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Philip Glass Operas That Color His Style With Fresh Hues
Philip Glass began his operatic career in the 1970s and ’80s with a trilogy focused on great visionaries of history: “Einstein on the Beach”; “Satyagraha,” a meditation on Gandhi’s early activism; and “Akhnaten,” about the Egyptian pharaoh who pioneered monotheism, which runs through Dec. 7 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. (It will be broadcast to movie theaters worldwide Saturday.)
Review: The White Light Festival Opens With a Journey to the East
(Critic’s Pick)
Review: A Pianist Is the Muse for a Flood of Zorn
(Critic's Pick)
Tickling the Ear With Sounds That Are Almost Tangible
(Critic's Notebook)'Lady in the Dark' Is Kurt Weill on the Couch
NEW YORK — There’s a Kurt Weill musical playing at New York City Center. It’s well-cast and smartly produced (if clearly on a budget). There is some playful choreography and attractive costuming. It sounds great, particularly the pit musicians, who are using a recent critical edition of Weill’s score.A Teenage Pierre Boulez, Heard for the First Time
The firebrand composer and conductor Pierre Boulez once wrote that it is essential that a creative artist “hides his first attempts and destroys his traces.” By withdrawing from circulation several works from his apprentice years, Boulez showed he was willing to follow his own advice.
A Space Devoted to Experimental Music Turns 40
(Critic’s Notebook)
He turned the Met museum's collection into an orchestra
(Critic's Notebook): NEW YORK — Walking up the stairs of the Met Breuer last week, British artist Oliver Beer pressed his face into a corner and began singing a slow succession of descending pitches. When he landed on a B flat, the walls suddenly vibrated with sympathetic resonance.
Opera lives in cycles
AMSTERDAM — When Friedrich Nietzsche turned his pen on his onetime friend, Richard Wagner, his overarching critique was that grandeur shouldn’t be mistaken for depth.
An ideal balance of Bartok
(Critic's Pick): NEW YORK — The aesthetic commitment being offered was never in doubt.
Review: The bloom is still on Claire Chase's monumental project
On the evidence of her concert Friday night at the Kitchen, she is not feeling bogged down yet. Nor does she seem likely to court ennui in the immediate future.
A pianist swings hard in both classical and jazz
At the Juilliard School, pianist Aaron Diehl studied both classical and jazz traditions. And in the years since, he’s chosen to follow each of those paths — and sometimes both, simultaneously.
Philharmonic ties new threads to a recent premiere
On Sunday at the Appel Room, at Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Philharmonic fielded a “Sound On” program that was one of its most entertaining new-music shows of the past couple of years.
A MacArthur 'genius' composes together past, present and future
This was “Trillium L,” the next opera in his long-gestating cycle of works for the stage. Each act of a “Trillium” opera tells a different story, while using the same cast of singers, who rotate roles.
