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Jan 25, 2025 | 
bachtrack.com | Susan Stempleski
For this unique program the New York Philharmonic's Artist-in-Residence Yuja Wang assumed the role of “pianist/leader” in three 20th-century concertos. The results were captivating, but mixed.
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Jan 23, 2025 | 
bachtrack.com | Susan Stempleski
Nearing the end of their first US tour together since January 2023, Music Director Emeritus Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra made a one-night stopover in Carnegie Hall. Opening with Bellini’s overture to Norma, the program also included Verdi’s ballet Les Quatres Saisons and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 4 in F minor. Under Muti’s precise baton, the Chicagoans delivered a crisp, biting account of the overture, one that made the listener eager to hear what was to follow.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
bachtrack.com | Semyon Bychkov |Yo-Yo Ma |Susan Stempleski |Loading image..
Six years after their last Carnegie Hall appearance,Music Director Semyon Bychkov and his Czech Philharmonic returned for the orchestra’s first concert in a three-day residency winding up the 2024 Year of Czech Music, an international celebration spotlighting Czech composers that takes place every decade.
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Nov 29, 2024 | 
bachtrack.com | Susan Stempleski
In an impressive NY Philharmonic debut, the charismatic conductor Kazuki Yamada – music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo – led a crowd-pleasing program featuring a US premiere and two works from the Romantic and late Romantic era. The concert opener was Dai Fujikura’s tone poem Entwine.
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Nov 23, 2024 | 
bachtrack.com | Susan Stempleski
Five years after their last New York appearance, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra returned to Carnegie Hall for their 50th visit since they first performed here in 1954 under Eduard van Beinum. In this, the first of two back-to-concerts at the hall, Chief Conductor Designate Klaus Mäkelä led the ensemble in a generous program pairing a US premiere with two 20th-century Russian masterpieces.
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Nov 8, 2024 | 
bachtrack.com | Susan Stempleski
This concert concluded Maxim Vengerov and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s two-night traversal of Mozart’s complete works for violin and orchestra, the series marking the official start of the violinist’s three-year “Perspective” series at Carnegie Hall. The first half of the program featured two dramatically different violin concertos, nos. 2 and 5. Written in 1775, when Mozart was 19, the two works illustrate his stylistic evolution within the span of a few months.
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Oct 31, 2024 | 
bachtrack.com | Susan Stempleski
Sir David McVicar's Goya-inspired 2009 production of Verdi’s Il trovatore is back at the Met for its fifth revival with an impressive cast of young singers. Last seen in 2018, the grimly realistic production moves the action from 15th-century Spain to the early 19th century, during the Peninsular War. Charles Edwards’ tall, rotating set efficiently accommodates the numerous scene changes, conjuring up a palace courtyard, a convent cloister, a gypsy encampment and other locations.
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Oct 22, 2024 | 
bachtrack.com | Susan Stempleski
A decade after their last visit to New York, the London Philharmonic Orchestra returned with a generous, emotion-laden program led by Principal Conductor Edward Gardner, alongside violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, both making their debuts in the Carnegie Hall’s renowned Stern Auditorium. In Britten’s harrowing Sinfonia da Requiem, Gardner brought tremendous emotion to the opening Lacrymosa and conveyed the despair of the second movement Dies irae with razor-sharp precision.
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Oct 16, 2024 | 
bachtrack.com | Susan Stempleski
Although infrequently heard in concert – due to its length and the immense orchestral forces and rehearsal time required – Gustav Mahler’s Third Symphony is the work that best epitomizes the composer’s life and career. One of his sunniest, most extrovert scores, it is a wondrous celebration of life, much heralded as one of the greatest symphonies of all time.
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Oct 2, 2024 | 
bachtrack.com | Susan Stempleski
Bartlett Sher’s staging of Rigoletto, which debutedat the Staatsoper Berlin in 2019and premiered at the Metropolitan Opera on New Year’s Eve 2021, is back in the house with a superb cast. Sher updates the action from 16th-century Mantua to early 1920s Weimar Republic, but apart from a scrim displaying a detail from George Grosz’ Metropolis and an Art Deco ballroom in the opening scene, the handsome production bears little relation to its purported inspiration.
