A fine Monteverdi Vespers from the Tenet Ensemble

By Robert Levine, 23 June 2014

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Reviewed at St Jean Baptiste Church, New York City on 18 June 2014

Monteverdi, Vespro della Beata Vergine "Vespers of the Blessed Virgin" (1610)

Tenet Ensemble

Tuvan throat singing and holy minimalism at collected stories: “spirit”

Rebecca Lentjes, 23rd April

Employing khoomei, a style of singing that remains “a mystery to Western science”, each of the four performers was capable of producing up to four notes at once.

****1

TENET: Portraits in Song, Renaissance Italy from Ciconia to Petrucci

Amanda Keil, 3rd February

To accompany the exhibition “The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini,” the early music ensemble TENET held court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a lovely concert of musical portraits from the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

***11

Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and Buniatishvili in Hamburg

Mengguang Huang, 24th March

Jonathan Nott and the OSR bring surgical precision to Debussy’s vivid sketches, while Khatia Buniatishvili’s Brahms evokes the soulful, improvisational warmth of a pre-war piano legend at the Elbphilharmonie.

****1

Text and textures in New York premieres by The Crossing at Zankel Hall

David Wolfson, 24th March

Donald Nally’s much vaunted chamber choir The Crossing give a program of three New York premieres at Zankel Hall.

****1

Concertos – for violin and for orchestra – from the Hallé

Peter Connors, 22nd March

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.

*****

Guitars, electronics and ancient treatises: the JACK Quartet at 92NY

Kurt Gottschalk, 20th March

At 92NY, the JACK Quartet performs four new works developed in their JACK Studio, including a commissioned premiere from the electrifying Tristan Perich.

****1

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Robert Levine

Robert T. Levine is a New York born-and-bred music writer with a particular interest in music for the voice. His work has appeared in many periodicals and newspapers. He is the author of many books, including The Story of the Orchestra, four volumes in the Black Dog & Leventhal Opera Library, and, most recently, Maria Callas: A Musical Biography.