New York Philharmonic. Barbara Hannigan, conductor/soprano. April 23, 2026.

David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.  Orchestra (Seat Y103, $50).

Hannigan at the end of the concert.  One of the cameras can be seen to her right.

Program

Metamorphosen, A Study for 23 Solo Strings (1945) by R. Strauss (1864=1949).

La Voix humaine, Tragedie lyrique en un act (The Human Voice, Lyric Tragedy in One Act), FP171 (1958) by Poulenc (1899-1963).

We had no idea what to expect from the concert, especially the second part.  We have seen instrumentalists (mostly violinists and pianists) both simultaneously performing as soloists and leading the orchestra at the same time; this would be our first encounter with a vocalist in that role.

First things first.  Metamorphosen was a piece written by Strauss just before the end of World War II.  Per the Program Notes, by that time Strauss had gone through two world wars, and was in declining health, so this work was in part "an agonized cry from the heart, a dark report from a dark time."  I frankly didn't find the work dark, and failed to appreciate the title until the work was more than half-way through.  Metamorphosis is a drastic change - think caterpillar to pupa to butterfly - but the piece begins as a very long serene statement; I couldn't detect any pause for a while. It only got a bit agitated towards the end.

While Strauss indeed gave the work its title, he also called it "a study for 23 solo strings."  (5 each first and second violins, violas, and cellos; 3 basses.)  Did he really have 23 instruments all going in different directions?  And can anyone trace all 23 at the same time? There are only twelve notes in a scale.  I looked at the score, the staffs are 2 violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos, and 1 bass; sometimes lines are "divisi," but far fewer than 23.

Hannigan and the 23 string players performed Strauss's Metamorphosen.

The beginning measures of Metamorphosen.

A page in the score where all 23 players have a line.

This from a YouTube video screenshot.  Evidently there is a septet version of the work.

Strauss makes sense after one understands what he is trying to do.  For this first listening, I think "study" is a more appropriate title.

La Voix humaine is best described as a one-woman single-act opera.  The story is simple enough.  Elle (simply means she/her in French) is talking on the phone with someone who is probably her former lover.  During the course of the 45 minute act, she pleads, cajoles, contradicts herself, and sprinkles in a good amount of incoherence.  The audience doesn't hear what the party at the other end says. The telephone technology in the 1950s also results in disconnects, interferences on the party lines, and noise.  Therefore Elle spends a good amount of time asking the operator to reconnect.  She evidently has taken 12 pills (type not specified) and eventually wraps the phone cord around her neck.  The audience is left to decide if she succeeds in killing herself.  The stage directions call for her letting the receiver go and dropping her head at the end.

What we saw today was even more of a one-woman show: Hannigan both conducted the orchestra and sang the role of Elle.  Not what I expected, but it was still an interesting experience.

When I saw the large screen on stage, my assumption was that some kind of projection would provide the backdrop for the opera.  It turns out there were (I think) three cameras pointed at Hannigan.  Most of the time it was a frontal shot, but two side cameras (which I couldn't locate) would provide shots from the sides.  Images are superimposed, reflected, or repeated to create some visual effects.  Orchestra members (most of the time the first violins and the hair of a violist) would sometime be in the shot.  At one point, the image on the screen was frozen for a few minutes, Hannigan turned around and sang directly at the audience.  What it spontaneity?  Since it happened again later in the play, I'm not so sure.

It must have taken a lot of planning and rehearsal to pull the thing off.  At least as far as the videography is concerned.  The story itself, while tragic, is typical for a tragedy.  Since Hannigan sang most of the time with her back to the audience (she was conducting, after all), the sound didn't project all that well.  And I am quite sure some sort of sound enhancement was used.  The exception would be the time she turned around, her voice projected very well at that time.  There was a bulge on her back which was probably part of the transmitter.

The camera sometimes would zoom in very close, so only her mouth would be on the screen.  That was a bit too close for comfort, even though we were seated in about the middle of the auditorium.

The opera ended with her arms still in the air, so not quite the "letting the receiver go and dropping her head" called for in the stage direction.  And of course there was no physical telephone or phone cord either.

Curtain call.  Imagine the screen filled up by a close up of Hannigan's mouth.

Taken from the NY Times.

I have also been amazed that conductors give singers very clear cues during an opera's performance; I guess that's mostly to sync up the vocalists with the orchestra.  Perhaps if one is familiar enough with the full score then it is unnecessary?

Hannigan is Canadian, so I assume her fluency in French is excellent.  We saw her in the Opera "Written on Skin" by George Benjamin about 10 years back.  She was in the lead role, my blog entry for that event didn't talk about her specifically, other than that the singing was generally good.

We got these tickets because we couldn't pass up on the $50 deal.  It was definitely worth that, perhaps more.

New Jersey Symphony. Xian Zhang, conductor. April 19, 2026.

State Theater New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ.  Balcony (Seat K101, $42).

Zhang and Buchanan at the end of the concert.

Program

Pavane, Op. 50 (1887) by Faure (1845-1924).

Songs of a Wayfarer (1883-85, rev. 1891-96) by Mahler (1860-1911).

Requiem in D Minor, K. 626 (1791) by Mozart (1756-1791).

Artists

Mei Gui Zhang - soprano; Taylor Raven, mezzo-soprano; Eric Ferring - tenor; Dashon Burton - bass.

Montclair State University Chorale, Heather J. Buchanan, director.

The main "attraction" for this concert is Mozart's Requiem.  Of course Pavane is a pleasant piece of music that seldom gets into a concert program (none in this blog thus far), and Songs of a Wayfarer dates from Mahler's earlier years, and are closely associated with the poetry collection Das Knaben Wunderhorn Mahler drew on extensively for his symphonies.

My first encounter with Pavane, if I recall correctly, was at a music camp our daughter attended while she was in high school.  One reason this is not programmed much in a concert, I suppose, is that it's a 7-minute piece requiring a full orchestra and a large chorus.  (Not completely true as performances can be done without vocals.)  One of Faure's more memorable pieces, it contains melodies that stick with the listener for a long time.  The woodwinds are the stars in this show, and today the section didn't disappoint.

The chorale and the orchestra on stage just before the concertmaster's entrance.

After performance of Faure's Pavane.

In going over my notes, I found out I had heard the Songs of a Wayfarer in 2018.  I liked it then.  Today they didn't sound as compelling as they did back then.  Interesting, a mezzo-soprano sang back then, and today it was sung by the bass Dashon Burton.  I have heard Burton on a couple of occasions before, his performance today was solid but not memorable.

Dashon Burton sang the Songs of a Wayfarer.

Mozart's Requiem is also enjoyable to listen to (to the extent that a work memorializing death can be enjoyed).  It's regularly programmed by NJ Symphony, NY Phil, and Mostly Mozart (while it was still known as such).  I always feel there is triumph despite the occasion.  Musicologists have analyzed all aspects of this work, and undoubtedly will continue to do so.  Today's Program Notes talks about "Its resolution on stark open fifths, unsweetened by a major third and unmitigated by even a D-minor chord, is a chilling reminder that this is music of death."  Question is: did Mozart design this?  From a prior blog entry I remembered that the Communion reused some of Mozart's earlier movements.  That would mean the music was indeed as described, what is unknown is if that would have been Mozart's original intent.

The four soloists for Mozart's Requiem.  From left: Zhang, Raven, Ferring, Burton.

I couldn't find the lyrics to any of the three pieces printed either in the Program book, or as inserts, or projected onto the screen.  I had no idea what the lyrics in Pavane say, had some vague idea what mood each song of the Mahler songs wanted to convey, and managed to catch a few Latin words (kyrie, sanctus, etc) in the Requiem.  I suspect most of the audience would appreciate some help in that area.

There were at least 120 members in the chorale.  Their volume was just right.  Wonder how they would sound in a large auditorium.  And will we ever see Buchanan conduct an NJ Symphony concert?  She certainly has prepared the choral parts well.

The Mozart Requiem would be the piece I felt most involved with (my definition of a great performance).  The lack of lyrics made that impossible, so I can call it only a good to great performance.

As I was leaving, I ran into Gene and chatted for a short while with him.  He also enjoyed the concert.

New York Philharmonic. Domingo Hindoyan, conductor; Karen Gomyo, violin. April 15, 2026.

David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center, New York.  Orchestra (Seat Y105, $87).

Gomyo after the Sibelius Violin Concerto.  With Hindoyan looking on.

Program

Can You See? (2023) by Loggins-Hull (b. 1982).

Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor, Op. 47 (1902-04, rev. 1905) by Sibelius.

Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70 (1884-85) by Dvorak (1841-1904).

It's not often that we go to a NY Phil concert on Wednesdays.  Today's tickets were offered to subscribers for 40% off, and the program is quite interesting.  I always enjoy listening to Sibelius's violin concerto, and Dvorak's Seventh is a lot less popular than his Eighth and Ninth, so it would be interesting to understand if there are any underlying reasons for that.

One reason I didn't consider this concert earlier was the piece by Allison Loggins-Hull, who is an artist-in-residence with NJ Symphony.  I have two prior encounters with her work, including the piece performed tonight, and ended up scratching my head afterwards.  I described Can You See as her attempt to deconstruct the national anthem the way Picasso deconstructs a human figure.  I can sometimes make sense of Picasso, but couldn't do it this evening even for a second listening.  Actually it sounded all new to me, such was the impression the piece left on me just a year ago.  The national anthem is an exciting tune, what with bombs blasting in the air and all that, this piece just drones on.  (My blog entry indicates there was a passage where the violas hit the strings with a stick; didn't notice that today.)  It is a relatively short piece, and Loggins-Hull went on stage at the end of the performance.

Allison Loggins-Hull on stage after performance of her Can You See?

While other interpretations are possible (or none), to me, however, Sibelius's violin concerto should capture the feelings of a violinist who fails to reach the highest echelons of the art.  Per today's Program Notes, Sibelius didn't start his violin studies until he was 14.  With inadequate teachers and problems with stage fright, being a virtuoso simply wasn't in the cards for him.  (I started taking violin lessons at around 11, in a couple of years someone at my school won a Hong Kong competition with Wieniawski's Second Violin Concerto, he was perhaps 15 at that time.  Even he quit playing the violin.)

Gomyo was born in Japan, and is in her forties.  This was my first encounter with her.  In general, she played well, with superb technique.  Every now and then there would be some intonation problems, to be expected as the pieces calls for quite a few rapid leaps in pitch.  Overall, it was enjoyable, but did not convey the sentiments I was looking for.  Per Gemini, she performs on a Stradivarius.

For encore, she played a piece written by a friend.  Google says it is "Changes" written by Samuel Adams.

Google identified this as the encore piece.

One notices quite a few entries in this blog on Dvorak's Seventh Symphony.  Despite that, it still sounded new tonight.  Per the Program Notes, this symphony was inspired by Brahms's Third, and was premiered in London where Dvorak was very popular.  Indeed the work was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic.  His own reaction to the premiere was that it turned "splendidly, really splendidly."   He also claimed that - after he edited out about 40 measures from the Symphony's second movement - that "there is not a superfluous note in the work."  All I can say is that Dvorak didn't realize how the 7th would be eclipsed by his later two symphonies.

Conclusion of the concert.

We were in Hoboken this afternoon, so stuck around and took the bus into the City.

Boston Symphony Orchestra. Andris Nelsons, conductor; Lang Lang, piano. April 8, 2026.

Symphony Hall, Boston, MA.  First Balcony Center (Seat E7, $132).

Lang Lang and Andris Nelsons after the Grieg Piano Concerto.

Program

Day Night Day by Tarkianinen (b. 1985).

Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16 by Grieg (1843-1907).

Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, From the New World by Dvorak (1841-1904).

Tickets for this concert were purchased back in September last year as a 3-concert subscription.  We picked this because it would be a chance to see Lang Lang, and both the Grieg and Dvorak pieces would be great to listen to, especially for a young concert-goer like Emmie, who would attend with us together with her dad.

The piece Day Night Day, by the Finnish composer Outi Tarkianinen, was commissioned by Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.  It had its US premiere last week, also at Symphony Hall.  (Its world premiere was in Berlin, and I assume it was also performed in Finland prior.)  As far as I can tell, the tone poem we heard today has its roots in the opera "Day of Night" Tarkianinen had composed earlier.  The Program Notes describes the piece as being about "the northern light and ice ..."  And there are two references to two Sami melodies.  Tarkianinen, when she came on stage to introduce her piece, also mentioned the French Horns as introducing the second melody.

The piece was reasonably easy to listen to, being short at 7 or 8 minutes undoubtedly helped.  One can imagine into the music northern lights and other arctic happenings.  A few years ago we visited Northern Norway, including a Sami heritage museum where native songs were sung (we were also served elk burger).  We did some ice fishing and dog sledding.  This was in January, and the only light was reflection off the atmosphere.  It would not take a lot of imagination to map these into the music.

Tarkianinen spoke briefly about her piece Day Night Day before the orchestra came out.

When we visited a Sami Heritage Museum in Norway (technically Center of Northern Peoples, 2-hour drive from Tromso Airport) we were served this Elk Burger.  Don't remember why the sauce is pink in color.  No, the piece Day Night Day didn't remind me of the food.

The Grieg piano is a crowd-pleaser, even more so with Lang Lang as the soloist.  I haven't seen him perform for quite a few years; he still stares a lot into empty space during breaks in the piano lines.  For encore he played Consolations, S. 172: No. 2 in E Major by Liszt.

After the break was the New World Symphony by Dvorak.  It is always nice to listen to, with all those folk melodies that Dvorak invented.

This photo is time-stamped at 8:50 pm.  Nelsons was already on stage when the orchestra was tuning their instruments.

At the conclusion of the concert.

The big news in the music world in the last few weeks was that the BSO decided next season would be Nelsons' last with the organization, and that there have been non-stop protests by the musicians.  Indeed people were handing out roses to wear as a sign of support.  Most in the orchestra had one on, and Nelsons also had one pinned to his lapel.

While the concert was enjoyable, there was a sense of sadness at the imminent loss of a conductor evidently loved by the orchestra and the community, and a sense of disdain at the lack of transparency of the Board's decision.  I imagine many orchestras would love to have Nelsons, and the new BSO music director (when named) will be under a lot of scrutiny.

Somerville MA All City Middle School Spring Concert. April 7, 2026.

Centennial Auditorium, Somerville High School, MA.  (Free)

Program

Emmie plays in the Somerville All-City Middle School Orchestra.  I came up a day early so I could attend this concert.  (I was coming up to see a BSO concert.)

The Band.

The Orchestra.  Emmie is the section leader for the cellos.

The Chorus.

Philadelphia Orchestra. Marin Alsop, conductor; Hayato Sumino, piano. March 31, 2026.

Carnegie Hall, New York.  Dress Circle (Seat GG108, $89).

Sumino and Alsop after Gershwin's Piano Concerto.

Program

The Rock You Stand On (2024) by Adams (b. 1947).

Piano Concerto in F (1925) by Gershwin (1898-1937).

Selections from Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64 (1935-36) by Prokofiev (1891-1953).

The John Adams piece was composed as "a gift for Marin Alsop," whom the Playbill describes as having "long been an advocate for Adams."  It is co-commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra and Carnegie Hall, and tonight's was its New York premiere.  Since it was written in 2024, I assumed it has been performed elsewhere (per Wikipedia, October last year in Philadelphia, with Alsop conducting).

I have heard quite a few of Adams's pieces, but must admit I lack the vocabulary to describe what I hear, other than some semblance to Philip Glass's minimalist style.  The Program annotator Thomas May has a large arsenal of words and phrases.  A few examples (somewhat paraphrased): both connects across decades and suddenly swerves into new territory, compact, volatile, angular, quasi-Straussian; and there are many more scattered throughout the three pages in the Notes.  In looking over this blog, I have used terms like monotonous (The Chairman Dances), forgettable (Naive and Sentimental Music), wasn't meant as a compliment (Tromba Lontana), and a disappointment (Nixon in China).  The opera "The Death of Klinghoffer" stands out because of the controversy it generated, and the tragic storyline; I enjoyed it, but complained that "sentiments didn't come through" regarding Marilyn's final solo.

Guess what I thought of tonight's performance?  I am writing this entry 2 days after the concert, and do not remember how I felt already.  But I did take some notes right after the piece was played: series of jerky passages, some jazz thrown in, ends abruptly, and was audience hanging on or relieved that it's over.  While written as a "gift" for Alsop (no idea what that means, or how it is different from dedication to), Adams stresses that the piece "... is not meant to suggest anything other than perhaps hinting at ... loyalty, determination, devotion."

A large orchestra was used for both the Adams piece and the Prokofiev suite.  I counted 30 violins (16/14 split?), 12 violas, 10 cellos and 8 basses.

It's quite often when I see "Gershwin Piano Concerto" I would think Ravel.  Ever since Yuja Wang "broke the code" on Ravel, I have come to enjoy the piece.  Unfortunately I have not had the same breakthrough with the Gershwin concerto - and I had listened to Wang perform it.  Tonight, unfortunately, didn't help in that quest.

I was seated in the last row of the Dress Circle (I moved one seat over to GG107 to get a clearer view of the stage), and the acoustics was incredibly weak tonight.  Is it the seat, or the performance?  The piano sounded so weak at times that I didn't know if was on if I hadn't been looking.  That was especially true with the second movement.  One interesting thing I saw was the trumpet sometimes had a sock (well, some cloth bag) on it to produce a softer sound that is not nasal when a regular mute is used.  The third movement was a crowd pleaser.  For encore Sumino performed a variation on Gershwin's "I've got rhythm.

Per the bio in the Playbill, Sumino has accumulated quite a bit of accolades over the years; he is all of 30 years old.  This was my first encounter with him, that speaks to the huge number of world-class pianists today.

I heard "Selections from Romeo and Juliet" performed by the NJ Symphony a couple of months ago, and liked the innovation of interweaving music with spoken dialog.  Tonight's performance had 14 movements excerpted from Prokofiev's work, and I found to my amazement that I could follow along.  What was more amazing, however, was how much better the Philadelphia Orchestra sounded; and it pains me to say it wasn't just that Carnegie Hall acoustics is better than that of Count Basie's.

After Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet.  Time stamp 10:08 pm.  The three pieces in the program add up to about 80 minutes, so it was frustrating for people on a tight schedule.

I went to this concert by myself as Anne had a class.  I chose to walk from Penn Station to the venue, it took longer than I expected, and I found myself at my seat at around 7:55 pm.  The concert didn't start until 8:12 pm, so I missed the 10:23 pm train by a couple of minutes.  Indeed many people rushed out after the concert ended.  This seems to be a constant problem with Carnegie Hall.  It was after midnight that I got off the train.

New Jersey Symphony. Xian Zhang, conductor; Juan Esteban Martinez, clarinet. March 27, 2026.

NJPAC, Newark, NJ.  Tier 1 (Seat F111, $52).

Martinez after performing Mozart's Clarinet Concerto.

Program

Divertimento in D Major, K. 136 (1772) by Mozart (1756-1791).

Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622 (1791) by Mozart.

Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68, "Pastoral" (1808) by Beethoven (1770-1827).

This is a "safe" program with pieces that are easy to appreciate and to enjoy.  And enjoy it I did.

We had not been to Prudential Hall for about a year, and our first reaction was at how weak the acoustics sounded.  And I complained about the acoustics then.

If you ask me what makes a piece of music a "divertimento," I won't be able to answer you.  Gemini AI tells me it "is a lighthearted entertaining musical genre from the 18th century ... has no fixed form but typically consists of several short movements ... common movements include minuets, marches, and variations."  So I am a bit puzzled by the claim in the Program Notes that "K. 136 is really misnamed as a divertimento," given the broad definition of the genre.  The "fault" lies in not having a minuet.

Actually, in my college days I was taught Mozart was the composer who contributed a lot to this genre, so who is to object to what he chose to call K.136?

Enough of the musicology debate.  The piece itself was a delight, crisp, and has enough structure to keep the intellect going if one wishes to so engage.  This was written when Mozart was 16, so perhaps he was still experimenting with different composition techniques.  That would support the Program Notes statement "where Mozart flirts with imitative writing in this otherwise homophonic work."  In case I forget in the future: fugue is imitative, harmony is homophonic (close enough?).

Only strings were used in Mozart's Divertimento.

The last time I heard Mozart's Clarinet Concerto was August, 2016, with Martin Frost as the soloist.  My jaw kind of dropped at how nice the piece was, and how Frost adeptly handled the instrument.  Martinez performed equally well, albeit without quite the showmanship of Frost.  And the acoustics of the venue worked a bit against him.

A few months ago I was remarking how limited the Cello repertoire was, it seems it's equally sparse in the clarinet world, and I have heard most of it.

Martinez in his bio lists Anthony McGill (of NY Phil) as one of his teachers.  He is a native of Colombia, moved to the Dominican Republic at a young age, and is a graduate of Yale and Peabody.  He is the orchestra's principal clarinet, and he played in the second half of the program.  Per his Facebook posting, this is his first performance of this concerto.

After over two hundred years, Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony has morphed from being a revolutionary piece to being today's standard classical/romantic work.  Some of the revolutionary elements: a descriptive program (albeit single sentences/phrases), no pauses between last three movements, and use of instruments to mimic sounds of nature (rain, thunder, bird songs).  These are all techniques and features deployed routinely without a second thought nowadays.

The orchestra did a good job.  For example, I felt the flow was so smooth that I didn't object to the repetition of some passages, and the bird songs were done very well.  The timpani, trombones, and piccolo were used sparing (mostly for the thunderstorm) and they added realistic sound effects (to the extent possible on stage).  But I didn't feel I was sitting by the brook, nor drenched by the rainstorm; I was sitting in Tier 1 observing.

A much larger ensemble performed Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony.

Just so I won't forget.  This symphony premiered on December 8, 1808.  On the program were Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Fourth Piano Concerto, Choral Fantasy, and part of the Mass in C Major.  I imagine I will be "Beethovened" out if I attend this 4-hour concert.

Again, this was not a well-attended concert.  We moved up 2 rows after the intermission.