicant enough, though, in the narrative and musical sweep of “Ghost Quartet,” which is to be released as an album via the website indiegogo.com. (The show’s numbers are identified by their track and side numbers.) This very live incarnation is performed without intermission and takes place partly — be warned — in near-total darkness.

Sure, on occasion the whimsy threatens to thicken to the clotting point. But the show never slows down enough to lose you, because Mr. Malloy is so infectiously in love with the dark arts of storytelling in all its forms.

In addition to spinning crazy, mixed-up yarns about subjects including premature burial and death by subway car, “Ghost Quartet” slyly addresses the questions of why we want to believe in ghosts and feel the need to keep talking about them.

And I promise you, you will believe by the evening’s end. People may die, but the stories they tell will continue to divide and multiply, and haunt the world for as long as the human race exists. The ways in which the last number attests to this creed is one of the most ingenious and affecting finales I’ve come across in years.

I won’t go into further detail. Ghost stories, more than any kind of fiction, should never be ravaged by spoilers. Let’s just say that Mr. Malloy and company find new ways for guaranteeing that this exultant production’s melody lingers on, in the finest tradition of phantoms that never say die.

We walked to and from the theater.  This is the Easter Empire State Building.  The windows of our apartment look directly out on this every night.  It is one block away!

Go back and look at Theater on 3/28/2015.

I've added a video.

I want to show how small the theater was for a production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

It's unbelievably small!

RECITAL

Carnegie Hall
Murray Perahia

• Bach - French Suite No. 6 in E Major, BWV 817
• Haydn - Sonata in A-flat Major, Hob. XVI: 46
• Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 26 in E-flat Major, Op. 81a, "Les Adieux"
• Franck - Prelude, Chorale and Fugue, Op. 21
• Chopin - Scherzo No. 1

"In the more than 40 years he has been performing, pianist Murray Perahia has left audiences around the world breathless. “You've never heard a pianist who considers each note with such deep care. No phrase is left unconsidered; every line of the score has been probed to make it as musical as possible,” proclaimed The Seattle Times."

"This evening’s program begins with Johann Sebastian Bach’s French Suite No. 6 in E Major, which is perhaps the most brilliantly entertaining and tuneful of all the French Suites. César Franck, who made a reputation for himself as one of France’s greatest organists, was endlessly fascinated by Bach’s music. It is not surprising that this naturalized Frenchman, who much preferred the Germanic musical tradition, should adopt three of Bach’s favorite forms and use them to create his Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue, Op. 21, which is arguably one of the finest late-Romantic keyboard masterpieces. Franck was also strongly influenced by Ludwig van Beethoven, as was Frédéric Chopin, who transformed Beethoven’s development of the scherzo as a replacement movement for the minuet into his four independent scherzos for piano, of which we hear the first on tonight’s program. Beethoven was a student of Joseph Haydn, and Haydn’s formal and emotional intensification of the piano sonata, on display in his Sonata in A-flat Major, paved the way for Beethoven’s programmatic “Les adieux” Sonata."

Watch a taste of Murray...

Review: Murray Perahia at Carnegie Hall

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

APRIL 3, 2015

The beloved American pianist Murray Perahia turns 68 this month, an age at which you might expect him to be mellowing as an artist and reaching new realms of profundity.

Actually, Mr. Perahia has been playing with increasing boldness in recent years. On Wednesday night at Carnegie Hall, during a much-anticipated recital, he sometimes sounded like an impetuous youth, especially during the last movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 26 in E flat (Op. 81a).

Beethoven composed this piece as an expression of loss when Archduke Rudolf of Austria, his supporter and friend, had to leave Vienna with his family to escape Napoleon’s artillery barrage in 1809. Beethoven gave programmatic titles (in German) to the three movements: “The Farewell,” “Absence” and “The Reunion.” That finale, which begins with a spiraling flourish that leads to a joyous theme, usually comes across as almost giddy in its exuberance.

Mr. Perahia dove into the movement at a breakneck tempo and never let up. Given his renown as a pianist of scrupulous musicianship and elegance, he still managed to bring textural details and structural clarity to the music. But he certainly cut loose here. In repeated passages, he would play a thumping low octave with his left hand, then sweep up the keyboard in a burst of dizzying arpeggios, landing on a crackling high note. It was actually fun to see Mr. Perahia, who can seem very serious-minded, going a little wild in a Beethoven finale.

True to his conservative orientation, Mr. Perahia offered a program of classics, including a stately, perhaps too much so, account of Haydn’s Sonata in A flat (Hob. XVI: 46). He began with Bach’s French Suite No. 6 in E. He drew maximum lyricism from the flowing, undulant Allemande and rendered the Courante at a fleet tempo, with limpid touch, so that the music’s racing lines sounded like whirlwinds of sixteenth notes. He revealed the bittersweet inner life of the stately Polonaise and infused the final Gigue with hearty, bouncing happiness.

In Franck’s Prelude, Chorale and Fugue, Mr. Perahia was at his most rhapsodic, especially in the Prelude section, which came across like an improvisation in which a sighing motif inspires explorations of wandering chromatic harmony. He ended with Chopin’s Scherzo No. 1 in B minor. While taking a hellbent tempo in the first section, he managed to dispatch Chopin’s teeming bursts with crispness and fire. His poetic, tender playing of the middle section was especially beautiful.

The enthusiastic audience wanted encores and got them. First a Chopin nocturne and then Schumann’s “Traumes Wirren” (“Dream’s Confusions”) from the Fantasy Pieces, a work Mr. Perahia recorded in 1973, at the beginning of a continuing relationship with Sony. His performance on Wednesday was riskier, more headstrong, than on that classic recording.

So much for mellowing in your late 60s.