Night After Night

Celluloid heroes.

Tan Dun Martial Arts Trilogy in Damrosch Park, Lincoln Center Out of Doors
The New York Times, August 15, 2011

Snapped with my iPhone, the image above depicts one of those moments described in the last paragraph of my Times review, when martial-arts movie images ceded to live-action video of Tan Dun conducting. Here he's leading the excellent Metropolis Ensemble, the Collegiate Chorale and pianist Jiayi Sun in The Banquet Concerto. (Parenthetically, awesome to finally have a chance to offer a sidelong salute to the majestic score Basil Poledouris composed for John Milius's 1982 film Conan the Barbarian.)

Double vision.

International Contemporary Ensemble at Alice Tully Hall and the Kaplan Playhouse
The New York Times, August 9, 2011

Everything about these two Stravinsky-centric concerts was hugely admirable. But the opening stretch of the Tully concert -- an unmanned "player piano" piece seguing into four small-ensemble pieces in tight sequence, accompanied by thoughtful lighting design -- was also outstanding music theater. And leave it to ICE to unveil without warning a world premiere composed in 1972 by John Zorn, then aged 18.

ICE plays two more Mostly Mozart Festival events tomorrow (August 10), both conducted by composer Matthias Pintscher. The first program, at Alice Tully Hall at 7:30pm, includes Mozart's "Gran Partita," Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1, Pintscher's wonderfully titled Occultation and an arrangement by Salvatore Sciarrino of Mozart's Adagio (K. 356). The second concert, in the Kaplan Penthouse at 10:30pm, features Mozart's Adagio and Rondo for glass armonica (K. 617), Zorn's Christabel, Jonathan Harvey's Serenade in Homage to Mozart and newly composed pieces by Steve Lehman and Phyllis Chen. (As I reported at the time, ICE's evening-length engagement with Lehman's music in April was a night to remember.)

Shout it out loud.

Photograph: Ruby Washington/The New York Times

Joshua Bell with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall
The New York Times, August 8, 2011

Along with the amazing Ruby Washington photograph you see above, my review of last Friday's Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra concert is in The New York Times today. I'd previously stated that my next post here would be an omnibus collection of links to missed Times pieces, but this morning I felt the urgent need to get this one up immediately, because Pablo Heras-Casado, the young Spanish conductor who made this particular concert such a joy, is working again this evening.

Heras-Casado will be collaborating with the ever-amazing International Contemporary Ensemble in two performances tonight, one at 7:30pm in Alice Tully Hall and another at 10:30pm in the Kaplan Penthouse. Both concerts are part of Stravinsky Too, a special run of Mostly Mozart concerts devoted to exploring Stravinsky's music.

I wasn't the first to write about Heras-Casado for the Times. He appeared in Will Robin's excellent Arts & Leisure feature on Toshio Hosokawa's opera Matsukaze yesterday. Just over a year ago, Allan Kozinn reviewed a previous Mostly Mozart engagement. And in June 2008, Anthony Tommasini covered Heras-Casado's U.S. debut, presented with Ensemble ACJW at Zankel Hall.

One line from Tony's review takes on an especially melancholy resonance now: "New Yorkers will be seeing more of Mr. Heras-Casado: [Gerard] Mortier has scheduled him for a debut with the New York City Opera in 2010."

If only. Still, isn't it a remarkable development that the Mostly Mozart Festival has become the place to catch up-and-coming conductors, many of them in their New York debuts?