School of \'c9 Classical? At Carnegie and Beyond, Youth Rules the Season

The New York Observer, September 18th, 2007

Has classical music become hip? From the looks of this fall, some of the city’s most traditional venues will be competing with clubs for the downtown crow. Check out The Berlin in Lights festival (Nov.2 to Nov. 18), which will celebrate Berlin (perhaps the coolest city in the world right now, according to Williamsburg types) in a wide range of events held at Carnegie Hall, the Neue Galerie, MoMA and Goethe-Institut.

Where to begin? Tucked among the lectures, movies and cabaret are a host of classical performances at Carnegie Hall: 26-year-old Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel makes his New York City premiere conducting the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra Ensemble (Nov. 11 and Nov. 12); the 12 cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic perform at Zankel Hall (Nov. 12); and the Philharmonic, at glorious full strength, plays three performances, including pieces by Gustav Mahler, Franz Schubert and Thomas Adès, conducted by Simon Rattle (Nov. 13, 14, and 16).

Two more events at Carnegie for the edgy set: Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman will join the Takács Quartet for an evening of music and literature. The quartet will perform selections by composers Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass and Franz Schubert; in between performances, Mr. Hoffman will read excerpts from Philip Roth’s recent novel Everyman. The evening culminates with Mr. Hoffman’s reading of Matthias Claudius’ poem “Death and the Maiden,” followed by the Schubert quartet piece it inspired (Oct. 23).

The week after, still-hot violinist Joshua Bell joins the Orchestra of St. Luke’s to perform pieces by Samuel Barber and Joseph Haydn, as well the world premiere of a work by 16-year-old composer-prodigy Jay Greenberg (Oct. 28).

The parade of youth will continue over at the New York Philharmonic. Mr. Dudamel will take the podium at Avery Fisher Hall, conducting the orchestra (featuring violin soloist Gil Shaham) in performances of Dvořák’s Violin Concerto, Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5, and Symphony No. 2, Sinfonía India, by Carlos Chávez (1899-1978), an important Mexican composer whose works mingle traditional European sensibilities with the indigenous music of Mexico (Nov. 29 and 30; Dec. 1 and 4).

And 27-year-old Macedonian pianist Simon Trpčeski, who recently sold out London’s Wigmore Hall, arrives in New York to join the Philharmonic in an all-Tchaikovsky set (Sept. 26 to Sept. 29), then joins soloists from the orchestra at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a program of Brahms and Chopin (Sept. 30).

The Met Museum’s season continues with a much-anticipated performance by pianist Simone Dinnerstein and cellist Zuill Bailey of the complete sonatas for piano and cello by Beethoven (Oct. 12). Ms. Dinnerstein’s recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, her solo debut, went straight to No. 1 on the Billboard Classical Chart when it was released in August, and The Washington Post has described Mr. Bailey’s cello sound as one of “youthfulness, suppleness and grace.” Their performance marks the first installment of the Met Museum’s Accolades young artists series.

At the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, the Kronos Quartet joins Finnish composing duo Kluster (accordionist Kimmo Pohjonen and electronic sampling artist Samuli Kosminen) to perform the U.S. premiere of Uniko, “a 60-minute piece for accordion, voice, string quartet, live loops, samples, and effects.” And, as you’ve probably guessed by now, “atmospheric video projections.” (Oct 3, 5 and 6)

If that’s not Next Wavey enough, violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain’s One Loss Plus should do the trick. Mr. Roumain combines snippets of recorded conversation, posts from Web sites and the sounds of traditional instruments into a multimedia collage (Nov. 14, 16 and 17). Cool. We think.

But don’t fret if this all sounds a little otherworldly. Peter Gelb’s second full season as general manager of the Metropolitan Opera features Iphigénie en Tauride by the 18th-century German-born composer Christoph Willibald von Gluck, whose Orfeo ed Euridice, directed by Mark Morris, was a smash hit last spring. Stephen Wadsworth takes the helm this time, with Mostly Mozart’s Louis Langrée on the podium. Susan Graham sings the role of Iphigénie, accompanied by Plácido Domingo in the role of Oreste, in a plot derived from the plays of Euripides (opens Nov. 27).