New York Classical Review

11/07/2025

Matthew Aucoin fails to put last things first effectively in the New York premiere of "Music for New Bodies" at the Run AMOC* Festival.

The ongoing Run AMOC* Festival at Lincoln Center brought out one of its major productions Thursday night, the world premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s Music for New Bodies. This is a headline event in David Geffen Hall, with Aucoin conducting and Peter Sellars directing this work, which has a libretto ...

10/07/2025

In the first of two Gabriel Fauré programs this week, Joshua Bell, Jeremy Denk and Steven Isserlis showed Fauré a chamber composer pour toutes les saisons.

Characterizing Gabriel Fauré’s attractive yet elusive chamber music in words is no easy matter, but the violinist and encyclopedist Arthur Cohn perhaps came closest when he wrote of “a poetic classicism as perfect in its way as Beethoven’s dramatic classicism.”

25/06/2025

On his exact 90th birthday, American iconoclast Terry Riley was feted with performances of a classic ("In C") and an evolving contemporary work ("The Holy Liftoff") Tuesday night in Brooklyn.

The temperature was still near 100 degrees outside when the celebration of Terry Riley’s 90ᵗʰ birthday began Tuesday night in Roulette. The spirit of the night was set when flutist Claire Chase greeted the packed house from the stage and, in case Riley was watching the livestream of the perform...

19/06/2025

North American sounds reverberated in and around each other in the Met Orchestra's season closer Wednesday night at Carnegie Hall.

https://newyorkclassicalreview.com/2025/06/north-american-sounds-reverberate-in-met-orchestras-season-closer/

19/06/2025

Opera worlds collided and a few survived with the American Modern Opera Company's "The Comet / Poppea" at Lincoln Center.

The big event at Lincoln Center this summer is the Run Amoc* festival, produced by the American Modern Opera Company. More than opera, the festival will cover instrumental performances and dance events, along with music theater. 

18/06/2025

Chopin winner William Yang displayed the art that conceals art Tuesday night at Carnegie Hall.

Pianist William Yang is the winner of this year’s National Chopin Competition, an event founded by the Chopin Foundation of the United States that’s been held every five years since 1975. Garnering that top prize means Yang is headed to the International Chopin Piano Competition this fall, as as...

18/06/2025

Karine Poghosyan celebrated the piano music of Aram Khachaturian last week.

Pianist Kariné Poghosyan’s concise all-Khachaturian program in Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall Tuesday night—an hour and a quarter with no intermission—drew a vivid profile of the Tbilisi-born composer whose infectious rhythms, exotic Armenian harmonies and persistent optimism helped him (mos...

07/06/2025

Leon Botstein, with the A*O and a fine cast, excavated buried treasure with a performance of Richard Strauss's first opera, "Guntram" Friday night at Carnegie Hall.

Guntram, Richard Strauss’s first opera, didn’t bomb when it premiered in Weimar in 1894. That happened with the second performance in Munich when the orchestra dubbed the opera a “scourge of God.” Strauss would refer to it as his “child of sorrow.”

06/06/2025

Zerious Zemlinsky opera needs a touch of the Wilde.

The Little Opera Theatre of New York has a curious production titled Zemlinsky’s Zimmer/Zemlinsky’s Room, which opened Thursday night at BAM Fisher and runs through the weekend. 

06/06/2025

An evening of color, brilliance and virtuosity from the Teatro Real Orchestra Thursday night at Carnegie Hall.

Concerts by the Orchestra of Madrid’s Teatro Real are becoming regular events in New York. The orchestra’s appearance on Thursday evening at Carnegie Hall marked its third performance here since 2022.

30/05/2025

Gustavo Dudamel’s distinctive season-closing Mahler Seventh bridges the New York Philharmonic‘s past and future.

For the past four seasons, the New York Philharmonic has been in a kind of limbo. The orchestra has played well—extremely so this season—but with a parade of guest conductors until Gustavo Dudamel takes over as the new music director in the fall of 2026. Even with the high quality, there has bee...

29/05/2025

Evgeny Kissin and friends explored Shostakovich‘s sonatas Wednesday night in his Carnegie Hall series devoted to the composer’s music.

At Carnegie Hall, the month of May is coming to a close with Shostakovich and Evgeny Kissin. The pianist is leading a series of concerts of the composer’s music. The second one, Wednesday night, was dedicated to the instrumental sonatas for cello, violin, and viola.