THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER4, 2019 5
ILLUSTRATION BY JASU HU
The violinist Midori earned her stardom
principally as a stellar interpreter of ca-
nonical classics, which she often played
with big ensembles in bigger rooms.
But she has also devoted considerable
resources to fostering music education,
and has made increasing time in her busy
schedule for modern music and intimate
spaces. A recital at the night club Le
Poisson Rouge, on Nov. 4, offers an espe-
cially illuminating program, devoted to
music by living women composers rep-
resenting a broad range of nationalities,
generations, and compositional styles.
The evening includes substantial works
by Sofia Gubaidulina, Franghiz Ali-Za-
deh, Olga Neuwirth, and Vivian Fung,
plus a New York première by Tamar
Diesendruck. Midori performs with an
ideally sympathetic partner, the superb
pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute.—Steve Smith
RECITALS
1
CLASSICALMUSIC
New York Philharmonic
David Geffen Hall
It’s hard to believe that neither the Swiss con-
ductor Philippe Jordan nor the German vio-
linist Julia Fischer has appeared with the New
York Philharmonic in more than a decade. In
the intervening years, both have built and bur-
nished their reputations as some of the most
sought-after and exciting performers in the
classical firmament. In this series of concerts,
they bring their talents to an invigorating, albeit
traditional, program, comprising Prokofiev’s
“Classical” Symphony, Mendelssohn’s Violin
Concerto, and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.
Jordan recently recorded the Prokofiev and Bee-
thoven pieces and collaborated with Fischer, in
Vienna, on performances of the Mendelssohn, so
this is not virgin territory for either performer.
Audiences can bask in the glow of well-known
and well-loved notes in the hands of thoughtful
and faithful interpreters.—Hélène Werner (Oct.
30-31 at 7:30, Nov. 1 at 2, and Nov. 2 at 8.)
Verdi’s Requiem
The Shed
Jonas Mekas was the first film critic for the Vil-
lage Voice and a tireless advocate for and creator
of experimental film. He died in January, just as
he was finishing a cinematic interpretation of
Verdi’s Requiem, a colossal work that seems to
shake the very earth. As an homage to the film-
maker, the Shed screens his piece accompanied
by a recording of the Mass by the conductor
Teodor Currentzis and the orchestra and chorus
of musicAeterna. Later in the month, the film
returns as originally intended: screened along-
side live concerts of Verdi’s opus.—Oussama
Zahr (Nov. 1-10.)
Masaaki Suzuki
Alice Tully Hall
In what has become an annual collaboration,
Masaaki Suzuki leads Juilliard415 and the Yale
Schola Cantorum, this time in an all-Telemann
program. Suzuki, one of today’s leading early-
music specialists, joins his expertise with the
considered exuberance of the Juilliard ensem-
ble and the Yale chorus for a performance of the
seldom heard oratorio “Der Tag des Gerichts”
(“The Day of Judgment”). One of the pro-
lific composer’s later works, the piece had its
first performance in 1762, when Telemann was
eighty-one years old. After Telemann’s death,
his reputation suffered under the weight of
his more famous contemporaries Bach and
Handel—the “Judgment” oratorio, with its
stately choruses and impressive instrumental
writing, is Handelian in both scope and scale.
In the course of the past century, the great
range and stylistic weight of his music have
found their way back into the hearts of scholars
and listeners alike.—H.W. (Nov. 2 at 7:30.)
Angela Hewitt
92nd Street Y
The Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt has de-
voted her career to Bach; after being anointed
“La Signora Bach” by a Milan newspaper, she
tweeted, “Seems I’m married to #Bach.” In
addition to recording all of his solo keyboard
works, Hewitt has been on a four-year-long
“Bach Odyssey,” journeying through the great
composer’s entire keyboard œuvre; what for
some could seem like a stunt is for Hewitt a
serious and sincere quest for truth and clar-
ity. With this concert, at the 92nd Street Y,
she embarks on the final leg, performing the
fourth, fifth, and sixth English Suites and the
cheerful and unencumbered D-Major Sonata,
BWV 963.—H.W. (Nov. 2 at 8.)
Music from Copland House
CUNY Graduate Center
Copland House, a cultural center and artist re-
treat housed in Aaron Copland’s national-land-
mark home, in Westchester County, inaugurates
a new Manhattan concert series, comprising
six events that offer a mix of historic and re-
cent American works and newly commissioned
pieces. Appropriately, the first concert focusses
on Copland’s own chamber music, played by an
ensemble that includes Derek Bermel on clar-
inet, Alexis Pia Gerlach on cello, and the Cop-
land House’s artistic director, Michael Boriskin,
at the piano.—Steve Smith (Nov. 4 at 7:30.)
Oratorio Society
Cathedral of St. John the Divine
Rachmaninoff and Duruflé, separated by dis-
tance and time, responded to the twentieth
century’s World Wars in the same way—with
choral music of preternatural calm and beauty,
using a style of liturgical chant capable of sooth-
ing battered hearts. Rachmaninoff ’s “All-Night
Vigil” (1915), commonly known as his “Ves-
pers,” achieves greatness with strictly a-cappella
forces, whereas Duruflé somehow managed
to subdue the organ into a dreamlike state to
accompany the choir and soloists in his Requiem
(1947). Kent Tritle conducts the Oratorio Soci-
ety of New York in excerpts from the “Vespers”
and, with the organist David Briggs, the com-
plete Requiem in the magnificent Cathedral
of St. John the Divine.—O.Z. (Nov. 5 at 7:30.)
Alpaca Ensemble
Areté Venue and Gallery
Alwynne Pritchard, a flamboyantly original En-
glish vocalist and composer based in Bergen,
Norway, presents a new work with the Alpaca
Ensemble, a bold Norwegian trio making its New
York début. In “Black Is the Colour (and I Still
Hope),” named for and based on the familiar folk
song, Pritchard explores and distorts conventions
of memory, dislocation, and a player’s physical
relation to an instrument. Separated from one
another and further isolated with earplugs, the
performers rely on vibrations and visual cues
to make music together.—S.S. (Nov. 5 at 8.)
1
THETHEATRE
Bella Bella
City Center Stage I
Late one night, in 1976, the irrepressible, ir-
replaceable Bronx-born three-term congress-
woman Bella Abzug hides out in the Urani-
an-blue bathroom of an Upper East Side hotel
room, recapping her life and career as she
waits for the vote count in her failed attempt
to become the only woman in the United States
Senate. The fact that a man is playing Abzug
almost certainly wouldn’t fly if he were anyone
besides Harvey Fierstein, but because he is—
and because Fierstein is performing his own
witty monologue, which he derived mostly from
Abzug’s own words—it’s irresistible. Directed
