Susan Hall
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Recent Articles:
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Beethoven and Mahler at the NY Philharmonic Front Page
Inon Barnatan Graces the Concerto
By: - Feb 17th, 2017Manfred Honeck conducted the New York Philharmonic in Beethoven's first Piano Concerto and Gustsv Mahler's First Symphony. Beethoven’s was actually the second and a big leap forward from his first. Mahler’s took the world by storm, featuring nature, folk and funeral music and an expansion of orchestral sound from its time binds into space.
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Tchaikovsky Befriended by New York Philharmonic Front Page
Joshua Gersen Conducts with Brilliant Restraint
By: - Feb 11th, 2017The program began with Francesca da Rimini, a symphonic fantasy. The music seemed more likely to have been composed in 1976 than in 1876. The buzzing strings, dissonance and mixed instrumental textures are thoroughly modern. Yet the story is eternal: a woman falls in love with her husband’s brother and descends to hell. Tchaikovsky adopted this as program music from Dante. The whirlwind which sweeps up the musical story prepares us for a similar whirlwind in the fourth movement of the Pathetique.
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Carnegie Hall Presents the Tallis Scholars Front Page
St. Ignatius Loyola Offers the Acoustics
By: - Feb 09th, 2017Carnegie Hall is offering a festival of Music from the Venetian Republic. At St. Ignatius Loyola, one of New York City’s acoustic treasures, the Tallis Scholars offered Venetian Voices, singing in split choirs, both to provide more vocal lines and to speak to each other when composers asked.
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Jaap van Zweden Conducts Dallas Orchestra Front Page
Tchaikovsky and Bruckner Revealed
By: - Feb 04th, 2017Japp van Zweden the next music director of the New York Philharmonic, performs wonders in his current home town of Dallas, Texas.
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Barenboim and Staatskapelle Berlin Front Page
Layering Bruckner in Carnegie Hall
By: - Jan 29th, 2017Bruckner's wish list included three harps for this Symphony No. 8. There were only two, but no matter. The Staatskapelle Berlin, performing the penultimate Bruckner Symphony with Daniel Barenboim, built layer upon layer, filling the outer reaches of Carnegie Hall with complex sounds, glorious to hear. MediciTV has some of Barenboim's Bruckner available for listening for the next three months.
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Barenboim Reveals Bruckner at Carnegie Hall Front Page
Berlin Staastskapelle Berlin Uncover the Keys
By: - Jan 28th, 2017Bruckner's Seventh Symphony find brought him acclaim. To get away from the barbs of a merciless critic, he persuaded conductor Arthur Nikisch to open in Leipsig, far from the offending pen. The premier was greeted with fifteen minutes of applause. The Seventh is often called Bruckner's most accessible work. Barenboim conducting also shows its subtleties and complexities.
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Bychkov Befriends Tchaikovsky Front Page
New York Philharmonic in World Class Performance
By: - Jan 26th, 2017Semyon Bychkov brought all his rich knowledge of Tchaikovsky to David Geffen Hall and invited members of the New York Philharmonic to play their hearts out as he encouraged them in a stellar performance of Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. Each and every special detail emerged in a multi-textured whole. No one wanted to leave the Hall at the conclusion.
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Daniel Barenboim Celebrates 60 Years at Carnegie Front Page
Saucy and Majestic Mozart and Bruckner
By: - Jan 25th, 2017A consummate musician, Daniel Barenboim showed us how Mozart and Anton Bruckner could bring a saucy spirit to magesterial moments.
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Marilyn Horne Makes the Case for Art Song Front Page
Talented Young Singers
By: - Jan 22nd, 2017New York was shrouded in thick fog, but Marilyn Horne shone a light on the art of song and of all the arts as she began to make her case to the current administration in Washington. No statement is more clear and heart-touching than beautiful voices raised in song before a rapt audience.
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Marilyn Horne's Art Song at Carnegie Front Page
Weill Music Institute is Home to Education
By: - Jan 19th, 2017Marilyn Horne's father saw Shirley Temple on the big screen and thought his daughter belonged there too. At the age of two she first performed in public. Here was a stage father whose personal aspirations matched his daughter's talents. For decades Marilyn Horne has given great pleasure as a performer and extended the audience for the art song. Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute presents Horne's master classes as part of "The Song Continues."
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Mirror Visions Celebrates Front Page
In Tight on Words and Music
By: - Jan 17th, 2017Mirror Visions Ensemble commemorated its 25th anniversary with a concert at The Sheen Center. Their driving vision is that each composer will interpret a poem, passage or letters in his or her own way. The composer is to find the true musical equivalent for the poem. The variety of the setting is no less than the variety of the poem. The group often contrast two composers take on the same poem, mirror images.
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Opera America Showcases New Opera Front Page
Wonderful Singing and Sonos Chamber Orchestra
By: - Jan 15th, 2017Opera is alive and well. New works are a-borning across our country and opera houses are mounting them. There is an audience for new work. Singers like performing it. Orchestras are delighted to give it a try. This is an exciting time for an old art form. Opera America, the national service organization for opera, is leading the way.
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NY City Opera Revives Front Page
Iconic Candide at the Rose Theater
By: - Jan 13th, 2017In the best of all possible worlds, the New York City Opera is alive and well at the Rose Theater, Lincoln Center. With Harold Prince at the helm in a production he has mounted for NYCO before, an exuberant romp through Voltaire's classic shows just how live NYCO is in its new incarnation.
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Chekhov with Cate Blanchett Front Page
Andrew Upton Updates Untitled in Four Acts
By: - Jan 08th, 2017Cate Blanchett can do anything, but her Chekhov is unique and apt. Following a triumphant run in Uncle Vanya in 2012, Broadway welcomes her as Anna, in what is probably Chekhov's first play.
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Alan Gilbert's NY Philharmonic Celebrates Brass Front Page
Quintessential American Music Featured
By: - Jan 04th, 2017Wynton Marsalis, WIlliam Bolcom and Aaron Copland welcomed the New Year at the New York Philharmonic under Alan Gilbert. The Bolcom and Marsalis pieces were commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and helped to create a ravishing evening of music.
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Light Up the Night for New Year Front Page
Treasure Trove of Songs by the National Yiddish Theater
By: - Jan 02nd, 2017Jewish music is often in the minor mode, but the enduring spirit of the people who sing it and live it creates a hopeful and joyous atmosphere.
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Avenue Q Lives On in the US Front Page
From College Grads to the 99%
By: - Dec 28th, 2016In the beginning, almost a decade and a half ago, target audiences were young people whose lives paralleled those of the characters on stage. Princeton has just graduated from college with an unmarketable BA in English. Kate can't find a job to fulfill her teaching ambitions. Gary Coleman peaked at fifteen and is now a building superintendent. Today these characters can be any one of the 99 % that make up our nation.
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Love at a Distance by Kaija Saariaho Front Page
Heralded Across the Continent, So So at the Met Opera
By: - Dec 22nd, 2016An important opera by a major composer is set well at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The Met Orchestra under Susanna Mälkki was magnificent. The orchestral score is one of beauty and terror, evoking the sea and the dangers of love. It is the story that provides an arc, and this production missed it entirely, leaving the experience flat.
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Babe at the New York Philharmonic Front Page
Nigel Westlake's Score Performed Live
By: - Dec 18th, 2016Babe is a tale about an unprejudiced soul and one we should surely take to heart. Children can learn to sing Jingle Bells with LaLaLa. Will one of the youngsters who was lucky enough to see the film with the NY Phil, one day fall in love with the Saint Saens Symphony and say, That’s Babe’s song?
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Erik Satie, 150 Years Young Front Page
The Sheen Center Celebrates
By: - Dec 14th, 2016Satie is the Paul Klee of composers. The lines may be thin, but they pack weight and feeling. They seem to dance. Louis Durey of Les Six would write that Satie's unique clarity, his horror of hackneyed ways , his love of discovery and risk led to his gleaming contributions to music. According to John Cage, Satie helped break down the barrier between art and life.
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Mark Morris Cracks the Nut Front Page
Christmas Traditions Celebrated at BAM
By: - Dec 11th, 2016Mark Morris' The Hard Nut is a Christmas tradition at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It is easy to see why. Morris is true to E.T. A. Hofman's story and also the Tchaikovsky score. Bringing smiles to the audience, punctuated by fear, delight and humor Morris's Nut is terrific.
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Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito Front Page
Bedroom Drama in the Coliseum at MMS Opera Theater
By: - Dec 09th, 2016Mozart's final opera was written in 18 days to celebrate the coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia. While it is often said that the opera is political, the hearts and minds of top political figures are central. It is hard to be evil. It is easier to be good if you have honest people around you. Simple, deep words are embedded in some of the most gorgeous music ever written. The Manhattan School of Music Opera Theater gives Mozart his full due.
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Isaac Mizrahi Narrates Peter and the Wolf Front Page
John Heginbotham and Ensemble Signal Are Icing
By: - Dec 05th, 2016Of course the costumes are terrific. Isaac Mizrahi, narrator and imaginer of this production, is a top flight designer. Each animal and human has a few eyecatching details. Prokofiev is always fabulous. All the elements come together in the Guggenheim's Works and Process Christmas celebration.
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yMusic Arrives at Carnegie Front Page
Unusual Instrumental Mix Triumphs
By: - Dec 03rd, 2016If there is an argument for YouTube and the ever-expanding internet, it is made by this group of superb young musicians, classically-trained, impeccable artists who are open to anything.
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Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra at Carnegie Front Page
Semyon Bychkov Takes Us Beyond Words
By: - Dec 02nd, 2016A twenty-five note chord indeed. But that’s how Detlov Glanert starts his composition Theatrum Bestiarum. The singing of a thousand birds, the howling of the storm, the lapping of waves and the crackling of the fire. We are in the midst of musical feeling at Carnegie Hall as Glanert crashes around us and Mahler follows. A thrilling evening of brass and drums.
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