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Zankel Hall; Carnegie Hall, NY; October 23, 2007 Text and music shared equal billing Tuesday evening at Carnegie Hall’s subterranean Zankel Hall, as music by Arvo Pärt and Philip Glass performed by the Takács Quartet found itself interspersed with readings from Philip Roth’s recent novella Everyman, performed by Academy Award–winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. The […]

Carnegie Hall, New York, N.Y.; October 20, 2005 When witnessing pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s myriad musical qualities in action, the most striking is remarkable for its absence: the stamp of the pianist himself. Aimard’s playing, while replete with confidence and finesse, manages always to serve the music rather than the ego. His daring rubato in the […]

Avery Fisher Hall, New York, January 16, 2002–Thomas Hampson’s illness, which caused him to pull out of this New York Philharmonic performance of John Adams’ The Wound Dresser, adds to the sadly growing list of canceled performances of the composer’s work, which include a production of his oratorio El Niño and a BSO performance of […]

Carnegie Hall, New York: January 15, 2002–A concert of Schubert, Schoenberg and Mahler by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra last Tuesday began almost 20 minutes late, as audience members were forced to submit to the kind of body and baggage scanning usually reserved for airline passengers. But the wait and the extra-heavy security measures were worth […]

AVERY FISHER HALL: JANUARY 9, 2002–Vladimir Ashkenazy and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra brought the long-delayed Rachmaninov series at Avery Fisher Hall to a close with two of the composer’s better-known works: the grandiose Third Piano Concerto, and the Symphonic Dances. The sense of occasion was palpable, as this three-day retrospective was sadly postponed because of the […]