(Le) Poisson Rouge celebrates Elliott Carter

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.

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.

Brooklyn Rider is a first-rate advertisement for the string quartet in NYC. A quiet approach to their artistry, stylish playing, and a gorgeous sound brings midsummer joy to Wigmore Hall.

Monday evening at Lincoln Center’s annual White Light Festival, audience-goers were sucked into the multi-media universe of Michel van der Aa. The concert, which featured four of Mr. van der Aa’s compositions, took place in the darkened ballroom of the Manhattan Center, running to a bit over an hour with no intermission. Three solo works, each about ten minutes long, were paired with the U.S.

Good news for skeptics: modernist music can be beautiful. If what keeps listeners away from the “difficult” music written in the past century is a fear of dissonance, they can rest assured.