10 THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER16, 2019
ILLUSTRATION BY BEYA REBAÏ
Singers can’t resist the melodies and seasonal quality of Schubert’s song
cycle “Winterreise” (“Winter’s Journey”), which traces its narrator’s
movements through the snow and his unhappy circumstances over
twenty-four songs. The mood is despondent yet gripping in its narrow
focus: two-thirds of the selections are in minor keys, and they’re so
tightly written that a portrait emerges of a melancholic protagonist at
once adrift and alive to the shifts in his emotional experience. A classic
Romantic-era piece, “Winterreise” is de rigueur for lieder singers, and
opera stars with an affinity for the subtleties of the song genre also take it
up. This week, the bass-baritone Eric Owens, performing with the pianist
Jeremy Denk at the 92nd Street Y (Dec. 13), and the mezzo-soprano
Joyce DiDonato, with Yannick Nézet-Séguin at Carnegie Hall (Dec. 15),
explore the work’s wintry landscape.—Oussama ZahrINCONCERT
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“Rayyane Tabet: Alien Property”
Metropolitan Museum
This Lebanese artist interweaves his family’s
history and that of the now far-flung pieces
of a ninth-century B.C.E. frieze, carved from
stone for the Neo-Hittite palace of Kampara,
in Tell Halaf, Syria. In his grandparents’ Beirut
apartment, Tabet found clues connecting his
great-grandfather to the site and its excavation,
in 1911, by the German diplomat and amateur
archeologist Baron Max von Oppenheim. On
display are four reliefs from the frieze, which
were stored in New York by Oppenheim and
acquired by the Met after they were seized,
pursuant to the Alien Property Custodian Act,
in 1943—the same year that fourteen other
parts of the frieze were destroyed by Allied
bombings in Germany. (Many of the nearly
two hundred pieces remain lost.) But the core
of this fascinating show, which also includes
archival materials and Tabet’s family tree,
is not the artifacts, it’s the artist’s inventiveson, Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, and Kristina
Wolfe—all U.S. premières.—S.S. (Dec. 13 at 8.)“Sounding Serra”
Gagosian
The sculptor Richard Serra’s “Reverse Curve,”
an undulant steel construct nearly a hundred
feet long and thirteen feet tall, serves as the
backdrop for an evening of mostly new and
recent pieces inspired by its imposing size, its
mottled surfaces, and its expansive footprint.
The enlisted composers and performers include
Lea Bertucci, Miguel Frasconi, Joan La Bar-
bara, Chris McIntyre, Chris Nappi, and Danny
Tunick; music by Michael Byron completes the
program.—S.S. (Dec. 14 at 8.)John Zorn
Roulette
Continuing what has been an extraordinarily
fecund year, the famously prolific composer
John Zorn presents “Heaven and Earth
Magick,” a clutch of fresh pieces designed
for an ensemble modelled on the Modern
Jazz Quartet. In a characteristically Zornian
gambit, the pianist Stephen Gosling and the
vibraphonist Sae Hashimoto play precisely
notated parts, with the bassist Jorge Roeder
and the drummer Tyshawn Sorey improvising
on the fly.—S.S. (Dec. 14 at 8.)JACK Frontiers Festival
Tishman Auditorium
The JACK Quartet has devoted unflagging
energy and ingenuity to expanding horizons for
the string-quartet idiom; now the celebrated
group inaugurates its own festival to further
that agenda. The first evening’s program is
devoted to the world première of a single work:
“divisio spiralis,” by Catherine Lamb. The sec-
ond concert features recent noteworthy com-
positions by Clara Iannotta, Lester St. Louis,
and Tyshawn Sorey.—S.S. (Dec. 17-18 at 7.)list of royals and celebrities, plus millions of
viewers at home, as Markle and Prince Harry
signed the register, and Twitter bestowed the
sobriquet “cello bae” upon him for his efforts.
Now Kanneh-Mason makes his New York re-
cital début—accompanied by his older sister,
the pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason—with sonatas
by Barber and Rachmaninoff, Lutosławski’s
“Grave,” and Beethoven’s delightful variations
on an aria from Mozart’s opera “Die Zauber-
flöte.”—Oussama Zahr (Dec. 11 at 7:30.)
Éliane Radigue
Pace
The French composer Éliane Radigue spent
the first four decades of her career creating
long-form electronic works that teem with
vibrant life beneath their placid surfaces. Hav-
ing turned to acoustic instruments, in 2004,
she continues to fashion uncanny aural expe-
riences whose impact approaches the meta-
physical. Here, in a two-night engagement
produced by the nomadic curatorial organi-
zation Blank Forms, four of Radigue’s closest
instrumentalist collaborators play selections
from “Occam Ocean,” a swelling œuvre of
immersive pieces that flow and fuse with liq-
uid mutability.—Steve Smith (Dec. 13-14 at 7.)
“Der Rosenkavalier”
Metropolitan Opera House
Robert Carsen’s elegant production of Richard
Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier,” a jewel of an
opera that elevates a romantic farce to the sub-
lime, returns to the Met with the lustrous mez-
zo-soprano Magdalena Kožená in the title role.
Kožená is surrounded by a strong cast—includ-
ing Camilla Nylund, Golda Schultz, and Gün-
ther Groissböck—for her first performances at
the company since 2011; her husband, Simon
Rattle, who stepped down from the prestigious
Berlin Philharmonic last year, conducts. Also
playing: The Met’s family-friendly “Magic
Flute” (Dec. 15 at 3), abridged and performed
in English translation, commences its holiday
run.—O.Z. (Dec. 13 and Dec. 17 at 7.)Wet Ink Ensemble
St. Peter’s Church
Having recently returned from an engagement
at the respected Huddersfield Contemporary
Music Festival, in England, New York’s Wet
Ink Ensemble presents selections from the
programs it played abroad. Included are works
by Charmaine Lee (with the composer as the
guest vocalist), Eric Wubbels, Bryn Harri-