The New Yorker – May 13, 2019

8 THENEWYORKER,M AY 13, 2019

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ILLUSTRATION BY MARINA MUUN

The abundance of lavishly talented

women composers now prominent in

the concert-music world is tangible

evidence of their determination to re-

habilitate an art form historically de-

voted to enshrining white male “genius.”

Initiatives like Luna Composition Lab,

founded by Missy Mazzoli, currently the

composer-in-residence at the Chicago

Symphony, and Ellen Reid, whose opera

“prism” won a Pulitzer Prize, are chang-

ing the playing field by providing men-

torship and exposure to teen-age female,

nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming

composers. At Merkin Hall, on May 8,

the prodigious youth ensemble Face the

Music and other students from New

York’s élite pre-college conservatories

play music by the lab’s current fellows;

works by the trailblazers Mary Halvor-

son, Alex Temple, and Shelley Washing-

ton complete the program.—Steve Smith

RECITALS

ILLUSTRATION BY HANNA BARCZYK

1

CLASSICALMUSIC

Mahan Esfahani

92nd Street Y

Listening to Martinů’s neo-Baroque Harpsi-

chord Concerto is like walking into a grand and

eccentric salon where the most entertaining

person in the room—the soloist—is also the host.

It’s a role well suited to Mahan Esfahani, a garru-

lous and talented keyboard player whose artistic

choices are often divisive but always arresting.

Sharing the bill is the Orpheus Chamber Orches-

tra, which accompanies Esfahani in the Martinů

piece and in another product of the modern

harpsichord revival: a phantasmagoric concerto

by the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla. Nonet

arrangements of works by Mozart (the Wind

Quintet, K. 452) and Strauss (“Till Eulenspie-

gels lustige Streiche”) give the orchestra a chance

to sparkle.—Fergus McIntosh (May 8 at 7:30.)

“Der Ring des Nibelungen”

Metropolitan Opera House

Robert Lepage’s production of Wagner’s mag-

isterial “Ring” cycle can conjure an occasional

beautiful stage picture, but Philippe Jordan’s

conducting tells the story. In the final two operas,

“Siegfried” and “Götterdämmerung,” the action

unfurls in elegant waves of sound that build

with an unhurried sense of inevitability; Jordan’s

“Ring” doesn’t traffic in cataclysm and shiny

concert pieces. The milestones in Siegfried’s

brief but heroic life reach a mythic pitch—the

Forging Song swings, the Rhine Journey glistens,

the Funeral March inflates into an all-consuming

wail—but they do so organically. As Siegfried,

Stefan Vinke wields his tenor with the young-

buck energy of someone convinced of his own

invincibility, and Christine Goerke balances

him with the equanimity and coiled force of

her Brünnhilde. Together they lead a cast of top

Wagnerians, including Eric Owens (an unusually

noble Hagen), Michael Volle (an earthshaking

Wanderer), Tomasz Konieczny (a venomous

Alberich), and Gerhard Siegel (a marvellous

Mime).—Oussama Zahr (May 9 and May 11 at 6.)

“Owen Wingrave”

GK Arts Center

Living at a time when the U.K. still criminalized

homosexuality, the composer Benjamin Britten

found urgent, thundering, achingly beautiful

ways to express the pain of being an outsider and

the perils of same-sex attraction. In his penulti-

mate opera, “Owen Wingrave,” a pacifist born

into a proud military family arrives home and

reveals his disposition to his outraged relatives.

It’s essentially a coming-out story, bristling with

the discomfiting tension of familial strife. Little

Opera Theatre of New York presents the work’s

New York première, in a production conducted

by Richard Cordova and staged by the compa-

ny’s artistic director, Philip Shneidman.—O.Z.

(May 9-11 at 7:30 and May 12 at 3.)

“El Cimarrón”

Metropolitan Museum

Hans Werner Henze’s “El Cimarrón” (“The

Runaway Slave”) compresses the extraordinary

hundred-and-thirteen-year life of Esteban Mon-

tejo into a nearly seventy-five-minute work for

three instrumentalists and a vocalist. Born into

slavery in Cuba, in 1860, Montejo escaped his

chains and lived to see the rise of Fidel Castro.

Henze’s piece, which he described as a recital

for four musicians, has the grandeur of an epic

poem and is told with efficient, atmospheric

gestures that draw on Cuban folk rhythms

and controlled improvisation. The American

Modern Opera Company’s English-language

production stars the riveting baritone Davóne

Tines; the director, Zack Winokur, incorporates

the players into the staging and builds the set

out of the dozens of percussion instruments

called for in the score.—O.Z. (May 10-11 at 7.)

Arcangelo

Zankel Hall

In the seventeen-twenties, Handel wrote a

series of refreshing songs that drew spiritual

inspiration from the natural world. The “Ger-

man Arias,” some of the only music for which

the cosmopolitan composer used texts in his

native language, provide the backbone of a pro-

gram featuring the period-instrument ensem-

ble Arcangelo and the soprano Joélle Harvey.

The group also plays “Sonata sopr’il Soggetto

Reale,” which Bach wrote to please a king, and

two comely trio sonatas (in A Minor and B-Flat

Major) by the sixteenth-century composer

Dieterich Buxtehude.—F.M. (May 10 at 7:30.)

Tigue

Roulette

In Tigue, the gifted and versatile percussionists

Matt Evans, Amy Garapic, and Carson Moody

adopt a genre-fluid approach to contemporary

music. Their skills are a match for even the most

rigorous experimental compositions, but the

music they create for themselves hews closer

to groove-driven bliss electronica, suitable for

ecstatic dance-floor reveries. For “This New

Forest,” an evening-length program exploring

human interactions with nature and machines,

the trio embeds premières by Paula Matthu-

sen and Elori Kramer among its own recent

pieces.—Steve Smith (May 13 at 8.)

Yarn/Wire

Zürcher Gallery

The members of Yarn/Wire—the pianists Laura

Barger and Ning Yu and the percussionists Ian

Antonio and Russell Greenberg—have worked

tirelessly to assemble a substantial repertoire

for their instrumentation, often commissioning

pieces by composers who are not closely tied

to any conventional classical milieu. Many of

the group’s most vital additions to the canon

have emerged from “Yarn/Wire/Currents,” a

series initiated with the programming curator

Lawrence Kumpf in 2013. That streak should

remain intact in this seventh installment, which

includes a new piece by Sarah Hennies, an im-

provising percussionist based in Ithaca, N.Y.,

and a New York première by the Chicago sound

artist Olivia Block.—S.S. (May 14 at 8.)

1

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Clurman

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