From the dust bowl to the ocean blue, the classic arts scene in New York is never quiet. Here is just a sampling of some of the classic arts events happening this week.
MasterVoices concludes its 2023-24 season with a concert performance of Ricky Ian Gordon and Michael Korie’s The Grapes Of Wrath April 17 at Carnegie Hall, with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Ted Sperling conducts the operatic adaptation of John Steinbeck's Dust Bowl-set novel, which stars Kyle Oliver as Tom Joad, with Margaret Lattimore and Nathan Gunn as Ma and Pa Joad. This marks a full-circle moment for Nathan Gunn, who played Tom when MasterVoices performed the opera in 2010. The cast also includes Mikaela Bennett, Bryonha Marie, Victor Starsky, Malcolm MacKenzie, Schyler Vargas, Christian Pursell, John Brancy, David Fleiss, and Jan Constantine, with Joe Morton and J. Smith-Cameron narrating.
Conductor Thomas Søndergård makes his New York Philharmonic debut this week leading the orchestra for the U.S. premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s Keyframes for a Hippogriff. The work is a NY Phil commission as part of Project 19, a multi-season initiative to commission and premiere 19 new works by 19 women composers. Keyframes for a Hippogriff sets to music texts by Ariosto, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Friedrich Nietzsche, graffiti artists, and others, sung by countertenor Andrew Watts and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. The work will be performed alongside Lili Boulanger’s D’un matin de printemps, and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5.
Mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo will make her Carnegie Hall recital debut April 20 with pianist Sophia Muñoz. The program will include songs by Bartók, Zemlinsky, Rebecca Clarke, both Alma and Gustav Mahler. The recital will also include a selection from Jeanine Tesori’s Grounded, which will open the Metropolitan Opera’s 2024-25 season, starring D’Angelo.
Carnegie Hall will also host this week performances from the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra (April 16); violinist Daniel Lozakovich and pianist Behzod Abduraimov (April 17); the Danish String Quartet (April 18); the Cecilia Chorus of New York (April 19); and pianist Emanuel Ax (April 21). Ax will celebrate fifty years since his Carnegie Hall debut with a program of Beethoven and Schoenberg.
The Blue Hill Troupe celebrates its 100th anniversary with a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore, running April 19-27 at El Teatro of El Museo del Barrio on the Upper East Side. One of Gilbert and Sullivan’s earliest big hits, H.M.S. Pinafore tells the story of the daughter of a captain in the Royal Navy, who, although sought in marriage by the First Lord of the Admiralty, is secretly in love with a lowly sailor aboard her father’s ship. Lauren Cupples and Joanne Lessner (Einstein’s Dreams) share the role of Josephine, starring respectively opposite Robert Farruggia and Rich Miller as the foremast hand Ralph Rackstraw. The cast also includes Neal Young and Kevin Murray as Captain Corcoran; Erik Hanson and Jonathan Jacobson as the Rt. Hon. Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B.; and Kim Lindsay Grutman (Titanic) and Suzanne R. Taylor as Little Buttercup, the bumboat woman with a mysterious secret that could turn everyone’s world topsy-turvy.
The vocal ensemble Chanticleer will perform at the Kaufman Music Center April 18. Originating as a Renaissance music ensemble, the group’s repertoire has expanded dramatically, as represented by the program they will perform this week, featuring works by Kurt Weill, Stephen Sondheim, Joni Mitchell, Peter Gabriel, Irving Berlin, Freddie Mercury, Hoagy Carmichael, Ayanna Woods, Tom Petty, and more.
Pianist Anne-Marie McDermott will host a concert at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Rose Studio. McDermott will be joined by violinist Paul Huang and cellist Brook Speltz for a program including Glière’s Eight Pieces for Violin and Cello, Poulenc’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, and Chaminade’s Trio No. 2 in A minor for Piano, Violin, and Cello.
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center will also present this week String Resonance April 21 at Alice Tully Hall. Violinists Chad Hoops and Bella Hristova, violists Matthew Lipman and Timothy Ridout, and cellist Sihao He, will perform works by Beethoven, Jean Françaix, Frank Bridge, and Mendelssohn.
The Jerusalem Quartet returns to the 92nd Street Y April 16. The ensemble will perform three contrasting quartets from three different centuries: Haydn’s Quartet in E♭ Major, Op. 76 No. 6, Brahms’ Quartet No. 3 in B♭ Major, and Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 2 in A♭ Major.
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