LINCOLN CENTER

David Koch Theater
New York City Ballet

CLASSIC NYCB I

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• Bournonville Divertissements

• Moves

• Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux

• Symphony in Three Movements

One of the few ballets in our repertory by the Danish master choreographer August Bournonville, Bournonville Divertissements provides a parade of principal roles and a cascade of nimble footwork.

Forgoing elaborate costumes, set design, and even musical accompaniment, Moves enthralls with the unexpected intensity derived from sounds produced by the dancers themselves.

A virtuosic ballet, Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux is brief, beautiful, and beloved – an adrenaline rush for both dancers and audiences.

One of Balanchine’s most celebrated leotard ballets, Symphony in Three Movements is bold and breathtakingly jet-propelled, a kinetic achievement, striking for its confidence and power.

THEATER

Symphony Space
Company

To get to Symphony Space we rode the subway to 59th, Columbus Circle, the southwest corner of Central Park and then walked through the park to 95th where we crossed over to Broadway.  The park was filled with people enjoying the great weather and the blooming, blossoming flowers.  The trees are just beginning to leaf.  It's a pretty time of year and a great day for a walk.

"Following five couples and their friend Robert (Neil Patrick Harris), the perpetual bachelor, this HD recording of Stephen Sondheim's Company explores the true meaning of being in a relationship through a series of vignettes. Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother, Rent) leads a star-studded cast which includes Patti LuPone, Stephen Colbert, Jon Cryer, Christina Hendricks, Craig Bierko and Martha Plimpton.


Company's plot revolves around Bobby (a single man unable to commit fully to a steady relationship, let alone marriage), the five married couples who are his best friends, and his three girlfriends. It's a concept musical composed of short vignettes, presented in no particular chronological order, linked by a celebration for Bobby's 35th birthday. Featuring the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Paul Gemignani.

The original Company on Broadway in 1970 was nominated for 14 Tonys ®, winning Best Musical, Book for Musical, Original Score, Lyrics, Set Design and Direction of a Musical.
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim."

LINCOLN CENTER

Alice Tully Hall
Great Performers Series

Emerson String Quartet

Haydn - Quartets Op. 76, Nos. 2 ("Fifths") and 5
Beethoven - Quartets Op. 18, Nos. 1 and 5

The “consistently brilliant” (New York Times) Emerson String Quartet presents a three-part series of late Haydn and early Beethoven, two masters of the string quartet.

“The Emerson has staked its claim to being the one indispensable quartet in a world that is constantly creating more, excellent ensembles.”
—Newsday

“The Emerson performances represented an extraordinary fusion of experience and authority with audacity and freshness.”
—Boston Globe

The “consistently brilliant” (New York Times) Emerson String Quartet presents a three-part series of late Haydn and early Beethoven, two masters of the string quartet. Haydn’s Op. 76 Quartets are ambitious chamber works containing some of his boldest and brightest musical writing, the brilliant result of a lifetime spent developing the form. Beethoven’s Op. 18 Quartets exhibit mastery of the Classical legacy he inherited from Haydn, which Beethoven pushed to a new threshold while incorporating motifs of tension, humor, and grace.

RECITAL

Merkin Hall
Young Concert Artists Series

Ziyu Shen - viola
Jessica Osborne - Piano


Brahms - Sonatensatz (Scherzo in C minor from the F-A-E Sonata)
Rebecca Clarke - Sonata for viola and paino
Prokofiev - from Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64
Quingwu Guan - Mongolian Song
Brahms - Sonata in F minor, Op. 120 No. 1

“Teenager Ziyu Shen is already making her mark on the music scene. Her recital at London’t Royal Festival Hall won a standing ovation.”        – Isle of Man Courier

17-year-old violist Ziyu Shen began to play the violin at age of four and switched to the viola at the age of 12 while studying with Li Sheng at the Music School affiliated with the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. At the age of 14, Miss Zhen won First Prize at the Johansen International Competition for Young String Players in Washington, D.C. and the next year, won First Place in the Chamber Music Competition of Morningside Bridge Chamber Music Competition in Canada. At 15, she won First Prize in the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition, setting a new record for the youngest winner ever. She won the 2014 Young Concert Artists International Auditions and was awarded YCA’s Sander Buchman Prize, which provides major support for her New York debut, and a recital appearance at the University of Florida Performing Arts.

PERFORMANCE

The Frick
Minetti String Quartet

Haydn - String Quartet in B-Flat Major, Op. 76, No. 4, “Sunrise”
Berg - String Quartet, Op. 3
Beethoven - String Quartet in E-Flat Major, No. 12, Op. 127

Great players with wonderful technique, beautiful sound, and moving musicality.

TOUR

Municipal Art Society
SoHo's Cast-Iron District

SoHo today is home to the world's greatest trove of cast-iron buildings. Cast-iron architecture began as a mid-19th-century cheap imitation of stone, in which the glories of the world's past could be offered in modern times in mass-produced, ready-to-build versions. But cast-iron soon developed into a remarkable technology expressive of the industrial revolution, capable of entirely new architectural effects. Threatened by a proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway, SoHo was rescued from near obliteration in 1973 by designation as one of the city's earliest historic districts. This tour with Anthony W. Robins, former Landmarks Preservation Commission Survey Director, considers the district's original architecture as well as new Commission-approved additions. 

LINCOLN CENTER

New York Philharmonic
Beethoven & Strauss

Suppé - Poet and Peasant Overture
R. Strauss - Oboe Concerto
Beethoven - Symphony No. 6, Pastoral

Manfred Honeck - Conductor
Liang Wang - Oboe

Beethoven’s love of nature overflows in his Pastoral Symphony. Listen for the babbling brook, bird calls, a summer storm, and the sun. Plus Strauss’s virtuosic Oboe Concerto with Principal Oboe Liang Wang, whose “ability to hold the pitches true, with haunting beauty and eerie calm, [is] astonishing” (The New York Times).

The New York Times review is below.

Review: Manfred Honeck Leads the New York Philharmonic 

Both Richard Strauss’s Oboe Concerto and Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony begin quietly yet actively, as if we were joining music that’s already flowing. It’s an effect maximized through naturalness and subtlety, qualities native to Manfred Honeck, who led the New York Philharmonic in both works on Thursday at David Geffen Hall. 

The conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Honeck was widely believed a contender for the Philharmonic music directorship, which recently went to Jaap van Zweden. If Mr. van Zweden, who starts in 2018, seems cast as the ensemble’s strict taskmaster father, producing performances of driven intensity, Mr. Honeck is perhaps its sweet-tempered uncle, fostering a mood of bright, unforced geniality. 

Mr. van Zweden’s account of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in the fall was hypercontrolled, blazing. Mr. Honeck’s take on the “Pastoral,” Beethoven’s Sixth, was warmer, creamier, smiling, the third movement’s merriness alert yet suave. 

The storm sequence wasn’t raging, the joy at its passing not portentously grand. Mr. Honeck’s vision of the symphony was always human in scale, a reminder that this work, which I’d always taken to be about nature per se, is more precisely about the experience of people in nature. 

In the Oboe Concerto, Liang Wang, the principal oboist, handled Strauss’s solo part with candied tone, and the ensemble had accuracy and bristling intimacy, but brought out little magic in the work’s autumnal colors. 

The playing was accomplished, yet, as too often with this orchestra, a bit anonymous when it came to these crucial details of tint and texture. Mr. Honeck can clearly give the Philharmonic some heart in his guest appearances, but he can’t give it a fully rounded personality.