CARNEGIE HALL

The Met Orchestra

The MET Orchestra
Esa-Pekka Salonen, Conductor
Susan Graham, Mezzo-Soprano
Matthew Polenzani, Tenor

ALL-MAHLER PROGRAM
Selections from Des Knaben Wunderhorn
·· "Der Schildwache Nachtlied"
·· "Verlor'ne Müh"
·· "Trost im Unglück"
·· '"Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht"
·· "Das irdische Leben"
·· "Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt"
·· "Rheinlegendchen"
·· "Lied des Verfolgten im Turm"
·· "Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen"
·· "Lob des hohen Verstandes"
Symphony No. 1

"Mahler said “a symphony should embrace the world,” a statement true of much of his music. In just a few bars, he can take the listener on a ramble through the forest, conjure visions of the last judgment, recreate a wild klezmer dance, or paint a picture of heaven. Mahler's music speaks to every emotion and touches every level of the psyche—it truly embraces the world. His song cycle Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn) tells tales of joy, recounts the farewell of a young soldier to his lover, conveys the mysteries of childhood, reveals the pleasures and pains of love, and much more."

"The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra is regarded as one of the world's finest orchestras. From the time of the company's inception in 1883, the ensemble has worked with leading conductors in both opera and concert performances, and has developed into an orchestra of enormous technical polish and style. The MET Orchestra (as the ensemble is referred to when appearing in concert outside the opera house) maintains a demanding schedule of performances and rehearsals during its 33-week New York season, when the company performs as many as seven times a week in repertory that this season encompasses 26 operas."

"In addition to its opera schedule, the orchestra has a distinguished history of concert performances. Arturo Toscanini made his American debut as a symphonic conductor with The MET Orchestra in 1913, and the impressive list of instrumental soloists who have appeared with the orchestra includes Leopold Godowsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arthur Rubinstein, Pablo Casals, Josef Hofmann, Ferruccio Busoni, Jascha Heifetz, Moriz Rosenthal, and Fritz Kreisler. Since the orchestra resumed symphonic concerts in 1991, instrumental soloists have included Itzhak Perlman, Maxim Vengerov, Alfred Brendel, and Evgeny Kissin, and the group has performed six world premieres: Milton Babbitt's Piano Concerto No. 2 (1998), William Bolcom's Symphony No. 7 (2002), Hsueh-Yung Shen's Legend (2002), Charles Wuorinen's Theologoumenon (2007) and Time Regained(2009), and John Harbison's Closer to My Own Life (2011)."

"Songs and symphonies form the two pillars of Mahler’s output, and both genres are represented on tonight’s program. Although Mahler was an esteemed opera conductor—arguably the greatest of his time—he never composed for the stage. Besides his symphonies and many songs, only one movement of a chamber work and a youthful cantata survive. Tonight’s concert opens with 10 songs on texts from Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim’s collection of German folk songs titled Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which began to appear in print in 1805 and quickly became a seminal text. Des Knaben Wunderhorn is not without its emotional complications, and the melancholic Mahler was no doubt drawn to the collection’s themes of unrequited love, doom-laden militarism, and desperate hopes for a better life."

"Mahler’s First Symphony drew much of its melodic material from his early song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer), begun in the mid-1880s. The symphony also drew on other late–18th- and early–19th-century sources, including Jean Paul’s Titan and Siebenkäs, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier, and Schubert’s friend Moritz von Schwind’s woodcut of a hunter’s funeral. As the work’s performance history progressed, Mahler removed these references, including the subtitle “Titan,” preferring the illusion of abstraction to possible critical indignation at the work’s programmatic roots. Nonetheless, Mahler’s symphony still strikes an extramusical note, offering both a bold continuation of the symphonic tradition pioneered by Beethoven and a poetic evocation of the landscape of Central Europe, albeit with a vein of nostalgia."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/arts/music/review-esa-pekka-salonen-met-orchestra-mahler-carnegie-hall.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fanthony-tommasini&action=click&contentCollection=undefined&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection

Review: Esa-Pekka Salonen Brings Mahler to Carnegie, Ever So Coolly

By ANTHONY TOMMASINIJUNE 1, 2017

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Met Orchestra, with the tenor Matthew Polenzani. Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times 

Two of the best and most important productions at the Metropolitan Opera in recent years were Janacek’s “From the House of the Dead,” in 2009, and Strauss’s “Elektra,” last spring. Both were directed by Patrice Cheréau. And both were conducted, brilliantly, by Esa-Pekka Salonen.

In the middle of the “Elektra” run last year, the Met announced that Mr. Salonen would replace James Levine in its orchestra’s annual series at Carnegie Hall. The hall was packed on Wednesday for the first of three programs, an evening of Mahler offering 10 songs from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” and the Symphony No. 1 in D minor. The chemistry between Mr. Salonen and these players, which came through so powerfully at the Met, was obvious again at Carnegie.

For some Mahlerites, Mr. Salonen’s approach to these classic works may seem a little steeped in Nordic cool. For me, the lean textures, clarity and emotional directness were exactly what made the interpretations so rewarding.

The mezzo-soprano Susan Graham performing selections from Mahler’s “Des Knaben Wunderhorn.” Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times 

The texts for “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” come from a collection of anonymous German folk poems. Many conductors and singers delve beneath the folklore to plumb the tragic depths of these texts about courtship, war and the afterlife. In this performance, featuring two Met stars, the mezzo-soprano Susan Graham and the tenor Matthew Polenzani, the storytelling aspects of the songs were paramount and the mood less heavy; profundities came through without undue emotiveness. Mr. Salonen drew sensitive and colorful yet refined and lucid playing from the orchestra.

In “Der Schildwache Nachtlied,” a lonely sentinel voices passing thoughts, one moment wistfully regretting that he must stand guard while others make merry, the next imagining a beckoning girl. Mr. Polenzani conveyed the sentry’s vulnerability in his sweet-toned singing.

Ms. Graham, in plush voice, captured the rustic courtship rituals between the “she” and the “he” of “Verlor’ne Müh.” The combination of her vocal charisma and emotional restraint proved effective in the aching song “Das Irdische Leben.” Mr. Polenzani, singing with plaintive beauty in soft, high-lying phrases, excelled in the wrenching “Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen,” in which a forlorn soldier, sensing doom, bids his girlfriend farewell.

In the First Symphony, Mr. Salonen seemed intent on reminding listeners that this piece is an earthbound symphonic composition, not just Mahler’s first step into the metaphysical beyond. Mr. Salonen drew out the folkloric elements of the music: the rustic tunes, the evocation of gurgling streams, the heavy-footed stomping in the landler dance that runs through the third movement.

But the slight coolness and clarity of the playing also revealed Mahler’s intricate contrapuntal writing, the boldness of his chromatic harmonies. And I don’t see how any Mahler lover could have felt shortchanged during the brassy, triumphant conclusion of the finale, played here to the hilt.

MUSEUM/PARK

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Central Park

Friday, yesterday, we went to The Met to see the Irving Penn Photographic Exhibit.

"The most comprehensive retrospective to date of the work of the great American photographer Irving Penn (1917–2009), this exhibition marks the centennial of the artist's birth. Over the course of his nearly 70-year career, Penn mastered a pared-down aesthetic of studio photography that is distinguished for its meticulous attention to composition, nuance, and detail.

The exhibition follows the 2015 announcement of the landmark promised gift from The Irving Penn Foundation to The Met of more than 150 photographs by Penn, representing every period of the artist's dynamic career with the camera. The gift forms the core of the exhibition, which features more than 200 photographs by Penn, including iconic fashion studies of Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, the artist's wife; exquisite still lifes; Quechua children in Cuzco, Peru; portraits of urban laborers; female nudes; tribesmen in New Guinea; and color flower studies. The artist's beloved portraits of cultural figures from Truman Capote, Picasso, and Colette to Ingmar Bergman and Issey Miyake are also featured. Rounding out the exhibition are photographs by Penn that entered The Met collection prior to the promised gift."

That included lunch in the Member's Dining Room, viewing the 19th And Early 20th Century European Paintings, and the Irving Penn Exhibit.


We then went to the roof terrace of The Met to see The Theater of Disappearance.

"Argentinian artist Adrián Villar Rojas has transformed the Cantor Roof with an intricate site-specific installation that uses the Museum itself as its raw material. Featuring detailed replicas of nearly 100 objects from The Met collection, The Theater of Disappearance encompasses thousands of years of artistic production over several continents and cultures, and fuses them with facsimiles of contemporary human figures as well as furniture, animals, cutlery, and food. Each object—whether a 1,000-year-old decorative plate or a human hand—is rendered in the same black or white material and coated in a thin layer of dust.

The artist has reconfigured the environment of the Cantor Roof by adding a new pergola, a grand tiled floor, a bar, public benches and augmented planting throughout the space. The Met's own alphabet has even been incorporated into the graphic identity of the project. To realize this extensive work, the artist immersed himself in the Museum and its staff for many months, holding conversations with the curators, conservators, managers, and technicians across every department who contributed to the realization of this installation."

Saturday, today, we walked into Central Park from the South and walked up the Mall to the Loeb Boat House and then over to 5th Avenue.  The weather and the park were perfect.  There I got a Halal Falafel Lamb Gyro and Carolyn got a Kosher Hot Dog.  We sat for an hour eating and watching people walk by.

We then walked home down 5th Avenue from 73rd to Rockefeller Center at 50th.  There we saw the Seated Ballerina.

http://theartnewspaper.com/news/in-the-frame/jeff-koons-s-ballerina-caught-up-in-a-pas-des-deux-/

Jeff Koons’s Ballerina caught up in a pas de deux

Prima ballerina? Oksana Zhnikrup's porcelain figure, left, and Jeff Koons's inflatable Seated Ballerina

Jeff Koons’s 45-foot-tall inflatable sculpture Seated Ballerina, installed at Rockefeller Center earlier this month (until 2 June), is not only drawing crowds in Manhattan. The kitschy work of appropriation art has also attracted a surprising amount of attention in Ukraine. 

In a 22 May Facebook post, Lado Pochkhua, a New York-based Georgian artist, pointed out the sculpture’s striking resemblance to a porcelain figure designed by the Ukrainian artist Oksana Zhnikrup. Zhnikrup, who died in 1993, worked for the Kiev Experimental Art Ceramics Factory. 

While some have called for Ukraine to confiscate the sculpture and install it in Kiev, Alexander Roitburd, a well-known and outspoken artist noted on Facebook that “I’m even glad that he’s popularising Ukrainian art”, adding however: “I hope that he named the source.” 

A spokeswoman for Koons's studio said: "We are aware of Oksana Zhnikrup’s work and have a license to use it for Mr Koons’s work."       

                                           

LINCOLN CENTER

David Koch Theater
New York City Ballet

Midsummer Night's Dream

The pas de deux from the divertissement from the 2nd act...

The above video is why we want to see this ballet as often as possible.

"Behind an ivied curtain lies Shakespeare’s gossamer world of magic and merriment. A cherished springtime tradition, this bewitching tale entangles and enthralls with its feuding fairy kingdoms and quixotic lovers for the quintessential romantic comedy."

A trailer for NYCB's performance...

"Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of his happiest and most loved comedies. It is called a "Dream" because of the unrealistic events the characters experience in the play — real, yet unreal, such as crossed lovers, meaningless quarrels, forest chases leading to more confusion, and magic spells woven by the infamous Puck. Balanchine had been familiar with Shakespeare’s play from an early age. As a child he had appeared as an elf in a production in St. Petersburg, and he could recite portions of the play by heart in Russian. Balanchine loved Mendelssohn’s overture and incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream (composed over a period of 15 years with the overture (Opus 21) first in 1826, and the other sections later in Opus 61). It is this score, Balanchine later said, that inspired his choreography. Mendelssohn had written only about an hour’s worth of music for the play, not enough for an evening-length dance work, so Balanchine added the following pieces, listed in the order of being played: Overture to Athalie, Opus 74; Overture to The Fair Melusine, Opus 32; excerpts from The First Walpurgis Night, Opus 60; Symphony No. 9 for Strings; Overture to Son and Stranger, Opus 89."

"Midsummer night has long been associated with love and magic. In European folklore it is the one night of the year when supernatural beings such as fairies are about and can interact with the real world. It is also a date that falls near the summer solstice, which was traditionally a time for fertility rites and festivals devoted to love. Shakespeare’s 1595 play has been the source for films, an opera by Benjamin Britten (1960), and a one-act ballet by Frederick Ashton, called The Dream (1964). George Balanchine’s version, which premiered in 1962, was the first wholly original evening-length ballet he choreographed in America. Two years later, on April 24, A Midsummer Night’s Dream opened the New York City Ballet’s first repertory season at the New York State Theater (now the David H. Koch Theater)."

Another trailer...

A discussion with Puck...

RECITAL

Carnegie Hall
Keyboard Virtuosos I

Maurizio Pollini - Piano

ALL-CHOPIN PROGRAM
Two Nocturnes, Op. 27
Ballade No. 3 in A-flat Major, Op. 47
Ballade No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 52
Berceuse in D-flat Major, Op. 57
Scherzo No. 1
Two Nocturnes, Op. 55
Piano Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 58

"When Maurizio Pollini comes to Carnegie Hall, his performance is not just an eagerly awaited recital, it’s a feast for anyone hungry for the poetry of great pianism. Audiences last experienced Pollini’s “searching musicianship and exquisite pianism” (The New York Times) in a 2015 Carnegie Hall recital. It’s time to feast again."

"In a career that spanned less than two decades, Chopin revolutionized piano music with dozens of nocturnes, waltzes, mazurkas, and other solo pieces that imbued the superficial brilliance of the salon style with unprecedented poetic depth. Schumann, who declared that “imagination and technique share dominion side by side” in Chopin’s music, likened his playing to the sound of an Aeolian harp, as exemplified by the undulating arpeggios that characterize the two Op. 27 Nocturnes.

Chopin deliberately set out to work on a grander scale in his ballades, scherzos, and sonatas. As their names suggest, the Ballade in A-flat Major and Ballade in F Minor can be thought of as tonal narratives: extended multi-section works with sharply characterized themes and subtle tonal shadings. Their dramatic energy contrasts with the intimacy of the Berceuse in D-flat Major, a tender lullaby that wears its virtuosity lightly. The B-Minor Scherzo and the two Op. 55 Nocturnes further illustrate Chopin’s innovative approach to the keyboard, as well as the extraordinary range and subtlety of his musical language.

Chopin demonstrated uncompromising independence in both his artistic and his private life. Liszt characterized him as “one of those original beings” who are “adrift from all bondage.” It was arguably the unparalleled range and subtlety of his pianism that enabled him to cast off the shackles of musical convention so successfully in works like the great Sonata in B Minor."

THEATER

Theater for a New Audience
Happy Days

“DIANNE WIEST IS EXTRAORDINARY…

A GREAT PERFORMANCE… RADIANT…HEARTBREAKING…

Ms. Wiest’s Winnie is like nature’s plaything, knocked about and childlike…an abused woman, clinging to what abuses her, which in this case is life. She shows us what a deeply womanly role Beckett has written, albeit one whose tragedy is refracted through a distorting lens…Ms. Wiest has called the play a ‘Hamlet for women.’” 

– Jesse Green, The New York Times, CRITIC’S PICK

“★★★★…Beautiful…an affecting revival…Dianne Wiest is wonderful…

moments of bitter self-awareness pass like clouds over Winnie’s determined sunniness,

enriching the play’s absurdism with plangent notes of deep feeling.” 

– Adam Feldman, Time Out New York, CRITIC’S PICK

“A powerful performance…a deeply unsettling production.”

– Edward Rothstein, The Wall Street Journal

“Dianne Wiest is terrific.” – The New Yorker

NYC-Arts Top Five Picks: May 8 – 14

“A must-see play…the best interpretation of the heartily harrowing role I’ve ever witnessed.

Wiest conveys the ravages of time superbly as well as disturbingly.”

– David Finkle, The Huffington Post

“Miraculous…illuminating direction by James Bundy…Dianne Wiest is especially translucent…

Jarlath Conroy is remarkable and shockingly funny.”

– David Tereshchuk, The Huffington Post

“Endlessly resonant…A marvelous performance, full of humor and pathos…Wiest’s Winnie is one for the ages…

Wiest and Conroy succeed in creating endearing chemistry onstage in marvelous moments of theater magic.”

– Pete Hempstead, Theatermania

“Dianne Wiest handles the role with awe-inspiring artistry…Wiest is mesmerizing in Beckett’s funny and deeply moving work about bravery, endurance and the cruel futility of human existence.

She is a magnificent presence onstage, vibrant and vulnerable, a buoyant soul pinned down but not vanquished by the imprisoning earth.”

– Lore Croghan, Brooklyn Daily Eagle

—

"Academy Award winner Dianne Wiest (Hannah and Her Sisters, Bullets Over Broadway) plays Winnie in Samuel Beckett‘s masterpiece Happy Days. Buried up to her waist and sinking into the earth, Winnie is considered modern drama’s pinnacle female role, an endlessly fascinating spirit of buoyant resourcefulness and unassuming grace in the face of inevitable oblivion. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, compassionate and ferocious, this extraordinary Happy Days, which also features Jarlath Conroy as Willie, originated at Yale Repertory Theatre and is staged by James Bundy, its artistic director.

Dianne Wiest is one of this country’s great artists, with a dedication to both stage and screen spanning four decades. No other American actor has sustained a distinguished theater career, continually performing the world’s greatest playwrights, staged by some of theater’s greatest directors, on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in regional theaters, while simultaneously achieving a celebrated television and film career. Ms. Wiest has received Obie and Clarence Derwent Awards and nominations for Drama Desk, Drama League and Lucille Lortel nominations. In film, her honors include two Academy Awards and a Golden Globe; for her work in television, she has been awarded two Emmys."

Trailer for Happy Days...

LINCOLN CENTER

Vivian Beaumont Theater
Oslo

"Vivid and thoughtful, OSLO combines investigative zeal and theatrical imagination with insider access. The stuff of crackling theater."

— THE NEW YORK TIMES, JULY 11, 2016

"A fascinating true story. This riveting production is alive with intrigue, humor and bristling intelligence."

— THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, JULY 11, 2016

"Compelling and compulsively watchable. This is what we call drama, and it's what we live for. So, go, already - live!"

— VARIETY, JULY 11, 2016

★★★★
"As the world hurtles toward greater polarization, OSLO provides a small measure of hope."

— TIME OUT NEW YORK, JULY 11, 2016

"A riveting political thriller. OSLO makes a complex historical event feel intimate and profoundly affecting."

— ASSOCIATED PRESS, JULY 11, 2016

"A disarmingly funny masterpiece."

— THE HUFFINGTON POST, AUGUST 23, 2016

"Everyone remembers the stunning and iconic moment in 1993 when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat shook hands on the South Lawn of the White House. They were “two old warriors who personified the conflict between their peoples,” wrote The New York Times, “sealing the first agreement between [them] to end their conflict and share the holy land they both call home.” But among the many questions that laced the hope of the moment was that of Norway’s role. How did such high-profile negotiations come to be held secretly in a castle in the middle of a forest outside Oslo?

Decades later, during the run of LCT’s acclaimed 2011 production of Blood and Gifts, director Barlett Sher introduced his friend Terje Rød-Larsen, a Norwegian diplomat, to playwright J.T. Rogers. Over drinks, Larsen shared that he and his wife, Mona Juul, also a Norwegian diplomat and now Norway's Ambassador to the UN, had covertly organized the back-channel talks between the State of Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization that led to the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords — and Rogers knew he had his next play.

A darkly funny and sweeping new work, OSLO is about a group of Israeli, Palestinian, Norwegian and American men and women struggling to overcome their fears, mistrust and hatred of each other. As he did with such wit and intelligence in Blood and Gifts, Rogers once again presents a deeply personal story set against a complex historical canvas: a story about the individuals behind world history and their all too human ambitions."

Trailer for Oslo...

Review: A Byzantine Path to Middle East Peace in ‘Oslo’

By BEN BRANTLEYJULY 11, 2016


Foreground from left: Daniel Jenkins, Daniel Oreskes, Michael Aronov and Anthony Azizi in “Oslo” at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

The Aaron Burr of the musical “Hamilton” — who stews over being shut out of pivotal closed-door conferences — isn’t the only person who wants to be in the room where it happens. It’s hard not to envy the witnesses to history in the making and to imagine attending conferences, Zelig-like, in Versailles, Vienna or Potsdam.

J. T. Rogers shares that instinct. Unlike most of you, he has acted on it. Having combined investigative zeal and theatrical imagination with insider access, Mr. Rogers now invites you into the chambers where the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization were forged during nine fraught months in 1993.

Even if you never thought about traveling to Norway, you’ll probably want to visit the inevitably titled “Oslo,” the absorbing drama by Mr. Rogers that opened on Monday night at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center. At a very full three hours, with many international stops, this play is long and dense enough to make you wonder if you should have packed an overnight bag.

Yet what Mr. Rogers and the director, Bartlett Sher, have created is a streamlined time machine, comfortably appointed enough to forestall jet lag. Centering on one Norwegian couple who improbably initiated the diplomatic back channel that led to the epochal meeting of the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the P.L.O leader Yasir Arafat at the White House, “Oslo” affectingly elicits the all-too-human factor in the weary machinations of state policy.



That couple is Mona Juul, then an official in the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, and her husband, Terje Rod-Larsen, who was director of the Fafo Institute for Applied Social Sciences. They are friends, as it happens, of Mr. Sher, who in turn introduced them to Mr. Rogers, who interviewed them extensively before writing this play.

From left, Anthony Azizi and Michael Aronov. CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

You might expect “Oslo” to have a self-servingly limited perspective. But as he demonstrated in his earlier plays about international politics, including “The Overwhelming” and “Blood and Gifts,” Mr. Rogers doesn’t traffic in superheroes.

His well-intentioned interventionists in foreign lands often turn out to be ambivalent fumblers in the manner of Graham Greene’s protagonists. “Oslo” doesn’t have the layers of complexity (and the respect for what we can’t know) of Michael Frayn’s great, similarly speculative you-are-there dramas “Copenhagen” and “Democracy.” But it’s a vivid, thoughtful and astonishingly lucid account of a byzantine chapter in international politics.

Mona and Terje are (spoiler) more successful in their endeavors than Mr. Rogers’s previous versions of such characters, at least in terms of immediate goals. But as embodied by (hooray!) Jennifer Ehle and Jefferson Mays, they are complicated beings in a less-than-perfect marriage with a sometimes faltering grasp of the international time bomb they have set ticking.

Well, perhaps not Mona, who always keeps her head and manages repeatedly to pluck victory from the jaws of disaster. But Mona has the advantages, as well as the disadvantages, of often being the only woman in the room; and she has the unqualified advantage of being played by the irresistible Ms. Ehle (the definitive BBC version of “Pride and Prejudice,”the 2000 Broadway revival of “The Real Thing”), who manages to be practically perfect without turning into Mary Poppins.

It is Mona who serves as our wryly neutral narrator, sliding briefly and fluidly out of the action to place us on timelines and annotate references. She and Terje have been ingeniously conceived as perpetual, generally gracious hosts to the play itself and to the social encounters within, pouring drinks, moving furniture and overseeing the seating arrangements on Michael Yeargan’s elegant, minimalist set.

Of course, the gatherings they preside over have astronomically higher stakes than those of an average cocktail party. When the play begins, a dinner at Mona and Terje’s home is interrupted by a phone call — two, actually, and simultaneous. It’s Israel on one line and the P.L.O. on the other. The couple’s guests, the Norwegian foreign minister Johan Jorgen Holst (T. Ryder Smith) and his wife, Marianne Heiberg (Henny Russell), are not pleased when Terje explains his goal of secretly bringing irreconcilable adversaries to the bargaining table.

Jennifer Ehle and Jefferson Mays. CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

“The world is cracking open,” says the blazing-eyed Terje, who has a habit of sounding like Tony Kushner in “Angels in America” when he is excited. (Mr. Mays, a Tony winner for “I Am My Own Wife,” expertly elicits the brazen but uneasy showboat in Terje.) Holst is skeptical and alarmed. That’s a response that Terje and Mona will continue to encounter in many forms. And the play’s rhythms are dictated by the couple’s repeated overcoming of resistance.

I leave it to historians to confirm or dispute the accuracy of Mr. Rogers’s portrayals. But he has done a fine job of mapping the lively, confusing intersection where private personalities cross with public roles. The supporting ensemble members, some of whom are double-cast, create credibly idiosyncratic portraits, right down to the two-man security detail (Christopher McHale and Jeb Kreager) that arrives in the show’s second half.

Only occasionally does the script resort to the telegraphic shorthand of cute, defining quirks. The relationships that emerge from within and between the opposing camps are steeped in a poignant multifacetedness, as sworn enemies find themselves tentatively speaking the language of friendship. This is most eloquently embodied by Uri Savir, an Israeli cabinet member portrayed juicily by Michael Aronov as an exuberant rock-star dignitary, and Ahmed Qurie , the P.L.O. finance minister played with a careful balance of wariness and warmth by Anthony Azizi.

The cast also memorably includes Daniel Oreskes and Daniel Jenkins as a pair of Rosencrantz-and-Guildenstern-ish academics from Haifa; Adam Dannheisser as an Israeli foreign minister with digestive problems; Joseph Siravo as a hard-line Jewish lawyer; and Dariush Kashani as a hard-line Marxist Palestinian. Mr. Oreskes also shows up as Shimon Peres. But the most famous power players in this drama, Rabin and Arafat, never appear, at least not in the flesh.12COMMENTS

However, at various points, different characters do imitations of the more famous politicians who remain in the wings. The ways in which these impersonations evolve, and the responses they provoke, create some of the play’s tensest and funniest moments.

It’s no secret that politicians have to be actors, which the characters in “Oslo” well know. Their understanding and re-creation of the signature styles of allies and enemies make for unexpected moments of personal catharsis and illumination. They also happen to be the stuff of crackling theater.

LINCOLN CENTER

Alice Tully Hall
Young Concert Artists Gala

These young artists are spectacular.  We have already heard them in other settings and they are wonderful.

LINCOLN CENTER

Alice Tully Hall
American Songbook

Rhiannon Giddens

"With soulful musicality and an anthropologist’s passion for digging into cultural artifacts, singer, violinist, and banjo player Rhiannon Giddens is considered “one of the most promising voices in American roots music” (Rolling Stone). After helming Grammy Award–winning string band Carolina Chocolate Drops, Giddens broke out as a solo performer with her crackling performance of Odetta’s “Waterboy” at the all-star Inside Llewyn Davisconcert at Town Hall in 2013. The New York Times called her sold-out 2016 performance with Leyla McCalla and Bhi Bhiman in The Appel Room “a pinnacle of [the] season’s American Songbook series.” As her mission to create a vibrant new life for old-time music continues, she returns to Lincoln Center to celebrate the release of her highly anticipated new album on Nonesuch."

Watch a video of Rhiannon...

Another... !

CARNEGIE HALL

Emerson String Quartet
Marc-André Hamelin, Piano

• Ravel - String Quartet in F Major
• Berg - String Quartet, Op. 3
• Brahms - Piano Quintet

"For more than 40 years, the Emerson String Quartethas held an honored place in the pantheon of great ensembles. Praised for performances that are "technically resourceful, musically insightful, cohesive, full of character, and always interesting" (The New York Times), the Emerson performs two 20th-century string quartet masterpieces by Berg and Ravel."

MAURICE RAVEL  String Quartet in F Major

This youthful masterpiece signaled Ravel’s emergence as Debussy’s peer and heir apparent. The composer’s first and only string quartet elicited largely favorable comparisons to Debussy’s celebrated String Quartet in G Minor. Recurring intervals, melodic shapes, textures, and sonorities give the four movements a powerful sense of organic unity.

ALBAN BERG  String Quartet, Op. 3

Composed in 1910 but not performed in public until 1923, Berg’s first quartet was a turning point in his career. Although he acknowledged how much he had learned from his teacher, Arnold Schoenberg, he credited his wife with being the primary inspiration for his Op. 3 String Quartet. In a letter Berg wrote to her after a performance of the work in Salzburg in 1923, he declared that it was she “to whom the quartet belongs and who brought it into being.”

JOHANNES BRAHMS  Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34

Originally conceived as a string quintet and later adapted for two pianos, Brahms’s masterpiece represents a near-perfect marriage of keyboard and strings. Only after Clara Schumann observed that the music was “so full of ideas” that a full orchestra was needed to do it justice did Brahms recast it as a piano quintet. In this form, the musicologist Sir Donald Francis Tovey wrote, “the rhythmic incisiveness of the piano is happily combined with the singing powers of the bowed instruments.”

LINCOLN CENTER

David Koch Theater
New York City Ballet

Here/Now No. 5

New work abounds in encore performances of season premieres from Principal Lauren Lovette, Corps Member Peter Walker, and Alexei Ratmansky, accompanied by the return of Peter Martins’ fleet-footed game of cards and Christopher Wheeldon’s touching pas de deux.

Jeu de Cartes

• Music by: Igor Stravinsky
• Choreography by: Peter Martins
• Principal Casting: MAY 4, 6 mat: Megan Fairchild, Joseph Gordon*, Harrison Ball*, Aaron Sanz*
  
  MAY 6 eve, 7: Erica Pereira*, Harrison Coll*, Sebastian Villarini-Velez*, Alec Knight* (*First time in role)
  

With a poker table backdrop for dancers dressed as playing cards, the whimsical Jeu de Cartespairs fleet-footed choreography with Stravinsky's boisterous and wildly rhythmic score.

After the Rain Pas de Deux

• Music by: Arvo Pärt
• Choreography by: Christopher Wheeldon
• Principal Casting: MAY 4, 6 mat & eve, 7: Maria Kowroski**, Ask la Cour** (**NYC Debut)
  

Full of heartfelt emotion, this simple yet stirring pas de deux leaves audiences in silent awe.

For Clara

• Music by: Robert Schumann
• Choreography by: Lauren Lovette
• Principal Casting: MAY 6 mat & eve, 7: Emilie Gerrity, Unity Phelan, Indiana Woodward, Andrew Veyette* (replaces Zachary Catazaro), Chase Finlay
  

Invigorated by Schumann’s grand composition, For Clara celebrates movement through a clean, linear style by marrying the precision of classical ballet with ideas of uninhibited expression.

ten in seven

• Music by: Thomas Kikta
• Choreography by: Peter Walker
• Principal Casting: MAY 6 mat & eve, 7: Emily Kikta, Ashly Isaacs, Sarah Villwock, Rachel Hutsell, Indiana Woodward* (replaces Gretchen Smith), Russell Janzen, Taylor Stanley, Spartak Hoxha, Daniel Applebaum, Sean Suozzi (*first time in role)
  

Imbued with a sense of community, ten in seven features a high-energy ensemble of dancers and an on-stage guitar-centric band that unify to create moments of tenderness and impulse.

New Ratmansky (Desyatnikov)

• Music by: Leonid Desyatnikov
• Choreography by: Alexei Ratmansky
• Principal Casting: MAY 4, 6 mat: Sara Mearns*, Tiler Peck*, Sterling Hyltin*, Amar Ramasar*, Taylor Stanley* (replaces Anthony Huxley), Joaquin De Luz*
  
  MAY 6 eve, 7: Unity Phelan*, Ashley Bouder*, Megan Fairchild*, Tyler Angle*, Taylor Stanley, Daniel Ulbricht* (*First time in role)
  

Ratmansky’s fifth NYCB work is set to “Sketches to Sunset,” a collection of incidental pieces composed by fellow Russian Leonid Desyatnikov for the 1990 film Sunset, including a mix of tango and klezmer music.