This titanic performance of Busoni’s 70-minute concerto was riveting, but exhausting to hear. It was preceded by a sparkling reading of Haydn’s “Military” Symphony.
How can you do musical justice to the vast idea of creation? Alan Gilbert and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester attempt to square the circle in Mahler's epic Third Symphony.
The origins of chamber music lie in a wish for music that could fit within a small room. On display at the New York Philharmonic last Friday were recent contributions that wished for the opposite.
Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic somewhat overpower the hall for the music of John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen's concerto fascinates on a first hearing.
Absolute Jest sounds like perfect fare for an April Fool's Day concert. John Adams quotes Beethoven in many guises in his jolly work for string quartet and orchestra.
The New York Philharmonic brought two works to the stage at David Geffen Hall last week; their extremely polished rendition of Lera Auerbach's violin concerto contrasted starkly with their under-rehearsed Mahler.
The New York Phil's music director drives his Tchaikovsky hard but brings taut control to 20th-century repertoire, with Frank Peter Zimmermann oustanding in Bartók.
Before the NY Philharmonic even arrived in San Francisco, skeptics were complaining about the 'hackneyed" repertoire they were bringing on tour. But there was nothing commonplace about their interpretations, power, technical skills or performances.
What’s next for the outgoing Music Director of the New York Philharmonic? It’s unclear. But this program reflected both his legacy and the gifts he will carry down the road.
Stephen Hough made light of the technical challenges of Dvořák's Piano Concerto; Carl Nielsen’s “Inextinguishable” symphony was an electrifying second half.
Carnegie Hall opened its 125th anniversary season with the help of one of the world’s greatest living composers, one of the world’s greatest performers, and one of the world’s greatest orchestras.
First seen at the innovative, fearless Aix-en-Provence festival three summers ago, George Benjamin’s riveting, grisly Written on Skin has arrived in New York.
Ms Batiashvili performed her final concert as the New York Philharmonic’s Artist-in-Residence alongside her companion and oboe virtuoso François Leleux in works by two distinguished organist-composers.
The influence of words and storytelling is apparent from Mr Adams’ dense score to Scheherazade.2, which broods throughout with cinematic yet unpredictable intensity.
New York Philharmonic under its music director Alan Gilbert delivered an impressive performance of Verdi's famous Requiem, with an excellent ensemble of soloists and chorus.
The New York Philharmonic began the New Year with a rapturous program featuring Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales, Nielsen's Clarinet Concerto, and selections from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake.
Alan Gilbert leads the New York Philharmonic with guest pianist Yefim Bronfman in a concert of contrasts: Bartók's Piano Concerto no. 3 and Bruckner's Symphony no. 8 in C minor.
Ornithologists would have had a field day in Avery Fisher Hall for the opening subscription concert in the New York Philharmonic's season. Trills and fluttering multiphonics abounded in Unsuk Chin's Clarinet Concerto, before bird calls opened Mahler's First Symphony.
Gilbert and the Gewandhaus gave us a Mahler 3 that was truly the representation of all of creation that the composer strove for. It's a symphony to keep coming back for.
The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Alan Gilbert deliver a satisfying account of Mahler's titanic Third Symphony in the Berlin Festival, with a memorable solo from alto Gerhild Romberger.
In the 15,606 concerts given by the New York Philharmonic and its predecessors before this, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony had received nearly 200 renditions.
“Opening Night” at the New York Philharmonic is a gala affair, although it’s rarely the actual opening night of the season. The gala isn’t as gaudy as the one that takes place across the plaza at the Metropolitan Opera, but it’s an auspicious occasion nonetheless, filmed for broadcast on public television and usually featuring a soloist with the appropriate star wattage.
So begins the fifth year of Alan Gilbert’s quest to make the New York Philharmonic the very model of a modern symphony orchestra: a concert in which the music director spent the vast majority of this time seated stock still; in which the luckier of the musicians spent most of their hours looking up at a big screen; and in which the audience spent most of their evening entranced by visuals and ju
After Simon Rattle blazed into the Philharmonie last week with big hits like Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass, and (somewhat less of a big hit) Lutosławski’s Second Symphony, Alan Gilbert, normally to be found on a podium in front of the New York Philharmonic, returned with the same band on Thursday to play lesser-known pieces in the repertoire: Janáče
Unusual scenes at the New York Philharmonic this past weekend: a ballerina flouncing across the stage; conductor Alan Gilbert lugging a life-size puppet down the aisle amid rows of laughing, bewildered audience members; black-and-white video projections of the orchestra musicians sipping tea.
On Saturday evening, a collage of sound enveloped Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall as the New York Philharmonic warmed up before swarms of buzzing concert-goers.
Alan Gilbert’s last few seasons at the New York Philharmonic have featured an opera in June. While previous efforts have featured elaborate staging, this year’s installment, Luigi Dallapiccola’s Il prigioniero, was performed in concert. For this particular work, which was written for radio broadcast, this seems only appropriate.
Saturday night, Avery Fisher Hall saw a solid and well-crafted final performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 25 and Bruckner’s Symphony no. 3. The piano concerto was cleanly executed and so polished as to allow the Mozartean patina to shine clearly through.
Alan Gilbert, Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, was an unexpected guest this past weekend at Severance Hall. Pierre Boulez had been announced as the guest conductor, but a few weeks ago he was forced to cancel his appearance for medical reasons.
Under conductor Alan Gilbert, the New York Philharmonic and the New York Choral Artists gave an inspired but slightly uneven performance of J.S. Bach’s Mass in B minor on Wednesday night. Playing with great panache as well as a mindful sense of the historical weight of the piece, the vocalists and musicians gave bristling and glistening life to a timeless work.
Dreams and anxieties, religious and otherwise, were the dominant themes at Thursday night’s New York Philharmonic performance. The concert program worked backwards in time, starting with Phantasmata by composer-in-residence Christopher Rouse (completed in 1985), followed by Ernest Bloch’s Schelomo (1916), and finishing with Brahms’ Symphony no. 1 (published in 1877).
