Conrad Tao is a pianist and composer, 18 years old. His bio tells us that he is “Chinese-American.” It also tells us he was born in Illinois, and I can tell you that he seems as American as apple pie. But we live in an age of relentless hyphenation.

He played a program at Le Poisson Rouge, the Greenwich Village nightclub. Classical music wants nothing more than to be cool, and its attempts to be cool are awkward. Yet Le Poisson Rouge provides a nice venue, clattering plates and all. Furthermore, Tao’s program was broadcast over Sirius radio.

Conrad Tao

The young man gave us the contents of his new CD, Voyages. The program, like the CD, began with a piece by Meredith Monk, not to be confused with Thelonious Monk. This was “Railroad (Travel Song),” pleasantly driving. Even among the clattering plates, Tao made it semi-hypnotic. He has a finely tuned internal motor.
Next, he played a group of preludes by Rachmaninoff. I got the feeling that the piano was a poor one. Tao’s sound was dry, and colors were too few. Some lines that ought to be singing did not sing.
But Tao’s musicianship was clear. You could quarrel with him, interpretively. I happen to like the G-major prelude relatively straight, whereas Tao was quite liberal with tempo. Nevertheless, he was musical. The C-minor prelude, he ended with glorious thunder. And the B-flat prelude was bold and hammering.
Tao has an interesting technique. It appears to be homemade, rather than textbook. The pianist looks tight, hindered. To use a baseball term, it looks like he “jams himself.” But he can play anything, with no hindrance at all.
The highlight of the program was his own work, vestiges. (As I’ve written many times, lowercase letters are de rigueur in today’s music.) There are four movements in this work. The first is Impressionistic, Debussyan. The second is a perpetual-motion exercise, reminding me of a Prokofiev toccata. The next called to mind Mompou—perhaps one of his Impresiones íntimas. The final one is Reichian, minimalistic, in the beginning. Then it becomes rhapsodic, Impressionistically rhapsodic, in the mold of L’Isle joyeuse (Debussy).
I have done the lazy thing of comparing new music to preceding music. But Tao’s pieces are not imitative, they are his own, and they are beautiful and intelligent. I would be pleased to see them on any other pianist’s program. They are more than one pianist’s private scribbles.
At this point, Tao sat down with a man from Sirius radio for an interview. He, Tao, used such phrases as “socio-cultural narratives.” I didn’t understand him. But I did understand his playing of Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit, one of the hardest pieces, technically, in all the repertoire: He played it easily and convincingly.
He ended the evening with another of his own pieces, iridescence, for piano and iPad. It is sweet and pretty. The pianist taps a bit on the wood of the piano. It was maybe a little too psychedelic for me, but the piece is far from stupid.
This month, from the 11th through the 13th, Tao will host his own festival in Brooklyn, the Unplay Festival. About Chopin, Schumann famously said, “Hats off, gentlemen, a genius.” I don’t know whether Tao is a genius. It depends on our standards for that category. But I know that he is extraordinary, and that our hats should be off.

From May 6 to May 11, Carnegie Hall will present a festival called “Spring for Music.” It offers five orchestras in six concerts. The orchestras come from around the country, and one of them was to have been the Oregon Symphony. The Oregonians found themselves short on cash, however, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) will play two concerts (May 9 and 10).

The first DSO concert consists of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Kurt Weill and Maurice Ravel. The second one is devoted to Charles Ives—his four symphonies. The concerts are conducted by the DSO’s music director, Leonard Slatkin.

Leonard Slatkin

I say to him, in a phone conversation, “I’m glad to be hearing Ives. But it’s a shame not to hear Walter Piston—he’s never played.” Slatkin informs me that he himself conducts Piston. But it’s true: The mid-century Americans are largely ignored. Music follows fashion, and Piston, William Schuman, Peter Mennin and the rest of those guys are out of fashion. A young conductor, says Slatkin, should make a project out of reviving them.

A young woman named Caroline Shaw has just won the Pulitzer Prize, notes Slatkin. She does not call herself a composer, interestingly enough. But performers will naturally want to perform what music she has written, or will write. What they’re unlikely to do, says Slatkin, is unearth, say, the Seventh Symphony of Roy Harris. (That composer’s Third was once well-known, but has faded from the repertoire.)

Slatkin grew up in Los Angeles, the son of a famous musician: Felix Slatkin, the violinist, conductor, arranger and so on. In and out of the house trooped even more famous musicians: Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky, yes, but also Art Tatum, the jazz pianist, and Frank Sinatra. Felix Slatkin died in 1963, when he was only 47. Leonard was 19.

He is now doing what his father wanted to do but did not live quite long enough to do: head an orchestra. His father wanted an orchestra of his own to conduct, somewhere. He was on the verge of getting one when he died. Leonard Slatkin has held many music directorships in his career. He started in Detroit five years ago.
The DSO has come through a rocky period. Before there was a national recession, there was a “one-state recession”: Michigan’s. The DSO was not immune. Then, toward the end of 2010, the musicians went on strike, for six months. The orchestra is now back on its feet, reformed and flexible.

The musicians took a pay cut—22 percent, on average. But they can earn more with optional work. The orchestra’s main home is still Orchestra Hall, downtown. But they are also out in the suburbs, in six different venues. Occasionally, the musicians break out into smaller ensembles, such as string quartets. “We don’t do flash mobs yet,” says Slatkin, “but that may come.”

Ticket prices have fallen, and ticket sales have increased. Also, concerts are streamed live on the Internet. “We are redefining the word ‘audience,’” says Slatkin. The webcasts are free of charge. Doesn’t this keep people from going to the concert hall? On the contrary, says Slatkin: The webcasts whet their appetite for the live-and-in-person experience.

The DSO is even developing an audience abroad, says Slatkin. “So, when the time comes to resume international touring, we have a head start. People not only know how we play, they know what we look like.”
You can buy all nine Beethoven symphonies from the DSO for a mere 20 bucks: They are downloadable. Slatkin figures we will have compact discs for another three or four years and then yield entirely to new technologies.
The DSO also has a number of programs designed to provide music education to young Detroiters—this used to be the job of families and schools. Slatkin himself enjoyed an excellent music education in the public schools he attended. He may have come from a spectacularly musical home, but “I cherished that hour when the music teacher came in with an autoharp.” Our society has changed, though, as we all know.

In short, the DSO has found a way to keep itself afloat, and moving forward. They are coping with the challenges of today, and also taking advantage of opportunities—such as the Internet. Slatkin is a particularly good ambassador for music. He is not only a fine conductor, he is one of the best talkers about music you’ll ever hear. He has some things in common with a conductor he much admired, Leonard Bernstein. And after all these years, he still loves music as much as ever.

“I have the best job in the world,” he says. “It is an honor and a privilege, as well as a responsibility.” He continues, “I stand in front of a hundred musicians and give a downbeat. To this day, I’m not 100 percent sure why that sound comes out”—the hard-to-beat sound of an orchestra.

When Gustavo Dudamel took the stage at Avery Fisher Hall, the crowd screamed and screamed. He is a “rock star,” as everyone says—a rock star of the classical scene. On this night, the Venezuelan conductor led his Los Angeles Philharmonic.
They opened with a piece by Claude Vivier, a Canadian who died in 1983, when he was only 34 years old. He was murdered by a prostitute he had met in a bar earlier that night. We heard Zipangu, a work for chamber orchestra, strings only. It is meant to have an Asian flavor.

Dmitri Hvorostovsky

The piece starts out scratchy and whiny, and remains that way for a long time. This is one of those bleakscapes. There is a drone, as in a bagpipe (not an aerial zapper). For a while, Zipangu threatens to be a parody of modernism. It builds interestingly toward the end, however, and concludes with an affirmative tonality: strong, unison E’s. Dudamel and the orchestra brought off the piece with admirable commitment.
Then came a canonical work, Debussy’s La Mer. The orchestra played very well. But the music did not quite sound like itself. It was a little blunt, a little loud, a little un-French. The third movement, “Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea,” was without its yearning and mystery.
After intermission, there was another canonical work, Stravinsky’s Firebird—not a mere suite, but the whole ballet. Again, the orchestra played very, very well. The L.A. Phil. is a slick band, with a nifty flute and a surefooted horn. (Surefooted horns are worth their weight in gold.) The music was kaleidoscopic, as it should be. But it was also, again, a little loud and blunt. The Firebird should be magical, spine-tingling, thrilling. In these hands, it was frankly a little dull.
But the crowd screamed afterward, which was nice: Classical music could use the commotion, people say.
Another night, another rock star—this one Dmitri Hvorostovsky, the Russian baritone, the “Siberian tiger,” as I have long called him. He gave a recital at Carnegie Hall. When he took the stage, it was with his usual mixture of swagger and strut. The crowd went wild. He flashed a smile—many smiles—and his lapels sparkled. There is some Vegas in Hvorostovsky.
On the first half of his program, he sang eleven Rachmaninoff songs, but not the most famous one—the one we know in English as “In the Silence of the Secret Night.” Hvorostovsky is a versatile singer. He is distinguished in Verdi roles, for example. But he is most at home in his native repertoire. The voice is alive, and the words fit his tongue. He gave no less than a clinic in how to sing Rachmaninoff.
His pianist, Ivari Ilja, was an equal partner. Rachmaninoff was maybe the greatest pianist of his day, and he does not scant the piano in his songs. I have often remarked on Ilja’s formal and endearing manner onstage. He is of the old school. On this night, the page-turner was a woman, and whenever the three of them left the stage—singer, pianist and page-turner—Ilja could not bear to precede her through the door.
The second half of the program consisted of songs from Petersburg, a collection by Georgy Sviridov (1915-98). Setting poems by Aleksandr Blok, the songs are smart, appealing and sometimes moving. Hvorostovsky sang them with soul, in addition to his technique and other gifts.
He has some fun with the audience as they scream for him. A lady approached the stage tentatively, with flowers. Hvorostovsky gestured to himself as if to say, “For me?”
His first encore was the Rachmaninoff song he had left out, the one we had perhaps been waiting for. It has a long, long, beautiful last line. Some singers take it with two breaths. Hvorostovsky took it with one, and he could probably have sung it twice, on that one breath—slowly. In a public interview with me some years ago, Renée Fleming said, “We think he has a third lung.”
He bade goodnight as he customarily does—with an unaccompanied Russian folk song. You can hardly help thinking, “Here is an authentic voice of Russia, rising right from the soil.”
It’s kind of easy to make fun of Hvorostovsky: the hair, the glam, the rock-star strut. But when all is said and done, and image is out the window, he is a great baritone, one of the best singers of our time.

In an early January column, I made some recommendations for the rest of the classical music season. I said that Lorin Maazel would be conducting Don Carlo at the Metropolitan Opera. Some performances were bound to be “great,” others could be “humdrum.” You had to “pick your night carefully.” As it happened, I picked a superb night.
You could complain about Maazel, and I will. Some tempos were sluggish. There was some classic Maazelian overmanagement, (particularly in the matter of ritards). The great tenor-baritone duet in Act II had some internal strength, but not enough external strength. It fell flat. And yet
Maazel knows his Verdi. He showed a sure sense of the architecture of the work. He paced wisely. He did not ask more of the music than warranted, at any point. He always had the entire opera in mind. He brought out huge tensions, and fascinatin’ rhythms. He imparted a little jazz, as he can to almost any score. Eboli’s first aria, the Veil Song, is often a nothing. Not from Maazel, who made it an exciting Spanish dance. He likes to dance—through his baton, and sometimes on a podium, literally. The meeting between King Philip and the Grand Inquisitor was riveting. Spellbinding.
For many years, Maazel-bashing has been a popular sport in this town. During Act III, a musician friend sitting next to me whispered, “He conducts with the confidence of a man who thinks he’s the smartest person in the room. He doesn’t care what anyone else thinks.” I agree with that assessment entirely. I also agree with Maazel.
Outstanding in the Met’s cast was the Philip, Ferruccio Furlanetto. He is the Philip of this age, and, indeed, his Philip is arguably the greatest operatic portrayal around. I have heard him sing the king’s monologue many, many times, and I have never heard him better, or more moving, than on this particular night. Furlanetto might scoff at me, but I give the conducting some credit.
The next night, the Vienna Philharmonic started a three concert stand at Carnegie Hall. Conducting them was a fellow Austrian, Franz Welser-Möst, who is also the conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra. The middle concert started with a Schubert symphony—No. 6—and ended with a Strauss tone poem—Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks. The orchestra played beautifully and executed neatly. This is the rare orchestra that is an instrument, a performer, unto itself. As for the conducting, it was adequate, sometimes better. Till can be funnier, darker and more exciting.
Between the Schubert and the Strauss came a work by Jörg Widmann, composed in 2003. Widmann is a German composer and clarinetist. This particular work is Lied, meaning “Song”w—and it is a kind of tribute to Schubert, or evocation of Schubert. It quotes several of that composer’s works.
The piece starts very, very quietly. In fact, Welser-Möst waited for a long time for a lady with a walker to reach her seat. He seemed quite annoyed, there on the podium. Lied is slow and arching, and takes its time to arch. It is essentially Romantic with modernist interventions and outbursts. Fittingly, Widmann gives the clarinetist a choice part. In my judgment, the piece is a little long for the material it has. It gets slightly tiresome.
But I’ll tell you what I admire about the piece: It is not an exercise in rhythm, percussion and freneticness, as so many of today’s pieces are. There are other elements of music. Widmann apparently knows this.
Stephen Hough knows it too. Once the Viennese cleared out, the English pianist gave a recital in Carnegie Hall, and among works by Chopin and other heavy-hitters, he presented a work of his own: his Piano Sonata No. 2, subtitled “Notturno Luminoso.” This is an unpredictable piece. It has a whiff of the cabaret lounge. Some perpetual motion. Some rhapsody. Some ripples, jabs and squiggles. Some Debussy. It feels improvisatory yet not unthought through. And I would like to hear it again, which may sound like faint praise, but is actually very high, for a new piece.
Moreover, we can appreciate a performer who rolls his own: who composes as well as plays. The performer and the composer were essentially one, till sometime in the early 20th century.
By the way, Hough used sheet music for his sonata, but not for the other composers’ pieces. He had a dispute with the page-turner, too: She turned too early once. I would rather pilot the space shuttle, blindfolded, than turn pages—some of the most nerve-wracking work there is.

Traditionally, he gives the opening recital, as he did this year. This latest recital posed a special challenge: The air conditioning broke down, on a very hot night. That gave the audience a sense of solidarity and adventure, as hardship can.

One benefit of this festival is that a patron has a chance to hear music that is hardly ever played during the regular season. You hear little-known pieces by well-known composers. This year, we had Scriabin’s Sonata No. 5, for example, and Hindemith’s Sonata No. 3. You also hear composers who are themselves little known. This year, we got Levko Revutsky, a Ukrainian who lived from 1889 to 1977, and Héctor Campos-Parsi, a Puerto Rican who lived from 1922 to 1998.

And then there are our old friends transcriptions-—arrangements of songs, orchestra pieces and the like for piano. When I was growing up, these were considered old-fashioned and embarrassing. None of the cool kids played them. But they never went entirely away, because so many of them were so skilled and so enjoyable. This year, one festival pianist played Liszt’s transcription of Chopin’s song “The Maiden’s Wish.” Someone else played Liszt’s transcription of Weber’s Konzertstück. The Konzertstück is old-fashioned enough on its own, believe me. But in the Liszt transcription? Positively transgressive!

Daria Rabotkina, a young Russian-born pianist, began her recital with Schumann’s Humoreske in B-flat Major. This is not a rarity—but you hear it a lot less than you do, say, Schumann’s Carnaval. You hear it about as often as you do Papillons. And the Humoreske is a formidable, mysterious piece. It’s no joke, put it that way. Rabotkina played it in an athletic, extrovert, headlong manner—-decidedly romantic.

She next played a rarity, Busoni’s Variations and Fugue on Chopin’s Prelude in C Minor. This is the same prelude on which Rachmaninoff wrote variations (but no fugue) years later. The Busoni piece is dark and stormy, to quote an opening line. Passionately romantic, it is a long way from Busoni’s last work, the modernist opera Doktor Faust. Rabotkina played the Variations and Fugue with commitment and command.

She closed her recital with a piece by Marc-André Hamelin, the Canadian pianist-—who played his own recital on the same stage about an hour later.

The following night, HaeSun Paik, a native of South Korea, played a recital beginning with bird pieces-—pieces by Messiaen, the birdiest composer since Byrd. Paik started with the prelude called “La Colombe” (“The Dove”), then continued with “Le Loriot” (“The Oriole”) from Catalogue of Birds. According to Paik, who gave remarks from the stage before she played a note-—often a concert-killer-—the catalogue takes about three hours to play. Is this love, on Messiaen’s part, or obsession? They’re often close cousins, love and obsession.

Regardless, it was a pleasure to hear the two bird pieces, which spring from the impressionism established by Debussy and Ravel. Paik played them with care.

The world of the piano, you will agree, is a wonderful one-—all that repertoire. Is it the best repertoire there is? You could make an argument for the song repertoire—-but fortunately, none of us has to choose.

Ballet music—one man’s evolution

The older I get, the smarter, wiser and more talented Verdi becomes. Funny how it works that way. When I was about 15, Verdi was basically a purveyor of corny tunes accompanied by oompah-pah. How had he managed to compose that masterly requiem, amid those silly operas? These days, I stand in awe at almost the least of those operas.

It is similar with the ballet. From a musical point of view, ballet was the bottom of the barrel, as far as I was concerned. Ballet music was the equivalent of tutus: frilly, insubstantial, kind of ridiculous. Romeo and Juliet was a masterpiece, no doubt—but I thought of that as an orchestral work, rather than something to be danced to.

Giselle, in particular, I considered a joke. Its composer, Adolphe Adam, scored a hit with “O Holy Night,” but the ballet was something else: a perfumed sleeping pill. Only later did I realize the joke was on me. Giselle, which has lived since 1841, may live to 2141 and beyond, and rightly so.

These thoughts and memories are occasioned by a visit of the Paris Opera Ballet to the Lincoln Center Festival. Attending Giselle, I appreciated the score anew. It is a piece of “program music,” in a way, helping to tell a story. It has coyness, intimacy, anxiety, pomp, gaiety, pathos and, of course, ethereality. It also has longueurs and mediocrity, to be sure—but the gold compensates for the dross.

The next day, the Parisians performed, among other ballets, a work called Suite en Blanc, whose music is taken from Lalo— Edouard Lalo, whom we know almost exclusively for his violin-and-orchestra piece Symphonie espagnole (and also, maybe, for the overture to his opera Le roi d’Ys). I was glad to get to know this music—new to my repertoire.

One reason for my prejudice against ballet music was that I so often heard it performed badly. Who among us hasn’t snickered at ballet orchestras? They are often the Appalachian League of the orchestral world, the bottom rung. Onstage, you will have surefooted dancers, and, in the pit, you will have clumsy instrumentalists.

Years ago, I asked Valery Gergiev, the conductor, “Why do people make fun of Puccini, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff?” He said, among other things, “You can perform anything in an insipid way. Even Mozart. But then the fault is yours, not the composer’s.” Exactly so. Giselle will be hopelessly la-di-da, if you play it that way.

Doing the honors for the Paris Opera Ballet was the New York City Opera Orchestra, a group that has not had much work lately, given the fortunes and misfortunes of City Opera. At worst, the orchestra played respectably, and, at best, impressively. Boléro’s rhythm was imprecise, which was a shame, because the piece is so dependent on rhythm. But not much harm was done.

Some ballet music, I still contend, is beyond hope. During its recent season here, the American Ballet Theatre put on Le Corsaire, whose score is cobbled together from five composers (including Adam). Act I is like a parody of ballet music, invented by ballet haters. But Swan Lake? Honestly, I could see and hear it once a week. Probably twice.

The Philharmonic’s New Yorky Fourth

The New York Philharmonic gives an annual Fourth of July concert, and this year the orchestra gave it three times. I attended on July 3. As usual, the concert was conducted by a Brit, Bramwell Tovey. He is one suave and talented Brit, too. I have always called him “your genial host,” for he talks charmingly to the audience: twitting latecomers, riffing on Kim Kardashian, etc. He has the verbal facility you expect from our cousins. I was shocked to hear him say “For you and I . . .”

The concert began with Three Dance Episodes from Bernstein’s On the Town. I have often wondered why someone who could write so brilliantly in this idiom would ever have bothered with classical music. Tovey and the Philharmonic were really good in the dance episodes, really swingin’. They were not merely fun, they were excellent. I had the feeling they had actually rehearsed.

Now, the Philharmonic is supposed to be good in New Yorky music. But I have to ask: Why should Chinese-born young people who join the Philharmonic be better in this music than Chinese-born young people who join other orchestras? Traditions linger, somehow.

Tracy Dahl, a coloratura soprano from Canada, took the stage to sing “Glitter and Be Gay,” the glittery and gay aria from Bernstein’s Candide. She gave it the old college try. Her heart was in the right place, and so were the notes, mainly. Her E flat had no vibrato, but it was bang on pitch.

Even suaver than Tovey is Gershwin’s Promenade, or “Walking the Dog,” the next piece on the program. The orchestra played it nicely, and this was especially true of Pascual Martínez Forteza, the principal clarinet. “Walking the Dog” gives the clarinet a delicious part.

Tracy Dahl returned for four songs by Gershwin, in which she was superb—both tasteful and heartfelt, both formal and informal, if you know what I mean. Every inflection was right. The arrangements were done by Tovey himself, who also played the piano. In “They Can’t Take That Away from Me,” the singer sings, “The way you sip your tea . . .” Here, Tovey tinkled a bit of “Tea for Two.” As he did so, he gave the audience sort of a proud look. His arrangement for the verse of “Fascinating Rhythm” sounded like Carmina Burana, so help me. Weird but effective.

As a pianist, Tovey may not threaten André Previn’s reputation; he was sometimes stiff and jabbing. But he was creditable. Besides, Previn doesn’t always play like Previn either.

The second half of the program featured ensembles from West Point, as well as the Philharmonic. We heard big-band music and marches. We also heard some patriotic and pro-military statements spoken by the West Pointers. I wasn’t sure this would fly in Manhattan, but it seemed to. The evening ended with John Philip Sousa’s masterpiece, The Stars and Stripes Forever. Let me quote Bernstein, in a humble and discerning mode: “I would give five years of my life to have written that piece.”

It was a long night, but a wonderful one, and this was thanks largely to the manifold talents of Tovey—and also to those of Sousa, Gershwin, Bernstein, et al.

I once heard Emanuel Ax, the pianist, give a great performance. Google has recalled the specifics: It was in August 2005 at the Mostly Mozart Festival. Ax played Mozart’s Concerto No. 22 in E flat, K. 482. I have now heard Ax give another great performance. It was of the same concerto.

This second performance was on a Wednesday night in the same hall: Avery Fisher. The conductor and orchestra were different, however. They were Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic. Ax’s phrasing was exemplary. He breathed along with the composer. He was both smooth and articulate. He was sensitive without being mousy. What rubato he used was intelligent. He fudged a trill or two, particularly at their resolution, but this was of little importance.

Crucially, he was not afraid to play simply. “‘Tis the gift to be simple.” And you may remember a Rubinstein quip: “Mozart is too easy for children and too hard for adults.”

For the second movement, Andante, Ax chose a perfect tempo. Tempos in these “slow” movements of Mozart’s are hard to get right. He sang this movement with an inevitable and natural feeling. The Rondo was jaunty and stylish. It was humorous in spots without being hammy. The cadenza that Ax has composed for this movement is fitting and clever; I thought I heard horn calls.

Above all, Ax played the Rondo, and all of the concerto, with pleasure. It is a privilege to play Mozart. I believe Ax knows this. As the audience applauded, the man behind me said to his wife—loudly and twice—“Good ol’ Manny Ax.” He was more than “good ol’ Manny Ax” on this occasion: He was a great Mozartean.

Gilbert and the orchestra did their roles ably. There was a botched entrance in the horns near the opening, which was unfortunate. Some of the exposition had a clock-punching feeling. But, on the whole, the orchestra was alert, correct and compact. The beginning of the Andante was positively beautiful.

The main work on this program was one of the main works of Mozart’s life, and of music at large: the “Great” Mass in C minor. The orchestra was again alert, correct and compact (and so were the New York Choral Artists). Gilbert was never less than competent. He was completely assured and thoroughly prepared. In my judgment, however, this performance was barren of spirituality. It was also, I’m afraid, a bore.

But I must say it was nice to hear the Mass performed with some richness, beauty and blood. In recent years, I have heard nothing but “period” performances, particularly at the Salzburg Festival. They are thin gruel, with some straw sticking out. They also feature mindlessly fast tempos. At the Philharmonic, it was a relief to hear “Laudamus te” at a sane, musical pace.

The evening’s soprano was Jennifer Zetlan, who was starry when she was a student at Juilliard. In the Mass, she began a little uncertainly and had no low notes. But she soon gained her stride and was wonderful. The other singers were adequate, with the tenor, Paul Appleby, sounding like a Polenzani in the making. The bass in Mozart’s Mass has even less work to do than the mezzo-soprano in Beethoven’s Ninth.

A famous mezzo once told me she had a piece of advice for other mezzos engaged for the Ninth: “Wear a pretty dress.”

Pianists pires and zacharias play concertos in pairs

Two orchestras came to town, each bringing a pianist. The first orchestra to appear was from just down the road, Philadelphia. They played in Carnegie Hall with their chief conductor, Charles Dutoit. And their pianist was Maria João Pires, from Portugal.

She is very well-known from recordings, but not so well-known from personal appearances, at least here in New York. She has a big reputation for Chopin, and, in fact, played Chopin’s Concerto No. 2 in F minor.

In the first movement, she was competent—but also stiff, workmanlike. The music lacked its fluid nature. The closing rondo was much the same—competent, acceptable, but without flair. A wet noodle.

So, how did Pires acquire her big reputation? She gave the answer in the middle movement, Larghetto, which was a thing of beauty: graceful, sensitive and altogether musical. Chopin himself would have smiled.

Three nights later, an orchestra from Bavaria, the Bamberg Symphony, played in Avery Fisher Hall. They were led by their longtime chief, Jonathan Nott, an Englishman. And their pianist was Christian Zacharias, a German. He is a pianist who is capable of perfection, no less. Other nights, he is commendable all the same.

This was one of those nights. Zacharias played Beethoven’s Concerto No. 4 in G major. Its opening chord is hard to get right: You have to play all the notes together, with the top note, B, having prominence. Zacharias got it exactly right.

In the first movement at large, he had a few slips, but nothing major. His playing tended to be dry. Sometimes a bigger, fatter sound was desirable. But Zacharias obviously understood the logic of the music, and he was no-nonsense without being cold.

He is a conductor too, and, at the keyboard, he could not quite resist the urge to conduct the orchestra. He was champing at the bit to do so. Did this bother the actual conductor, on the podium? Ask Nott.

The second movement, that sublime creation, was matter-of-fact—very much so. Zacharias could have been a little freer. And the rondo could have been sprightlier and more graceful. But, again, you will want to hear Zacharias on any night, no matter what.

Incidentally, his concert clothes are those austere black pajamas, the modern uniform. It seems to suit the clinical side of his personality.

Saturday,
April 21: It’s good to have an afternoon with Korngold, that neglected,
underappreciated composer. City Opera is reviving its 1975 production of Die
tote Stadt (The Dead City), possibly the composer’s finest work.
Korngold was one of the great child prodigies in the history of music, compared
frequently, and by some of the best musical minds, to no less than Mozart. He
didn’t quite pan out, although he left a distinguished, even enchanting,
body of work. An emigre from Vienna, Korngold lived the second half of his life
in Hollywood, where he wrote film scores, along with a small amount of concert
music. (Quick: Who wrote the score to Ronald Reagan’s best picture, Kings
Row? Right, Korngold.)

Sunday,
April 29: A music critic seldom "looks forward" to a particular
concert, just as a sportswriter must infrequently "look forward" to
a particular ballgame: it’s just part of the job. This afternoon’s
concert at Carnegie Hall, however, is an exception. Indeed, it is just possibly
the most anticipated performance of the season. The work is the Verdi Requiem,
and leading the Metropolitan Opera’s orchestra and chorus is James Levine,
their master. He has with him some of the mightiest soloists in the business:
Renée Fleming, the soprano, Olga Borodina, the mezzo-soprano and René
Pape, the bass. This is a lineup about as mouthwatering as any in the past.
The fourth soloist–the tenor Marcello Giordani–is not quite in the
same league as his colleagues, but he can be expected to perform solidly nonetheless.

Tuesday,
May 1: It’s not every day we get to hear Smetana’s Ma Vlast
complete. Usually, we hear just its hit section, "The Moldau,"
the greatest depiction of a river in music (with apologies to Johann Strauss
Jr. and his beautiful "Blue Danube"). It is the only work on the Philadelphia
Orchestra’s program here at Carnegie, with Wolfgang Sawallisch, the Philadelphians’
music director, on the podium. Although we hear the work complete, we hear it
split up, as there is an intermission between Parts Three and Four (of this
six-part work). This seems unnecessary, for Ma Vlast should flow on.
Played without interruption, the work is no longer than a Mahler symphony. It
is one big tone poem, requiring, above all, orchestral sound and lots of it.
Fantastic, luxuriant, orgiastic sound. So who better than the Philadelphians
to play it? There is some off-center, unpleasant string playing, however, and
in certain passages the bassline should be more clearly delineated. But all
told, we are treated to a convincing account of this Czech national music. In
one section–containing a march–Sawallisch is as animated as I have
ever seen him, stomping around, exhorting his troops, delighting in their response.
They say that Sawallisch is a stolid Kapellmeister–baloney. And if so,
give us more of it.