Blogcritics: Concert Review (NYC): Curtis on Tour – Chamber Music by Mozart, Sibelius and More from Some of Curtis Institute’s Finest
Even as the Curtis Institute of Music launches its own record label, the venerable conservatory has not neglected its long-running Curtis on Tour chamber music project. Seven fine Curtis student musicians and two noted professionals joined forces at 92Y in New York City on Dec. 3, performing music by 20th-century composers Erwin Schulhoff and Ernst von Dohnányi as well as Mozart and Sibelius. The music was a lively mix of periods and styles, and a testament to the high quality of Curtis’s programs
Blogcritics
Jon Sobel
Even as the Curtis Institute of Music launches its own record label, the venerable conservatory has not neglected its long-running Curtis on Tour chamber music project. Seven fine Curtis student musicians and two noted professionals joined forces at 92Y in New York City on Dec. 3, performing music by 20th-century composers Erwin Schulhoff and Ernst von Dohnányi as well as Mozart and Sibelius. The music was a lively mix of periods and styles, and a testament to the high quality of Curtis’s programs.
Read more here.
Blogcritics: Exclusive Interview: Parlando Founder and Music Director Ian Niederhoffer Previews October 4 ‘Odysseys’ Concert, with Music of Tchaikovsky, Jimmy Lopez, Joey Roukens
The New York City-based chamber orchestra Parlando aims to bridge the gap between audience and performer.
That might sound a bit self-evident – doesn’t every artist and ensemble want to connect with listeners?
But for Parlando and its founder and music director Ian Niederhoffer, “bridging the gap” means something special: truly direct communication, and engagement in creative and fun ways.
Blogcritics
By Jon Sobel
The New York City-based chamber orchestra Parlando aims to bridge the gap between audience and performer.
That might sound a bit self-evident – doesn’t every artist and ensemble want to connect with listeners?
But for Parlando and its founder and music director Ian Niederhoffer, “bridging the gap” means something special: truly direct communication, and engagement in creative and fun ways.
Niederhoffer engages with the audience before each concert, explicating the theme of the program. The selections vary widely, but each concert’s theme connects standard works with new or underrepresented music. The upcoming “Odysseys” concert, October 4 at Merkin Hall, brings together two contemporary pieces, Jimmy Lopez’s Guardian of the Horizon and Joey Roukens’ Visions at Sea, with Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence.
Read more here.
Photo Credit: Rebecca Fay
Blogcritics: Concert Review (NYC): Taiwan Philharmonic, Paul Huang – Music of Bruch, Mendelssohn, Debussy, Ke-Chia Chen
The Taiwan Philharmonic’s concert at Lincoln Center on Friday night was a festive affair. Conductor Jun Märkl brought sweeping majesty to Debussy’s La Mer and Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture. Violinist Paul Huang dazzled with Max Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra. And the concert opened with a spectacular new piece by Taiwanese composer Ke-Chia Chen titled Ebb and Flow, written for the orchestra’s current tour.
Sometimes you can tell when musicians are really delighted to be where they are. There was that sense of excitement on the stage at David Geffen Hall, matching the enthusiasm bubbling in the audience. Musicians crowded the stage wall-to-wall, and you could feel positive energy emanating from them as individuals as well as collectively. The program’s theme was islands and oceans, but the feeling was homey, like a huge family reunion.
Blogcritics
By Jon Sobel
The Taiwan Philharmonic’s concert at Lincoln Center on Friday night was a festive affair. Conductor Jun Märkl brought sweeping majesty to Debussy’s La Mer and Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture. Violinist Paul Huang dazzled with Max Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra. And the concert opened with a spectacular new piece by Taiwanese composer Ke-Chia Chen titled Ebb and Flow, written for the orchestra’s current tour.
Sometimes you can tell when musicians are really delighted to be where they are. There was that sense of excitement on the stage at David Geffen Hall, matching the enthusiasm bubbling in the audience. Musicians crowded the stage wall-to-wall, and you could feel positive energy emanating from them as individuals as well as collectively. The program’s theme was islands and oceans, but the feeling was homey, like a huge family reunion.
Read more here.
Blogcritics: Concert Review: Ukrainian Pianist Illia Ovcharenko – Music of Liszt, Scarlatti, Silvestrov, Revutsky, Chopin
Ukrainian pianist Illia Ovcharenko dazzled an enthusiastic audience at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall on Sunday, showing NYC why at just 21 he was the laureate of the 2022 Honens International Piano Competition.
Ovcharenko is as thoughtful and exact in his concert programming as he is technically proficient and emotionally immersive at the keyboard. His first set centered on Franz Liszt’s challenging Sonata in B minor and bookended that vast opus with two Scarlatti sonatas in that same key, which set off and commented on the Liszt in interesting ways. In the second half he interspersed pieces by two Ukrainian composers, exercising his dynamic control in short works by Valentin Silvestrov and contextualizing Levko Revutsky’s late Romanticism with a Chopin Polonaise at the end.
Blogcritics
By Jon Sobel
Ukrainian pianist Illia Ovcharenko dazzled an enthusiastic audience at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall on Sunday, showing NYC why at just 21 he was the laureate of the 2022 Honens International Piano Competition.
Ovcharenko is as thoughtful and exact in his concert programming as he is technically proficient and emotionally immersive at the keyboard. His first set centered on Franz Liszt’s challenging Sonata in B minor and bookended that vast opus with two Scarlatti sonatas in that same key, which set off and commented on the Liszt in interesting ways. In the second half he interspersed pieces by two Ukrainian composers, exercising his dynamic control in short works by Valentin Silvestrov and contextualizing Levko Revutsky’s late Romanticism with a Chopin Polonaise at the end.
Read more here.
Photo Credit: Chris Lee
Blogcritics: Exclusive Interview: Illia Ovcharenko, Winner, 2022 Honens International Piano Competition
Awards are nothing new for Ukrainian pianist Illia Ovcharenko. As the winner most recently of the 2022 Honens International Piano Competition, he is in the midst of a 2022–2023 season that includes two Carnegie Hall performances and an international tour.
The Honens competition Laureate must be a “complete artist” who is “a consummate communicator and collaborator, a risk-taking explorer, a dreamer” and who “inspires the heart and engages the intellect.” Though only 21, Ovcharenko has proven his worth by these standards already. (The Honens runners-up were 26 and 27.)
International Piano called Ovcharenko “technically flawless and impeccably musical” and hailed his “stupendous performance of Liszt’s Sonata in B minor.”
Blogcritics
By Jon Sobel
Awards are nothing new for Ukrainian pianist Illia Ovcharenko. As the winner most recently of the 2022 Honens International Piano Competition, he is in the midst of a 2022–2023 season that includes two Carnegie Hall performances and an international tour.
The Honens competition Laureate must be a “complete artist” who is “a consummate communicator and collaborator, a risk-taking explorer, a dreamer” and who “inspires the heart and engages the intellect.” Though only 21, Ovcharenko has proven his worth by these standards already. (The Honens runners-up were 26 and 27.)
International Piano called Ovcharenko “technically flawless and impeccably musical” and hailed his “stupendous performance of Liszt’s Sonata in B minor.”
Read more here.
Blogcritics: Exclusive Interview: Luke McEndarfer, National Children’s Chorus Artistic Director, on Ukraine Concert at Disney Hall
“When you live from the truth of your purpose, you need not worry, and can know with certainty that you are always headed in the right direction.” Those words of wisdom come to us from Luke McEndarfer, Artistic Director of the the National Children’s Chorus (NCC).
Maestro McEndarfer will lead the NCC in a concert with the American Youth Symphony at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles on Feb. 25. Dedicated to the people of Ukraine, the concert, co-led by Maestro Carlos Izcaray, is dubbed “Voices of Peace.” It will feature a performance of Benjamin Britten’s challenging War Requiem.
Blogcritics
By Jon Sobel
“When you live from the truth of your purpose, you need not worry, and can know with certainty that you are always headed in the right direction.” Those words of wisdom come to us from Luke McEndarfer, Artistic Director of the the National Children’s Chorus (NCC).
Maestro McEndarfer will lead the NCC in a concert with the American Youth Symphony at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles on Feb. 25. Dedicated to the people of Ukraine, the concert, co-led by Maestro Carlos Izcaray, is dubbed “Voices of Peace.” It will feature a performance of Benjamin Britten’s challenging War Requiem.
Read more here.
Blogcritics: Exclusive Interview: Kevin Kwan Loucks, CEO of Chamber Music America
As the acute phases of the COVID-19 pandemic recede into memory, musicians are eagerly resuming their concert careers. Chamber Music America (CMA) is a national service organization that provides ensemble music professionals with access to various resources and benefits, including professional development seminars, grants and awards, and, not least, opportunities to network with presenters, managers, and other musicians and ensemble professionals, especially with its annual National Conference. Kevin Kwan Loucks, a concert pianist, educator, and arts entrepreneur serves as the CEO of CMA.
Blogcritics
By Jon Sobel
As the acute phases of the COVID-19 pandemic recede into memory, musicians are eagerly resuming their concert careers. Chamber Music America (CMA) is a national service organization that provides ensemble music professionals with access to various resources and benefits, including professional development seminars, grants and awards, and, not least, opportunities to network with presenters, managers, and other musicians and ensemble professionals, especially with its annual National Conference. Kevin Kwan Loucks, a concert pianist, educator, and arts entrepreneur serves as the CEO of CMA.
Read more here.
Blogcritics: Exclusive Interview: Pianist Weiyin Chen on Music, Healing and Designing Her Own Performance Wear
To Taiwanese-American pianist Weiyin Chen, music is more than a creative endeavor. It’s part of a whole range of artistic and humanitarian engagement with the world.
For years she has worked with her father, renowned surgeon Hung-Chi Chen, to raise funds for charitable activities in the field of medicine. Their “Music & Medicine” humanitarian foundation arose from Dr. Chen’s development in the 1990s of a way to restore the gift of speech (and even song) to cancer patients who had lost the use of their vocal cords.
Growing up in a family of doctors linked music and medicine in Weiyin Chen’s mind from an early age. “As a concert pianist,” she has said, “my goal is to also become a healer, a healer of people’s soul or spirit through music.”
Blogcritics
By Jon Sobel
To Taiwanese-American pianist Weiyin Chen, music is more than a creative endeavor. It’s part of a whole range of artistic and humanitarian engagement with the world.
For years she has worked with her father, renowned surgeon Hung-Chi Chen, to raise funds for charitable activities in the field of medicine. Their “Music & Medicine” humanitarian foundation arose from Dr. Chen’s development in the 1990s of a way to restore the gift of speech (and even song) to cancer patients who had lost the use of their vocal cords.
Growing up in a family of doctors linked music and medicine in Weiyin Chen’s mind from an early age. “As a concert pianist,” she has said, “my goal is to also become a healer, a healer of people’s soul or spirit through music.”
Read more here.
Blogcritics: Concert Review (NYC): The Knights and Lara St. John with Music of Avner Dorman and Felix Mendelssohn at the Central Park Bandshell
The meat of the program commenced when Lara St. John stepped in front of the white-clad orchestra. Nigunim is a violin concerto rooted in melodies inspired by Jewish songs from around the world. The piece won the Azrieli Prize in 2018. In a recent interview with Blogcritics the composer told us that in writing it he created new melodies inspired by “listening to music from Jewish communities around the world, recalling music I had heard from different diasporas, and internalizing the styles and gestures. I also analyzed these melodies and found some surprising commonalities.”
Blogcritics
By Jon Sobel
The organizers of the Naumburg Orchestral Concerts could hardly have asked for a nicer evening for The Knights and violinist Lara St. John to present the New York Premiere of Avner Dorman’s Nigunim. The darkening sky turned rose-red and aqua blue as the audience heard a spectacular performance of the virtuosic concerto and an invigorating reading of Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 (“Scottish”).
Around the World in Four Movements
The meat of the program commenced when Lara St. John stepped in front of the white-clad orchestra. Nigunim is a violin concerto rooted in melodies inspired by Jewish songs from around the world. The piece won the Azrieli Prize in 2018. In a recent interview with Blogcritics the composer told us that in writing it he created new melodies inspired by “listening to music from Jewish communities around the world, recalling music I had heard from different diasporas, and internalizing the styles and gestures. I also analyzed these melodies and found some surprising commonalities.”
Read more here.
Photo: Oren Hope Media
Blogcritics: Exclusive Interview: Marios Papadopoulos, Artistic Director and Conductor, Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, on June 7 Carnegie Hall Debut
The Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra (OPO), under the baton of Artistic Director Marios Papadopoulos, was to make its long-awaited Carnegie Hall debut on May 4, 2020. One look at that date and you’ll know why it didn’t happen. Now it’s back on the marquee, rescheduled for June 7, 2022 and presented by MidAmerica Productions.
Blogcritics
By Jon Sobel
The Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra (OPO), under the baton of Artistic Director Marios Papadopoulos, was to make its long-awaited Carnegie Hall debut on May 4, 2020.
One look at that date and you’ll know why it didn’t happen.
Now it’s back on the marquee, rescheduled for June 7, 2022 and presented by MidAmerica Productions. Grammy-winning violinist Maxim Vengerov will be the featured soloist at the 7:30 PM concert. Brahms’s Symphony No. 1, Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1, and the Navarra (Danza Espagnole) for Two Violins and Orchestra (1889) by Pablo de Sarasate constitute the program.
Read more here.