Victor Goldberg, piano

Victor Goldberg, piano
Pro Musicis
Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY
April 21, 2010

Victor Goldberg is an excellent pianist with a formidable technique, a powerful tone, and a romantic soul (and a distracting habit of tossing his hands way up). Russian-born, he has studied, performed and won competitions in Europe, Israel and America, and is the recipient of the 2008 Pro Musicis International Award.

His Weill Recital Hall concert, rather enigmatically entitled “From the Depths of the Creative Spirit,” showed his pianistic strengths, emotional projection, and stylistic versatility. Except for Domenico Scarlatti’s famous E major Sonata – played with filigree delicacy, crystal-clear runs and elegant leaps – the program featured music of the 19th and 20th centuries. The beginning of Chopin’s B-flat minor Scherzo immediately demonstrated that Goldberg subscribes to a key element of today’s performing style: utmost dynamic contrast. The opening figure’s ominous whisper and the crashing chords following it seemed to skirt the outer limits of the instrument’s sound, a tendency toward extremes that continued throughout the concert. But within these parameters, Mr. Goldberg has a wide range of nuances and colors, which he used with great skill and imagination.

Shostakovich wrote his second Sonata in 1942 during Hitler’s infamous siege of Leningrad that claimed 632,000 lives. One of the victims was Shostakovich’s teacher Leonid Nikolaev, to whose memory the sonata is dedicated. The Shostakovich family had been evacuated from the besieged city, but, though composed in the comparative safety of the countryside, the sonata has an eerie, unsettled quality and a desolate ending; Mr. Goldberg’s intensely expressive performance had a powerful emotional impact.

The program’s highlight was Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Handel, one of the most daunting masterpieces of the repertoire. Goldberg met its instrumental and musical challenges with masterful technical and tonal command. Combining careful planning with spontaneity, austerity with romantic passion, he made the variations building blocks in an overarching structure, yet he also brought out their individual characters, using the repeats to underline different voices. With the final fugue as a true culmination, it was a most impressive performance. Responding to the audience’s enthusiasm, he played encores by Debussy, Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky.

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by Edith Eisler  for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

Daniel Cho, violin

Daniel Cho, violin
Sunglee Victoria Choi, piano
Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY
April 20, 2010

Daniel Cho

Daniel Cho played with a robust, confident sound at his New York recital debut, sponsored by the Korea Music Foundation; he displays a technique that is comparable to many top professionals today. Winner of the 2009 Great Mountains Music Festival Competition, he studies with Hyo Kang in Juilliard’s Pre-College Division. His technical prowess was exemplary in Wieniawski’s Fantaisie brillante on Themes from Gounod’s Faust; his up-bow spiccato, harmonics, difficult leaps, pizzicato and tricky double-stops were all eye-opening.

Corelli’s Sonata in E Major, which was composed in the second half of the 17th century, required clearer, more elegant phrasing and Baroque-Period simplicity, but Seunghyun Yun’s Decalcomania: Lament, a contemplative work combining the overt nature of open strings and the more mysterious qualities of major sevenths and minor ninths, was beautifully played, and with much devotion by Mr. Cho.

In the Grieg Sonata, pianist Sunglee Victoria Choi made the most of every solo turn, and—when required—she played with a lovely, tender sound. Cho had his musical moments too, but he didn’t always make the most of his opportunities to change tone color (his vibrato, pressure of the bow, etc.) in contrasting sections. Here and in Chopin’s Nocturne in D Major, Op. 27 No. 2, he sometimes forgot to substitute genuine sweetness for passion. Still, there is absolutely no doubt that Cho has complete command of his instrument. In fact, his sound is so resonant and lush that he would have no problem projecting over a full orchestra in heavily scored works such as the Shostakovich and Bartok concerti. And he certainly would be heard from the top balcony of a large hall such as Carnegie’s Stern Auditorium; hopefully, he will play there one day.

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by Anthony Aibel  for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

Choral Chameleon

Choral Chameleon
Vince Peterson, Artistic Director
Sanctuary of the Fourth Universalist Society, New York, NY
April 18, 2010

Choral Chameleon is a nineteen-voice chamber chorus whose mission “is to engage listeners in a diverse and innovative musical experience through its integrative concert programming and education outreach.” Their early-evening concert was titled “Hymns for the Amusement of Children” and featured four works composed during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These works were integrated in that their texts all have a connection to childhood. The chorus produces a pleasant sound, especially beautiful in soft homophonic passages. But unlike the reptile for which they are named, throughout the concert the sound of Choral Chameleon never changed color. They do sing with fine intonation and are very comfortable performing complex rhythmic passages. Most importantly, artistic director Vince Peterson has the chorus shape the musical lines so that they all have forward thrust and an expressive musical profile.

The concert began with “Three Choral Settings from Alice in Wonderland” by Irving Fine (1914-1962). These works set the tone of the first half – often jazzy, easy to listen to. By the way, Mr. Peterson made his first entrance carrying a baton in one hand and a plastic water bottle in the other, something this viewer found to be quite undignified.

“Five Childhood Lyrics” by John Rutter (b.1945) followed. I especially enjoyed the first song, “Monday’s Child.” It was good to hear the chorus singing some slow, expressive, a cappella music. The first half ended with the work from which the concert took its title, “Hymns for the Amusement of Children” by Conrad Susa (b.1935.) In the next to the last song, “Undressing in the Evening,” we heard the best of the first half’s three soloists drawn from the chorus, baritone Andrew Cook-Feltz.

The second half featured the world premiere of the oratorio “Such Beautiful Things” by Jeffrey Parola (b.1979.) The skillful libretto by Tony Asaro was drawn from the Brothers Grimm’s “The Traveling Musicians.” This is a well constructed major work, almost an hour long. Of the four soloists, soprano Christina Borgioli made the strongest impression. She possesses a thrilling voice – well produced and beautiful in all parts of her range.

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by Harry Saltzman  for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

Yoonjung Han, piano

Yoonjung Han, piano
Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, New York, NY
April 16, 2010

Gold medalist at the 2008 World Piano Competition in Cincinnati, South Korean pianist Yoonjung Han recently presented her debut recital at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. A feeling of celebration and anticipation of the moment filled the auditorium. Having made her debut at the age of thirteen, Han is no stranger to the concert stage. She got right to business with a colorful and joyfully performed Haydn Sonata in E-flat Major, Hob. 52. After the light and giddy first movement, the audience erupted into applause. The Adagio was carefully planned out and balanced, though one might have wished for more spontaneity and abandon. The Presto Finale floated gracefully above ground and was received with a warm ovation.

Han seemed to truly enjoy herself during the Chopin Sonata, Op. 58. Although her sound was a bit timid at times, every harmony had a lovely inflection. This was most apparent in the third movement, which might have been a love duet in an opera Chopin never wrote. My favorite part of the program turned out to be the two selections from Granados’ “Goyescas” after the intermission— (and the gown change). “Los requirebros” (Flattery) was filled with both joy and the requisite flirtation. She showed understanding of multi-layered textures and an admirable sensitivity to the counterpoint and key structure, at the same time masterfully displaying the shimmering figurations. “El amor y la muerte” (Love and Death) was presented with drama, yearning, and passion. She now truly identified with the music and brought out the intensity I hoped for in the Chopin Sonata.

Han concluded the program with Schumann’s “Carnaval,” performed without most repeats. Many fast sections felt rushed, yet she managed to portray the festive character of this colorful ball. Overall, Han’s natural gift for melody and a charming stage presence made her recital a joy to hear.

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by Magdalena Baczewska  for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

Sebastyen Nyirö, piano

CD Review: New York Concert Review
Sebastyen Nyirö, piano
Bach’s Aria with Thirty Variations (Goldberg)
April, 2010

This unusual and, ultimately, compelling new recording of Bach’s transcendental Aria Mit Verschiedenen Verandergungen introduces us yet to another outstanding Hungarian pianist, Sebastyen NyirÖ, who was born in 1979. This may well be the broadest and longest performance of the Goldberg Variations ever. NyirÖ favors taking all the repeats (even those in the Aria da Capo which even the near-fanatical purist Claudio Arrau was even willing to forgo in his early 1940s RCA recording released posthumously on two CDs. Rosalyn Tureck, another famous (or notorious) advocate of repeats and slow tempos, likewise ran over onto two CDs in the Philips Great Pianists of the 20th Century reissue. Simone Dinnerstein, another champion of slow tempos, played all the repeats in her in-concert performance at Weill Recital Hall, but reluctantly condoned omitting a few of them in order to limit her commercial recording (a labor-of-love, later taken over by Telarc) to a single CD. Nyirö’s rendition runs to 85 minutes and fourteen seconds: CD no. 1, with the Aria and Variations 1 through 15 taking 40 minutes and 12 seconds; CD no. 2 beginning with the French Ouverture Variation 16 and ending with the Aria da capo runs 42 minutes; 14 seconds for the work’s conclusion.

Quite apart from repeats and deliberation, Nyirö’s ideas via embellishments are extreme and immediately evident. His account of the Aria is so profusely ornamented that this listener was momentarily at a loss for a few seconds to recognize the basic melody amidst the labyrinth of encrustations. One famous pianist, Wilhelm Kempff, made a recording of the Goldberg for D.G. and unconventionally opted to reduce and strip the tema to its bare skeletal bones (banishing even the minimal decorations that Bach’s original included in his notations). NyirÖ, one might say, is the anti-Kempff!

As the recreation unfolds, Nyirö gradually makes us aware of several important qualities: first, his extreme rigor and clarity of contrapuntal texture. In this respect, his interpretation even exceeds this aspect of Glenn Gould’s 1981 second recording (the first—from 1955—couldn’t be more different, with its remarkably fast tempos and the omission of many, if not all, repeats). Also, in similarity with a well known tradition favored by the conductor Otto Klemperer (of linking some variations together in a single mathematical metronomic pulse), Variation 18, for instance, is admittedly brisker than usual, but the next variation follows at exactly the same half speed tempo. The aforementioned rigor is expressed in severely accented (even martellato) rhythms. NyirÖ is remarkably potent in his handling of the French Ouverture Variation No. 16’s first introductory half, although I was admittedly perplexed by his extremely deliberate treatment of the ensuing second half (which I feel is too static, albeit vital and rhythmically steady).

In describing Glenn Gould’s basic style (not only in Bach), I once wrote about his combining “swooning sensuality with ecclesiastic rigor.” Some of this description might likewise apply to Nyirö’s Goldberg, but the rigor is more evident than the sensuality (though I find some of the pianist’s lavish rubatos “swooning” but never “sensual.”) It will, I admit, take numerous rehearings of this recording to accustom me to certain iconoclastic details, but at the moment, only three or four variations made me take umbrage: Variation 25, which Landowska poetically dubbed as “the Black Pearl”, seems to me more akin to a “Schwartze Maria”: rather tediously fragmented and funereal, and lacking requisite flow and lyricism. Variation 28, with its written- out trills (which may sometimes seem to offer a foretaste of the finale of Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata) is resolutely nailed to the mast. I found Variation 29 aggressively (even assaultively) splashy, and No. 30 could benefit from a touch of requisite levity and humor.

But, ultimately, one is forced to make an attempt to meet Mr.Nyirö on his own terms, pay respect to some technically wonderful pianism, and bow to his deeply motivated, honest experience and his musical thinking. I urge everyone to acknowledge Nyirö’s supreme talent and be tolerant of what may at first seem like off-putting eccentricity.

The recorded sound, incidentally, is vividly realistic.

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by Harris Goldsmith  for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

Junior Chamber Music

Junior Chamber Music
Presented by Distinguished Concerts International -New York, DCINY
Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY
April 11, 2010

From the west side of the United States to the west side of Manhattan, an impressive bunch of students from southern California, all part of an organization called Junior Chamber Music –founded and directed by Susan Boettger—performed extremely well-prepared, well-chosen music at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall. The concert was presented by Distinguished Concerts International New York.

One of the most impressive performances on the program was Schumann’s Piano Quintet (the last two movements)—not just for its ensemble excellence and finesse in notoriously tricky passages and transitions, but for all its musical insights. Individually, the students are quite young and inexperienced with this music—violinists Lucas Stratmann and Hao Zhao are middle school-aged, Iona Batchelder is a 6th grade cellist, and violist Amanda Lin and pianist Jessie Wang are high school freshman— but collectively, they had a rare unity of interpretation and sounded more professional than they probably knew they were capable. In the Scherzo, the many up-and-down scales—which can often sound tedious in student performances, were exquisitely shaped, and the second theme was tender, showing a mature contrast in tone quality and expression.

The Mendelssohn piano trios received plenty of exposure on the program—G. Theory and the Vision and NYC trios performed movements admirably—with pianist Weston Mizumoto a standout for his excellent finger work in the D minor’s technically demanding first movement. Two other favorites of the repertoire, the Brahms Opus 8 and the Arensky were also excellent choices and given passionate performances by the Brahms and Angeles Trios. Despite small intonation lapses and some ordinary phrasing, Trio con Lancio’s playing in Martinu’s excellent Sonata for Flute, Violin and Piano was solidly together throughout.

Swing Shift, by Kenji Bunch, was another highlight of the program. I can see why the inventive 4th and 6th movements were selected for this group. Violinist Paya Sarraf, cellist Alec Hon and pianist Primitivo Cervantes reveled in the music’s Rock-Minimalistic beats, and the audience was swinging along with them. Excellent ensemble-playing and some intonation difficulties permeated the CalDuo performance of Duos for Flute and Clarinet by Robert Muczynski, and Jack McFadden-Talbot’s Concern, in its world premiere, was—considering an older, more experienced group at hand— overly simple in its use of rhythm and counterpoint. The mezzo Hannah McDermott is a wonderful talent with a lovely, expressive voice; she was teamed-up with flutist Taylor Weary and pianist Leslie Wu for a very fine performance of three songs from Deepest Desire by Jake Heggie.

The chemistry was palpable between violinist Judith Yu and cellist Allan Hon in the Tchaikovsky Piano Trio in A minor (Variation movement); their physical gestures, vibrato, and bow strokes were always matching. They exuded a lush, professionally robust string sound and a finely-tuned sense of pitch. Renee Yang did an excellent job with the technical demands of the piano part, although she needs some more variety in her phrasing and dynamics. The group’s overall performance was engaging and polished, with well-timed transitions of tempo. Junior Chamber Music and all the ensembles on this program should be very proud of what they are accomplishing.

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by Anthony Aibel  for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

The Madison String Quartet

The Madison String Quartet
Musica de Camara
Museum of the City of New York, NY
April 11, 2010

Founded and directed by Eva de La O, Musica de Camara has been presenting Hispanic musicians for 30 years in concert halls, community centers, churches, libraries and museums—often for audiences with little access to classical music. One of its recent discoveries is the Madison String Quartet, an adventurous, enthusiastic young group dedicated to exploring the Hispanic literature, for whose idiomatic rhythms and colors the players have a natural affinity. The performance, apart from some intonation problems in octaves and unisons, was admirable: secure, well-balanced, expressive, homogeneous in sound, unanimous in spirit.

In a quartet arrangement of Four for Tango by Astor Piazzolla, the players exploited all the resources of their instruments, including harmonics, slides, and knocking on the wood to imitate percussion. Teresa Carreno was born in Venezuela but spent most of her life in France and Germany. One of the first great women pianists and famous as a formidable virtuoso, she was also a conductor, singer and composer. Her String Quartet in B minor was written in the 1870’s during her marriage to the first of her four husbands, the violinist Emile Sauret. A substantial, four-movement work, it is clearly influenced by German romanticism; the Scherzo recalls Mendelssohn, the slow movement sings, the corner movements are fast, intense and turbulent. Its weakness lies in the modulations, that ultimate test of compositional skill. All four parts have demanding solos, which the players negotiated with panache.

The program’s most unusual work, which the Quartet recorded in 2004, was Miguel del Aguila’s Life is a Dream, inspired by Caldéron de la Barca’s play of the same title, La vida es sueno. It opened with three players on stage producing eerie-sounding tremolos with their bows behind the bridge; the first violinist, heard off-stage playing very virtuosic music, eventually joined them. All four musicians took turns reciting portions of Caldéron’s poem while playing; the music built to an intense climax, recapitulated the spooky beginning and faded away. The poetry and the music are arresting enough to stand alone; they did not seem to add anything to each other.

The audience demanded and got an encore: Aldemoro Romero’s Fuga con Pajarillo, Variations on a popular Venezuelan folksong. A fun piece, it began like a Bach Contrapunctus and became an intricate maze of multi-layered rhythms.

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by Edith Eisler  for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

Mana Takuno, piano

Mana Takuno, piano
Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY
April 10, 2010

Mana Takuno’s excellent performance of an early, rarely heard 1901 work by George Enescu, his Suite No.2 in D Major, Op. 10, delighted me at a May 8, 2008 concert—(see review in Volume 15, No.3 of this journal) , and it made me want to hear more of her playing. I wrote that her exciting interpretation, with its “drive, virtuosity, textual and coloristic diversity”, stole the show from three other young pianists who shared the same concert with her. Ms. Takuno and her program of Poulenc, Thomas Oboe Lee, Beethoven and Schumann afforded me a more comprehensive “fix” on her achievement and pianistic capabilities.

Ms. Takuno commenced with Theme Varie, which I believe was Francis Poulenc’s last work for solo piano. From the outset, the pianist captivated me with a warm, firm, beautifully balanced singing tone, and was alive to every intriguing turn of Poulenc’s whimsy. The second item was Thomas Oboe Lee’s 2009 Takuno Toccata, which was labeled a world premiere (it had been previewed in Boston a few weeks earlier on March 30th.) The work is skillfully written, and Ms. Takuno, the dedicatee, obviously found the Toccata tailor-made for her abilities and musical persona.

Alas, it pains me to relate that Ms. Takuno’s recital, after its auspicious beginning, turned out to be a surprisingly Jekyll and Hyde affair: Beethoven’s Sonata No. 28 in A, Op. 101 began wanly, and then promptly came with memory slips from which she never really recovered. The second movement March was too fast (for her comfort) and rhythmically and technically out of control. The poignant Largo-molto cantabile lacked concentration and intensity, and the Presto Finale was slipshod and lumpy. I will concede that this late-Beethoven Sonata is a tough nut for any young artist to crack, but I was a bit shocked that a player who I had believed to be as experienced and accomplished as Ms. Takuno would have been so technically over-extended and out of her element.

I was even more saddened by her inadequate performance of Schumann’s sublime Davidsbundler Tanze, Op. 6, a work which I had hoped would prove entirely congenial for an artist with an inclination to heartfelt Romanticism. Her version was to be sure “serious”, but it was also “boring”, as her tempos were prevailingly slow and heavy. Admittedly, I much favor Schumann’s earlier first version of the composition. The revised version, which Ms. Takuno validly preferred, burdens the attractive impetuosity and asymmetry with many portentous repeats, and furthermore expunges a few delectable details such as the held over note on the very first phrase and the delicious little pat on the backside at the end of No. 9. But the real problem with Ms. Takuno’s rendition was its technically labored pianistic deficiency (No. 13 was not so much Wild und lustig as muddled and desperate.)The virtuosity I had admired deserted her.

An encore, the Promenade penultimate movement from Schumann’s Carnaval, Op. 9 gave us more of the same, but, fortunately, a second encore—which I am told was part of Thomas Oboe Lee’s 20-9 Fireflies Book III, “Like a Music Box”—let us glimpse anew at the tonal beauty and refinement that had delighted me in Ms. Takuno’s playing in the early stages of her program.

My conclusion is that she is certainly gifted but also a “work in progress.”

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by Harris Goldsmith  for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

Temple University Symphony Orchestra

Temple University Symphony Orchestra
Louis Biava, conductor;
Terell Stafford, trumpet
Alice Tully Hall, New York, NY
April 9, 2010


This concert “celebrated the American creative spirit” by combining photography and music. The program featured the “three B’s” American style – Barber, Bernstein, and Brubeck (Dave and his son Chris) – and included two New York premieres: the Brubecks’ “Ansel Adams: America,” and Bill Cunliffe’s fourth stream… La Banda (The Band). Composers Dave Brubeck and Bill Cunliffe were present, as were several members of Adams’ family.

The program’s only non-jazz work was Samuel Barber’s 1942 Essay No. 2, three continuous movements, the first slow and stately, the second an energetic fugue, and the third a “solemn chorale.” In Leonard Bernstein’s own symphonic arrangement of the Three Dances from his “On the Town,” the orchestra admirably captured the nostalgia of the middle section and the vibrant liveliness of the outer dance movements.

The program’s centerpiece was “Ansel Adams: America,” the Brubecks’ collaborative work written to accompany a projection on screen of Adams’ photographs of the American West. The concept was inspired by the composers’ discovery that Adams intended to become a concert pianist until, overwhelmed by the scenic beauty of Yosemite, he turned to photography instead. At the concert, the orchestra performed the music while Adams’ photographic images were displayed on a huge screen behind it. Proceeding without pause or interruption, this visual and auditory experience created a riveting cumulative impact. However, concentrating on both eventually became difficult; and, since each element was absorbing and beautiful enough to stand on its own, one began to wonder whether the simultaneity acted as an enhancement or a distraction.

Bill Cunliffe cites as his inspiration John Lewis and the Modern Jazz Quartet as well as the distinctive rhythms of Latin music. For his La Banda, a jazz band with a large percussion section was added to the orchestra; the players were splendid, but so enthusiastic that they obliterated virtually everything else. Trumpeter Terell Stafford was fine but also had only one dynamic: fortissimo. The orchestra, apart from some doubtful intonation in the winds, was excellent throughout. Maestro Luis Biava was at home in every style and in full command of his forces. The audience was extremely responsive, but included a large group of friends whose behavior was more suitable to a private party than a public cultural event.

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by Edith Eisler  for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

Peter Fletcher, guitar

Peter Fletcher, guitar
Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY
March 27, 2010

Peter Fletcher’s loyal followers at Weill Recital Hall were treated to a program of classical guitar music that ran the gamut from Paduana, by Baroque lute music pioneer Esaias Reusner, to the haunting and ethereal Prelude and Ritual from David Leisner’s Four Pieces. Fletcher began the evening with three crowd-pleasing transcriptions: Handel’s Sarabande and Variations, Bach’s Prelude No.1 from Book 1 of The Well Tempered Clavier, and Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring (a Foster transcription).

The highlight of the evening was Fletcher’s clever transcription of Erik Satie’s Sports and Divertissements. This set of fifteen of the twenty ephemeral, witty pieces was originally conceived as a multimedia project for music, with sketches by Charles Martin—of which some illustrations were printed in the program—and narration by Daniel Brondel, who gave an equally witty demonstration of each of Satie’s poetic commentaries. Colin-Maillard (or Blindman’s Bluff) particularly demonstrated the wide range of his personal vocabulary, which is unique in his transcriptions, and the same can be said of his transcriptions of Issac Albeniz’s Sevilla and Leopold Weiss’ Passacaglia.

In the program notes, Fletcher attributes the cumbersome quality of Bach’s Lute Suite in E minor to his lack of lute skills and reminds the audience that the score does not specify lute as the instrument for which it is written. Though Fletcher’s overall interpretation of the suite was very moving, he illustrated the aforementioned technical awkwardness by rushing through the end of the Gigue. He also performed, with some difficulty, his own transcription of Ravel’s Empress of the Pagodas from the Mother Goose Suite, though his arrangement of this and the Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty were strikingly clever. He did, however, give absolutely seamless performances of Villa-Lobos’ Gavotta-Choro and Carlo Domeniconi’s koyunbaba, (Turkish for “sheep-father”), which was particularly impressive due to the re-tuning of his guitar.

Throughout the program, Fletcher created an air of comfort in his musical presentation: his choice to address the audience in between movements, and his relaxed attire transformed the regal Weill Hall into his own living room, where the audience was made to feel very welcome.

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by Anthony Aibel  for New York Concert Review; New York, NY