Performer: Ensemble LPR

Jennifer Koh and Ensemble LPR helped celebrate the five-year anniversary of (Le) Poisson Rouge Friday night, with a lively program of works by John Zorn, Charles Wuorinen and Ludwig van Beethoven. The club-like atmosphere of LPR was in full swing before the show began, waiters ferrying salads and glasses of wine as percussionists adjusted their instruments on stage under colored blooms of light.

Elliott Carter was a real maverick composer. Born into the era of Igor Stravinsky, Charles Ives and Arnold Schoenberg, Carter went onto to create an exciting world of new music in the 20th and 21st century. Never slowing down, Carter composed over 40 new works between the ages of 90 and 100. The result: Carter’s music is current and exciting today... and he has an incredible repertoire of music.

At once, Max Richter’s avant-garde remix of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is both strange and familiar. Poised atop the stage at (le) Poisson Rouge sat the LPR ensemble – complete with a harpsichord! – ready to begin their performance. But something curious happened: the players remained silent as an electronic hum radiated out of a laptop on stage.