Category Archives: The Lesser Blog

Discovering a New Conductor

Posted on March 31, 2019 by Wendy Lesser

Of course, I am very late to the show on this one, since Daniel Harding is already a known quantity in the classical music world. But I had never before heard him conduct live (never, to my knowledge, even heard a … Continue reading →

Posted in The Lesser Blog | Tagged alban berg, berlin philharmonic, charles ives, daniel harding, dorothea röschmann, gustav mahler, wozzeck | 2 Comments

Rattle’s Berlin Philharmonic

Posted on March 25, 2019 by Wendy Lesser

A great deal of what I know about music, it turns out, has accrued to me over the years through my attendance at Simon Rattle’s performances with the Berlin Philharmonic. When I first arrived in Berlin in 2003, Rattle had only recently taken … Continue reading →

Posted in The Lesser Blog | Tagged andrew staples, bach, berlin philharmonic, camilla tilling, georg nigl, jorg widmann, junge deutsche philharmonie, magdalena kocena, mark padmore, peter sellars, roderick williams, rundfunkchor berlin, schumann, simon rattle, st john passion, st matthew passion | Leave a comment

Five Nights in Berlin

Posted on December 31, 2018 by Wendy Lesser

For various reasons, Berlin is my favorite city in the world, and one of the reasons is certainly the quality and variety of music it always makes available to me. I spotted a window of opportunity to get there for a week … Continue reading →

Posted in The Lesser Blog | Tagged beethoven, berlin philharmonic, christian gerhaher, gerold huber, hippolyte et aricie, jan lisiecki, komische oper, konzerthaus berlin, love of three oranges, olafur eliasson, prokofiev, rameau, staatsoper-berlin, valery gergiev | Leave a comment

A Month of Great Piano

Posted on November 10, 2018 by Wendy Lesser

The piano is not my instrument, normally. I don’t just mean I never learned to play it (though that too is true: my childhood music lessons were on the violin). What I really mean is that I don’t seek out piano concerts … Continue reading →

Posted in The Lesser Blog | Tagged anne-marie mcdermott, baryshnikov arts center, beethoven, brahms, busoni, carnegie hall, fred sherry, fredric rzewski, haydn, igor levit, inon barnatan, jeremy denk, liszt, mariinsky orchestra, morton feldman, nelson freire, paul lewis, pedja muzijevic, people's symphony concerts, peter serkin, pierre-laurent aimard, schumann, st. lawrence string quartet, tamara stefanovich, ursula oppens, valery gergiev, white light festival, zankel hall | 2 Comments

Fall for Dance

Posted on October 19, 2018 by Wendy Lesser

Every fall, over the course of two or three weeks, New Yorkers get treated to a generous helping of dance at the hallowed City Center. This Moorish extravaganza on West 55th Street was the original home of the New York City … Continue reading →

Posted in The Lesser Blog | Tagged brooklyn mack, city center, fall for dance, herman cornejo, jennifer weber, justin peck, lil buck, pam tanowitz, patricia delgado, paul taylor, simone dinnerstein, tiler peck | Leave a comment

The Good Teslas

Posted on September 20, 2018 by Wendy Lesser

Forget Elon Musk and his super-fancy cars. He may be making an embarrassing hash of his company at the moment, but he is not the only claimant to the name. There is quite a wonderful group of string players operating … Continue reading →

Posted in The Lesser Blog | Tagged alexandra smither, bac salon, baryshnikov arts center, berio, debussy, edwin kaplan, michelle lie, pedja muzijevic, ross snyder, serafim smigelskiy, szymanowski, tesla quartet | Leave a comment

Serendipity

Posted on August 27, 2018 by Wendy Lesser

Part One: This part of the story begins in 2007, when I first heard a very young quartet group, the Vertigo Quartet, play Shostakovich’s Twelfth. I had heard all fifteen Shostakovich quartets in a cycle played the year before, during … Continue reading →

Posted in The Lesser Blog | Tagged brahms piano quartet no. 3, brahms piano quintent, coppola, inglenook, johannes brahms, masumi per rostad, milina barry, music in the vineyards, music@menlo, nicholas canellakis, pacifica quartet, schoenberg's verklärte nacht, vertigo quartet | Leave a comment

Russian Music

Posted on July 23, 2018 by Wendy Lesser

It’s not often you get to go to a chamber music concert of entirely unfamiliar pieces and have them all turn out to be good. But I had that experience last Saturday night at Music@Menlo’s “St. Petersburg” concert. The program even … Continue reading →

Posted in The Lesser Blog | Tagged arensky, balakirev, david finckel, from jewish folk poetry, gilbert kalish, glinka, music@menlo, paul neubauer, sara couden, shostakovich, wu han | Leave a comment

Summer Surprise

Posted on July 4, 2018 by Wendy Lesser

First of all, I apologize for the length of time between my last post and this one. I’ve been in Scandinavia, a most delightful and enlightening place, which I previously knew only from decades of Nordic noir reading and television-watching. … Continue reading →

Posted in The Lesser Blog | Tagged dracula, le poisson rouge, michael riesman, norwegian embassy, philip glass, swedish academy, swedish embassy, tod browning | Leave a comment

Gerhaher

Posted on May 9, 2018 by Wendy Lesser

It never ceases to amaze me that critics can respond to a specific performance with such different takes. Sometimes I have trouble believing I was at the same concert as these other guys. This morning’s Times review of the recent … Continue reading →

Posted in The Lesser Blog | Tagged berlin staatsoper, christian gerhaher, das lied von der erde, great performers, lincoln center, london symphony orchestra, simon rattle | Leave a comment