A singer, a violinist and a pianist

Joyce DiDonato

There is so much to crab about, it’s nice to rave, once in a while. I know at least three musicians, who have recently performed in New York, who make raving possible. They are a singer, a violinist and a pianist.

Singers aren’t ranked like tennis players, but if they were, you’d be hard-pressed to keep Joyce DiDonato out of the No. 1 spot. The mezzo-soprano from Kansas sang at Carnegie Hall, accompanied by a “period” band, Il Complesso Barocco. She sang opera arias from the Italian baroque. A few of the arias were by well-known composers such as Monteverdi. Most were by virtual unknowns: Cesti? Orlandini? Porta? DiDonato has done some welcome excavation.

When she took the stage, the audience roared for her, as though expecting something good. They got it. She put on a clinic of singing, the way Marilyn Horne used to do, in her prime. Technically, DiDonato can do practically anything. She is almost always in the center of the note. She is utterly secure, meaning that you can be secure as you sit in your seat. Her high notes are free. Her low notes are juicy. She can dig into her lower register, the way a violinist does his strings.

Of her musicality, there seems no end. She added a speck of American jazz to a couple of those baroque arias, I swear. Her Italian diction is a model—as when she spat out the first words of a Monteverdi aria, “Disprezzata regina” (“Despised queen”). She has a healthy streak of humor too, which we saw when the band behind her was tuning up. She imitated, almost under her breath, the sound of a string instrument tuning. Memorably funny.

Usually, when the band introduced an aria, she looked eager to sing, champing at the bit to sing. We would be too, if we could sing like that.

With the New York Philharmonic, Frank Peter Zimmermann played Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1. In the first movement, I thought he was playing too warmly, too beautifully. But I soon realized that the music was still frightening: Shostakovich built the fear into it. In the second movement, the Scherzo, Zimmermann was rude, brash and jabbing. Or rather, the music is that way, and Zimmermann expressed it right.

So it was with the Passacaglia, which Zimmermann played nobly. I thought that maybe he and the conductor, Andrey Boreyko, were a touch fast. But they made their tempo work. Incidentally, Zimmermann missed a note or two, which was almost comforting: This was not a studio recording. There’s nothing like live.

The cadenza, which bridges the Passacaglia and the Burlesque, was superbly calibrated. This was a feat of thinking, as well as playing. And the Burlesque was hot and virtuosic—from the orchestra as well, actually.

Pianists aren’t ranked like tennis players, but if they were  . . .  This brings us to Yefim Bronfman, who performed Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto in Carnegie Hall, with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, conducted by Fabio Luisi. There is a well-known video of Bronfman. He is 17, rehearsing a Bach concerto. Sitting next to him is Gina Bachauer, the famed midcentury pianist. After the concerto is over, Isaac Stern asks Bachauer whether she has anything to say to Bronfman—any advice to give. “Nothing,” she says. “Bless him. Nothing else. What can you say?”

I have nothing to say about the “Emperor,” except maybe this: The opening pages were just a little overpedaled, in my view. Otherwise, Bronfman had Beethoven to a T. The solidity, the limpidity, the rhythm, the chords (deep and precise), the octaves (ditto), the fortissimos, the pianissimos, the trills. The utter evenness of his playing—the sense of weight—is almost spooky.

Now and then, someone will ask me, “Whom do you like in the Beethoven piano sonatas? What recordings should I get?” The truth is, I don’t have anyone to recommend—although Backhaus and others deserve high praise, certainly for individual sonatas. I know that the recording industry is down the tubes. (Down the YouTubes?) But Bronfman should record the 32 sonatas, even if in his living room, for no money. He owes it to posterity.

Philip Glass and John Adams are the most famous living classical composers (if you don’t count John Williams). Who would be next? Possibly Thomas Adès, the Brit. His opera The Tempest is maybe the most acclaimed opera of recent years. And it has been playing at the Metropolitan Opera. The composer himself conducts. I have long known him to be a very fine pianist. On the night I attended The Tempest, he proved a more than adequate conductor. He knows the score, obviously. But he had his head rather buried in that score—or so it seemed from my seat.

Shakespeare’s play is magical and otherworldly, and an operatic treatment of it ought to be the same. Adès is largely successful in this regard. The opera begins with a storm, as does Otello. What is it about Shakespeare beginnings and storms? Personally, I found it hard to adjust to Adès’s musical language. The notes on the stage did not seem to match the notes played in the pit. The singers’ notes struck me as indeterminate, almost random. But there is a variety of music in this opera, and the score ultimately wins you over, I believe.

Britten’s treatment of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is at times Debussyan, and so is Adès’ Tempest. It is both Brittenesque and Debussyan, we could say. Yet Adès is his own man, compositionally. There is humor in this opera, a streak of scherzo. Ariel is a coloratura soprano, with her music way up in the ether. Some of the most moving music is given to Caliban, a freak treated with sympathy.

The Met’s production is by Robert Lepage, best known for Cirque du Soleil, and known, too, for the Met’s latest Ring. His Tempest goes with the story and the score. What more can you ask of a production? This Tempest looks a little like The Enchanted Island, the Met’s baroque pastiche, which debuted last season. Prospero is Wotan-like—walking around grave and troubled, bearing a staff. Supertitles, or rather, subtitles, are flashed at the bottom of the stage. At intermission, a friend of mine said, “It ought to be that way for all productions!” I agree—but what about those who would prefer to do without titles?

In the cast are many worthy singers, of whom I will mention just two. Young Alek Shrader has a beautiful, fresh, graceful tenor voice. Catch it before it changes, as voices must. His character is Ferdinand, over whom his family is in despair, because he is missing. I wanted to call out, “Don’t worry, he’s with Isabel Leonard!” This extraordinary mezzo has the part of Miranda, and on the night I heard her, she sang with her customary intelligence and poise.

Plenty of composers have written operas based on The Tempest, including Lee Hoiby, the American who died last year. Shakespeare is still a force in the artistic world—almost dominant—four centuries on.

In the first week of November, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center presented a concert involving three musicians: a pianist, a violinist and a cellist. The first two were okay. Competent. The cellist was something else: a great artist, no less. When she began to play, the evening took on a different character altogether.

She was Alisa Weilerstein, and she played the Chopin Sonata. About her technique, there is no concern: She can do whatever she likes. For example, she can widen or narrow the “ribbon” of her sound. And she has all the colors. Most important, she has an innate sense of music. She knows how to breathe, how to sing, where to put accents. She grasps the “soul” of the music at hand. This is probably unteachable (although a student can be encouraged). She plays with tremendous confidence, as well she might: She has everything to be confident about.

Weilerstein is a young woman, and when she is old or planted, she will be recognized as one of the greatest cellists we have known. In truth, she has been that for several years now. Don’t be a Johnny-come-lately or bandwagoneer: Recognize this today.

A final word, about Chopin: If he had not composed all those marvelous piano pieces, would we ever hear his cello music or his songs? I don’t think so. Odd, how the inspiration did not transfer over.

By Jay Nordlinger

For several years, we have called Yuja Wang a wunderkind, a phenom, a sensation. For how long can we keep talking that way? She’s 25 now. I figure we can continue for a couple more years.

Most recently in New York, she played Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the New York Philharmonic. She does well by Prokofiev. Two seasons ago, she played the Concerto No. 2 with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Carnegie Hall. She played it to within an inch of its life. Earlier this season, she played the Sonata No. 6, also in Carnegie Hall. Her grasp on the work was sure.

And the Concerto No. 3? First, let me say what was wrong with her performance, on the night I heard her. (She played the concerto on four separate nights.) She entered a hair late. She immediately changed the tempo, making it faster. She changed it further, making it faster yet. She left the poor New York Philharmonic in the dust. The conductor, Jaap van Zweden, looked at her as if to say, “What the . . .?” She was careless and sloppy. She slapped and banged. Prokofiev can be percussive, but it need not be ugly. Where she should have been elegant, she was inelegant. Her sound was not grand enough. Her passagework was bony. Some of her accents were absurd. Etc.

But: I thought to myself, “Never let me become an old fart who doesn’t appreciate youthful fire and abandon.” Wang was electric. She was a girl on a mission. There was actually a little anger in her playing. She was over the top, but she was exciting as hell, and I think Prokofiev himself would have gotten a kick out of it.

She won’t play like this always—but I’m glad she does for now. She will undoubtedly mellow and mature. But fire and abandon are fine musical qualities, especially in the Prokofiev Third.

I often say, “Not every performance has to be a desert-island disc”—a definitive performance, an exemplary performance, for all time. The Prokofiev Third I heard should not be on a recording. But a live concert is a different cat (thank heaven). And Wang was alive, no question.

A week later, the Takács Quartet arrived in Zankel Hall, for two concerts. Formed in Budapest in 1975, the quartet now resides in Boulder. Two of the original members are still with the group. They are Hungarian, whereas the newer members are from different climes.

They started their New York concerts with Janácek’s String Quartet No. 1, nicknamed “the Kreutzer Sonata.” It is a talky, anxious work, a minor masterpiece. The Takács played it knowledgeably and intelligently. They make a better overall sound than they do individually. Nevertheless, the overall sound was at times too fuzzy. And fingers at times were unresponsive. Also, where beauty was called for, the group could not quite summon it.

Next on the program was another String Quartet No. 1, this one by Britten (and without a nickname). It is written in that special Britten tongue that is half modern and half not. Do you know the expression “Second verse, same as the first?” Again the Takács sound was a bit fuzzy, out of focus. Again fingers were somewhat wanting (particularly in the last movement, molto vivace). And again the group played with a general and welcome intelligence.

You can think well without playing well. Usually, it’s better to think well than to play well. And when you can do both—why, then, of course, the world is your oyster.