“Conversations” from Ensemble ACJW

AS part of his "Perspectives" series at Carnegie Hall, Sir Simon Rattle takes time to coach young musicians in a controversial modern score.

Ensemble ACJW performed works by Berio, Reich, and Bartók with conductor David Robertson and soprano Dawn Upshaw at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall. This attractively programmed concert featured an admirable first half, though the Bartók left something to be desired.

Inside Juilliard’s Paul Hall, a splendid spectacle of geometric juxtaposition greets the eyes. The wood-paneled interior is a busy mishmash of thin vertical rectangles and squares of varying sizes, whose right angles are further contrasted by a row of glossy spherical lights on each wall.

When Alice Tully, the great New York patron of the arts, commissioned a work from Olivier Messiaen to celebrate the American bicentennial, the French composer packed up his sketchbooks and headed West. He found inspiration in the unearthly beauty of Utah’s national parks, among the brilliantly colored landscapes of canyons, cliffs, rock pillars, and arches. Des canyons aux étoiles...

“I put into your hands manuscripts that I very much wish will remain after me,” wrote Émilie du Châtelet shortly before the birth of her fourth child in 1749. “I hope... that my lying-in, which I am expecting at any moment, will not be fatal, as I fear.” Her fears did prove fatal, and she died days after giving birth, at the age of 42.

Viktoria Mullova is a superb soloist in Brahms' Violin Concerto, while an orchestra full of soloists play Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra with Kahchun Wong presiding.