The Washington Post 3/16/06:  Classical music may be dying a slow death, but not if Joseph Horowitz has anything to say about it. Author of the essential "Classical Music in America," executive director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic and founder (with Angel Gil-Ordonez) of the Post-Classical Ensemble, Horowitz has been dragging classical music out of its High Culture sickbed and giving it a series of healthy kicks.

The Post-Classical EnsembleAnd on Tuesday night the Ensemble did just that, in a bold concert at the Virginia Theological Seminary titled Manuel de Falla and the the Music of Faith.  The concert focused on a single movement of a single piece -- the 1926 Concerto for Keyboard -- which many Falla lovers tend to view with distrust or outright hate.

 And it was brilliant. The program explored the deep Spanish roots of this remarkable work, which resonates with everything from Renaissance polyphony to 18th-century keyboard works to the toe-curling, 16th-century erotic-mystical poetry of John of the Cross -- all in a thoroughly modernist style.


Manuel de FallaGil-Ordonez opened with three early choral works -- Thomas Aquinas's "Panga Lingua Gloriosi" and two sublime works by the 16th-century Tomas Luis de Victoria -- before pianist Pedro Carbone and the five members of the ensemble unleashed the Falla concerto. The piece is instantly compelling; it opens and closes with two colorful, biting and Stravinsky-flavored movements, each providing delight for the ear and sustenance for the brain.

 But it was the slow and thoroughly magnificent middle movement that was the epicenter of the evening. Radiant and austere, exalting and almost hymnlike, it shimmers with light, with vastness. As it unfolds, you think: This is what God listens to on a Sunday afternoon.

The Washington Post 3/14/06:  If you're going up against opening night of a new season of "The Sopranos," you'd better pack some serious heat. And that's what Steven Blier, the erudite but unstuffy director of the New York Festival of Song, did on Sunday night, bringing to the Terrace Theater an inspired recital of art song from belle epoque France.


Steven BlierHis adventurous program covered the three decades of anything-goes creativity that started in Paris at the tail end of the 19th century and ran until the start of World War I. Taking a cue from Roger Shattuck's classic book "The Banquet Years," Blier pulled together nearly two dozen works, including barely-there miniatures by Eric Satie, a few of Maurice Ravel's more recherche broodings, and a trio of funny, gutsy cabaret songs from Marcel Bloch and Leon Xanrof.

What gorgeous stuff it all was. Among the abundant riches were Francis Poulenc's "Le Bestiare," six songs with poems by Guillaume Apollinaire; Blier warned that they would continue to detonate long after the music had stopped, and sure enough they do. And Camille Saint-Saens's "Si vous n'avez rien a me dire" is one of the more darkly moving love songs to ever arise from the mind of man, an unforgettable work that grips the heart and refuses to let go.

Mezzo-soprano Marie Lenormand and baritone Hugh Russell (with Blier at the piano) brought it all off in high style, with smart, nuanced interpretations and engaging onstage confidence. Kudos to Washington's Vocal Arts Society for this latest in a long series of superb and always intriguing concerts.

The Washington Post 2/26/06:  Meredith Monk, that formidable doyenne of the avant-garde art music scene, brought her renowned vocal ensemble to the George Mason University Center for the Arts on Saturday night for "Impermanence," a beautiful and deeply personal new work on the themes of death, leave-taking and the fragility of human life.

Sound a little heavy?  Well, actually, maybe not. At 63, Monk is an engaging composer and singer, and the evening was replete with her trademark ululations and microtonal slides, those wonderful yips and yelps, her vocalized breaths and gorgeously off-kilter harmonies. The unique voice may have aged a bit, and she was eclipsed as an innovator years ago by the likes of Diamanda Galas and Sainkho Namtchylak, but who cares? She's still a fine composer -- and always easy on the ears.

Maybe a little too easy. "Impermanence" is an extended meditation on loss, exploring the emotional terrain at the end of life. It's a rich field to mine, and Monk created a sensuous soundscape out of it (with accompanying dance and film). That said, there was little edge or drive to the piece and too much of the art school preciousness that still lingers in her work. You felt absorbed into a trancelike ritual that, while pleasant enough, didn't exactly leave impact craters on the heart.

That may have been partly due to the choreography, which can only be described with wincing and painful groans, and which undercut the many poignant moments in the music. But the ensemble members were all first-rate, with excellent performances from Katie Geissinger, Bohdan Hilash, Ching Gonzalez and others.

 

The Washington Post 2/23/06:  It's hard not to love the early-music crowd.  They're infinitely endearing, with their odd haircuts and mismatched shoes, their sackbuts and clumsy barytons, their beards dripping with earnest crumbs of musicology. Lovable, right?  There's a place for them, agreed?  So please: why oh why must they mess with Mozart?

The Kuijken Quartet, four accomplished early-music specialists who have made serious contributions to the interpretation of Baroque music, appeared at the Library of Congress on Tuesday night to launch an assault on the Classical era, performing the last three of Mozart's celebrated "Haydn" quartets (K. 464, K. 428 and K. 465).


Sigiswald Kuijken
And the evening should have been a treat. These quartets are frighteningly intelligent and insightful, among the most beautiful ever written  -- and clear evidence that the human race has not been entirely a waste of time and money.

But you wouldn't know that from Tuesday's performance, which -- not to mince words -- was a muddle of woeful intonation, weak tone, sloppy detail, unfocused interpretation and near-total absence of dramatic tension. Despite much rubbing of sticks and strings, few actual flames were produced, and the audience spent much of the evening exchanging weary looks of dismay.  

Perhaps some of the mess was due to 'cellist Wieland Kuijken being replaced at the last minute by Kenneth Slowick, but Slowick is a fine performer and played quite elegantly. First violinist Sigiswald Kuijken was simply not in good form; his playing felt labored and awkward, and violist Marleen Thier and second violin Francois Fernandez, despite some valiant efforts, simply lacked the power to steer this shipwreck off the rocks.  

The Washington Post 1/30/06:  If you're a card-carrying Mozart fanatic (and if you're not, what's the problem?), you were probably at the great composer's 250th birthday party at the Austrian Embassy on Friday night, where a packed house greeted the young and spectacularly talented Minetti String Quartet.

Let's just say this upfront: The Minetti has a huge future, boasting thoughtful interpretations, beautiful ensemble work, crisp articulation and flawless technique -- not to mention the fact that the players are all drop-dead gorgeous.

Yet despite all that, the party got off to a rather slow start, with two very early Mozart quartets (the G Major, K. 156, and C Major, K. 157) that can only be described as slight. The works fluttered prettily by like leaves in the breeze, leaving minimal impact on the ears, and were followed by yet more fluff and puff: Franz Schubert's Quartet in E-flat, D. 87. Schubert was only 16 when he wrote it, and it's not completely awful. But frankly, it felt like being stuck at dinner with a precocious, self-involved teenager. Unusual kid, talented, you wish him well, but really . . . doesn't he have somewhere to go while the grown-ups talk?

But never mind, because after intermission things got interesting. The Minetti dug into the first and only mature work of the evening, Schubert's "Death and the Maiden," D. 810, with a vengeance. And let there be no doubt: This was very high-caliber musicianship -- a nuanced, passionate, profoundly satisfying interpretation. Too bad for old Wolfgang, who got upstaged at his own party. But for the rest of us, it was simply a stunning and brilliant display of what string quartet playing is all about. 

The Washington Post 12/05/05:  Stephen Salters is one of the rising voices of the operatic world, and judging from his fearless and nearly flawless recital at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater (with pianist David Zobel) Saturday night, it's not hard to hear why.

Not only does he sound like God on a good day, but he's intensely imaginative and adventurous, navigating repertoire that would make most singers creep into the wings and weep. Saturday night was no exception: From the Washington premiere of William Bolcom's "To My Old Addresses" to a sublime "Begin the Beguine," Salters brought wit, brains and ain't-no-big-thing charm to every syllable.

Salters may be the thinking person's baritone, but pianist Zobel is no slouch either, and the interplay between the two was a constant joy. The whole recital, in fact, was so satisfying that it's hard to find a peak: Was it Salters's tender reading of Cesar Cui's "The Statue at Tsarskoe-Selo"? Bolcom's full-blooded setting of the Langston Hughes poem "Ballad of the Landlord"? Borodin's magnificent and moving "For the Shores of Your Far Native Land"? Or any of a dozen others?

Impossible to decide. This was sophisticated repertoire for a sophisticated voice, and Salters made the most of it. His sound is rich and powerful, with a slight roughness that adds to the bite. But Salters's command of detail and dynamics is precise and elegant, and it's no wonder that the audience brought him back for four spectacular encores.

By Stephen Brookes
The Washington Post • November 24, 2005

The redoubtable Guarneri String Quartet – those rock-stars of the classical world – descended Tuesday evening to a packed Terrace Theater, and from the first notes of Mozart's Quartet No. 19 in C, it was clear that the group’s fabled intelligence and consummate musicianship were there in rampant abundance.

For all that, though, the Mozart never quite took to the air; it was high on brainpower but emotionally lackluster, and the Guarneri felt like they had yet to fully hit their stride. A solid, professional performance, to be sure. But music’s like love: If you're thinking, "how professional" while it's going on, something's wrong.

Ned Rorem's Quartet No. 3, a not-so-hot work from this otherwise engaging composer, had been promised as the second work.  But it was replaced by Richard Danielpour's Quartet No. 5 -- and for this we can only offer profound thanksgiving.  Danielpour is one of the most gifted composers on this or any other planet, and the quartet is purely and unarguably gorgeous. Building on the simplest of motivic ideas, it unfolds with intense excitement – propulsive, imaginative, always surprising, deeply satisfying. And the Guarneri (for whom the piece was written several years ago) brought it off in full-blooded style.

Of the Mendelssohn Quartet in F minor Op. 6 which closed the program, it can only be said that this was a ravishing performance from head to toe, and if you missed it you should regret it bitterly for the rest of your life. Sure, it's a thoroughly Romantic piece, with all the the swooping and swooning and throbbing and trembling that can make modern ears cringe. But this was a passionate and captivating performance, with a hang-onto-your-hat finale that propelled the Terrace Theater well into the ozone. In a word: Unforgettable.