Lincoln Center’s acclaimed Great Performers series began its 2012/13 Symphonic Masters lineup with two outstanding performances by the London Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of its principal conductor, Valery Gergiev. Each of the all-Brahms programs featured a concerto and a …
This year the Lincoln Center Festival will be longer and richer than ever. It will offer 116 performances by ensembles and artists from some 20 countries, and will include 6 World, North American, U.S., and New York premieres unfolding in …
Modest Mussorgsky (music and libretto), Boris Godunov
Metropolitan Opera House: 10/18/2010.
Boris Godunov – René Pape
Prince Shuisky – Oleg Balashov
Pimen – Mikhail Petrenko
Grigory …
In a recent interview the conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, remarked that Igor Stravinsky pulled off the greatest camouflage in the history of music. He was referring to the composer’s lifelong stand that music expresses no emotions, indeed, expresses nothing except sound. Behind this mask, Salonen said, lies a man of deep feeling whose music is often as moving as any ever written. I began to think about Stravinsky and his camouflage, which has always baffled me. How could such glittering creations, each commanding your attention, whether as a shout across the primordial steppes or a murmur like the tick-tock of a mantel clock in the Princesse de Polignac’s salon, be about nothing?
This week, the touring Mariinsky Orchestra, led by the ubiquitous Valery Gergiev, performed two evenings at Davies Hall in San Francisco. The first program, which I did not hear, was devoted to Prokofiev ballets and Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. The second, more intriguing to me, presented Shostakovich's enigmatic final symphony, as well as an opportunity to assess the Rachmaninoff artistry of Denis Matsuev, who is being hailed these days as a pianist in the Horowitz tradition.
Lincoln Center Great Performers Presents
Russian Dreams: The Music of Sergei Prokofiev
Monday, March 23, 2009 at 8:00
Avery Fisher Hall (Broadway at 65th Street)
London Symphony Orchestra
Valery Gergiev, conductor
Vladimir Feltsman, piano
All-Prokofiev program
Symphony No. 1 in …
