Susan Hall
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Recent Articles:
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Ivan Fischer Conducts New York Philharmonic Front Page
Musical Chairs Play Beethoven and Dvorak
By: - Nov 27th, 2016Conductor Iván Fischer led the New York Philharmonic in a startling program, not because Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D Major or Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony in G Major are unfamiliar. Yet they sounded particularly new and fresh in this performance. Fischer characteristically releases phrases in a swell and dares to experiment with dynamic extremes, particularly in the Beethoven, where both the soloist and the orchestra often whisper.
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Jonathan Dove's Flight at Juilliard Front Page
Operatic Enchantments Fly
By: - Nov 21st, 2016Jonathan Dove's Flight is given a near perfect mounting this fall at the Juilliard School. Juilliard's neighbor across the way could take a page on opera production from the young artists whose talent and sensibility bodes well for the future of the opera form.
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The Servant of Two Masters Front Page
At Brooklyn's Theatre for a New Audience
By: - Nov 20th, 2016The Polonsky Shakespeare Center mounts a charming production of Carlo Goldoni's famous play. Improvisation abounds. You'll hear about Flatbush and election night mares.
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William Kentridge's Return of Ulysses Front Page
The Father of Opera Celebrated
By: - Nov 17th, 2016Claudio Monteverdi is considered the first major composer of an opera. The richness of his talent is on abundant display in William Kentridge’s direction of The Return of Ulysses.
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Eastman Philharmonia at Alice Tully Hall Front Page
Renée Fleming Sings Kevin Puts
By: - Nov 16th, 2016The Eastman Philharmonia under the brilliant Neil Varon, performed Maurice Ravel, Kevin Puts and Serge Prokofiev at Alice Tully Hall.
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Venetian Coronation at Lincoln Center Front Page
Gabriele Conducted By Paul McCreesh
By: - Nov 13th, 2016For a Venetian Coronation, the golden wood of Alice Tully Hall is lit around the stage by floor floodlights cast upwards. The 1595 Coronation ritual inducted Marino Grimani who would rule until his death in 1605. The Baroque style of the performance was delivered with clarity and beauty Challenges in playing period instruments with fewer vents and using the high larynx to produce tones of exquisite beauty were not apparent in the formal but easy movements of the groups.
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Finian's Rainbow Arcs Over New York Front Page
Irish Repertory Mounts Charming Production
By: - Nov 11th, 2016FInian's Rainbow was first produced in 1947, but the tough issues it raises are very contemporary. In Southern United States blacks and whites live comfortably, but are challenged by land grabs, Sears Roebuck salesmen and a Senator ripe for conversion.
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White Lights Festival Presents All That Fall Front Page
Beckett's Radio Drama Re-imagined
By: - Nov 10th, 2016The brilliance of Samuel Beckett is captured by the Pan Pan Theatre Company of Dublin. Beckett's magical words never had more music and humor. The irony of death's grip is fully evoked in our mind's eye as we sit in rocking chairs, imagining figures. Beckett is laugh-inside funny, his words ricocheting around the room.
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Carnegie Hall's Invites Music in the Resnick Center Front Page
Developing Performers and Listeners Alike
By: - Nov 08th, 2016Carnegie Hall programs explore an individual's musicality. For those who are born with the musical gene, their basic instincts are led out into the beat and the song. For those who do not have the gene, music is brought inside and listeners made.
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Xian Zhang, Maestra of the New Jersey Symphony Front Page
Handel, Beethoven and Strauss at the Bergen PAC
By: - Nov 04th, 2016The New Jersey Symphony tours the state, winter, summer and fall. Starting her inaugural season as Music Director, Xian Zhang was welcomed enthusiastically by residents of Englewood.
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Carnegie Celebrates Steve Reich's 80th Birthday Front Page
To Defy God or Not is the Big Question
By: - Nov 02nd, 2016The year long birthday celebration for Steve Reich, our country's foremost composer, continues. At Carnegie Hall, we heard a Quartet from 2013 and the world premier of Pulse with the International Contemporary Ensemble. The evening was capped by Three Tales, a collaboration between Reich and his wife, Beryl Korot, a video artist. While Reich appears to be fit as a fiddle, these tributes to his decades might better be annual for all the pleasure they offer.
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Richard Tucker Gala at Carnegie Hall Front Page
Opera's All Stars Gather
By: - Oct 31st, 2016The Richard Tucker Gala began about forty years ago to celebrate the career of a tenor who made his mark around the world, moving from Synagogue to opera stage and back. Today, the annual prize is awarded to deserving young talent who often end at the top of the opera world. Tonight's awardee, Tamara Wilson, shows all the promise of a huge career.
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Babel from the White Lights Festival Dance
Cacaphony of Words, Dance and Music
By: - Oct 28th, 2016The impact of the Tower of Babel is immediately felt in the silence of the Rose Theater. Watching steel frames in the shapes of cubes and rectangles built up and toppled on stage, seeing people trapped by them and also liberated graphically, drives home our divided world and the need for human unification. These structures both divide and unite. There is hope.
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Kallor Opera, The Tell Tale Heart Front Page
Tales from the Crypt
By: - Oct 27th, 2016The ironic title of the website for the presentations at the Crypt of the Chutch of the Intercession in New York is 'death of classical.' Surely if classical music is to survive during the 21st century it will be in performances that are taken out to its audience in venues which are unique and intimate. Andrew Ousley, who conceived the Crypt Sessions, has a deep sense of what works in the venue, buried in the beautiful arches of a church in New York. The Tell Tale Heart was his Halloween, or perhaps All Saints Day, offering.
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Ian Bostridge, Thomas Adès, Winterreise Front Page
Schubert Set in Carnegie Hall
By: - Oct 24th, 2016Ian Bostridge not only admits that he has been obsessed for years by Winterreise, but he has written a superb book on the piece and obsession. The wonderful tenor has so absorbed the music and poetry that he seems to step behind the performance and let this remarkable work shine. Thomas Adès constantly reveals Schubert at the piano.
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Lincoln Center Presents Miwa Matreyek Front Page
Animation and Performance Flow
By: - Oct 22nd, 2016Enchantment. Provocation. Rapture by enrapping. The animator Miwa Matreyek performs as a shadow silhouette in two pieces, one that suggests that beauty of the quotidian, and the other which puts us inside human evolution through geologic time from the Big Bang. You are swept into her vision.
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Master Voices Presents "27" Front Page
Ricky Ian Gordon's Opera Stars Stephanie Blythe as Gertrude Stein
By: - Oct 21st, 2016The Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibit on 27 Rue de Fleurus, the Gertrude Stein/ Alice B. Toklas salon frequented by Picasso, Matisse, Man Ray, and others, largely consisted of blown up black and white photos. In every way, the Master Voices production colors these lives. In addition to the sublime presence of Stephanie Blythe as Gertrude, Heidi Stober and Theo Lebow thrilled.
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Brahms' Human Requiem Front Page
White Lights Festival
By: - Oct 16th, 2016Can listeners experience music as their own, an inside experience enjoyed by performers? Yes, in the extraordinary productioin conceived by Jochen Sanig and brought to life by the Rundfunkchor Berlin under Simon Halsey assisted by Nicolas Fink. The setting was Synod House at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Brahms' Requiem was the experience.
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Roundabout Presents The Cherry Orchard Front Page
Diane Lane, Joel Grey, John Glover, Chuck Cooper
By: - Oct 16th, 2016The Cherry Orchard was Anton Chevkov’s last play. He drew a picture of an old Russian family at the end of their run, their beloved cherry orchard and the hundreds of acres that it fills will be auctioned in August to pay the debts of Liuboff Andreievna Raneyskaya. Liuboff, the role originally created by Chekhov’s wife, is now enlivened by Diane Lane in her return to the New York stage. Lane’s first Broadway appearance was in The Cherry Orchard decades ago.
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Sir Simon Rattle and Mahler at Carnegie Hall Front Page
The Philadelphia In Magnificent Form
By: - Oct 12th, 2016Sir Simon Rattle, the great conductor of the Berliner Philharmonika, joined forces with an A list orchestra, the Philadelphia, to perform Gustav Mahler's Sixth Symphony. In an interview Rattle says, Mahler "was my road to Damascus moment. This is something that has lived with me all my life. And it is something that will never stop being a challenge and a discovery."
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Ryan Thorn and Andrew Sun at Carnegie Hall Front Page
Marilyn Horne Makes the Case for Song
By: - Oct 09th, 2016How fortunate we are to have class Ambassadors for the new crop of musical talent. Both Ryan Thorn, baritone, and Andrew Sun, pianist, have participated at Marilyn Horne's Santa Barbara school and in its competition. Horne stepped to the front of the altar at a church on the upper West Side of Manhattan and made the case for the importance of Song, from Solomon to Richard Rogers.
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Joe Sutton's Brilliant Orwell in America Front Page
At 59E59th Street Theater
By: - Oct 09th, 2016Playwright Joe Sutton creates George Orwell twisting moment to moment. Jamie Horton is magnificent in the wrenching role. Orwell’s discomfort, his loneliness, his humor and passion are all developed before us in language that is very much the author’s. Director Peter Hackett brings off this complicated character in an enormously engaging piece.
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Simon Bolivar Orchestra at Carnegie Hall Front Page
Gustavo Dudamel Sets the Hall A-Buzz
By: - Oct 08th, 2016Gustavo Dudalmel went from the street to El Sistema with a music program for poor kids in Venezuela. Over time, the role of music in society has become ever more important and consuming for him. He mission is comparable only to Riccardo Muti's.
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New Victory's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Front Page
Captain Nemo Makes His Case
By: - Oct 03rd, 2016The New Victory uses every imaginable tool to go to the depths of the ocean in a 19th century submarine. Jules Verne tells his story with present references to the throttling of the sea by plastic and a case for democratic leadership.
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On Site Opera with Argento and Berlioz Front Page
Stanford White's Harmonie Club Ballroom is the Setting
By: - Oct 02nd, 2016While huge opera houses are the dinosaurs of the 21st century, smaller venues for the presentation of the original multi-media art form are thriving. Opera is alive and well in every nook and corner of the world. Even in grand ballrooms of exclusive Manhattan Clubs like the Harmonie.
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