Jay Harvey Upstage

George Li didn't shy away from Beethoven's imperial breadth.  Compositional nicknames are inevitably grafted onto works that are formally known by type, key, and opus number. Even the knowledgeable segment of the public wants a word or phrase to hang onto. So, from the "Moonlight" sonata to the Symphony of a Thousand, the labeling identifiers persist.  The origin of such nicknames is sometimes obscure and often lacks the composer's stamp of approval. The eminent British essayist Donald Francis Tovey opened his concise scrutiny of Beethoven's Piano Concerto E-flat, op. 73, with this brush-off: "From the history of the 'Eroica' we know how Beethoven would have appreciated the vulgar title by which this concerto is known in the British Isles. So we will say no more about that, but attend to the music."  In the English-speaking world  the nickname "Emperor" has spread beyond Tovey's homeland, and the musicologist's first phrase ...

A traditional partnership of two well-established musical organizations made its annual presence felt again Tuesday night to welcome a chamber-music newcomer with a familiar face at the head: Jaime Laredo, who has chaired the jury of the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis for the past 30 years, is the violinist of Espressivo. Besides the IVCI, the Ensemble Music Society presented the concert. Espressivo: Robinson, Laredo, Polonsky, Pajaro-van de Stadt Laredo and his wife, cellist Sharon Robinson, for several decades performed together with the late pianist Joseph Kalichstein as a piano trio that carried their names. They are the foundation of Espressivo, which also counts violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt and pianist Anna Polonsky as members. The program at Indiana Landmarks Center  featured an Espressivo co-commission, "Joy Steppin'" by Nokuthula Ngwenyama, that had received its premiere Monday in Cincinnati. "Joy Steppin'" is about 12 minut...

Avery Gagliano got the Premiere Series of the 2025 American Piano Awards off to a robust start Sunday afternoon at the Indiana History Center. Avery Gagliano now studies with Schiff. She is the first of five finalists to be presented here in solo recitals plus a concerto performance, one each month through February. That will be followed by adjudicated chamber-music performances, then a finale featuring the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in April after which the top prize will be awarded. After her Curtis Institute of Music training, the 23-year-old pianist from Washington, D.C., has just started studying with Sir Andras Schiff in Kronberg, Germany. Immediately with her program opener Sunday — J.S. Bach's  French Suite No. 4 in E-flat — some suggestions of Schiff's Bach style, the Bach-on-piano standard for me in recordings to counter the powerful Glenn Gould approach,  were apparent. There was the suave legato displayed in the Allemande, then the vivid definition of the l...

It's been a hundred years since the ultimate in crossover musical achievement premiered: Geroge Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." In celebration, Jack Everly, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra 's principal pops conductor, has made the pioneering work for piano and orchestra the centerpiece of the season's second program in the Pops Series.  The celebratory concert Friday was all-Gershwin at a high level, heralded by the mayor's proclamation that Oct. 11 was a day in honor of the ISO in its 40th-annniversary weekend at Hilbert Circle Theatre. Apart from the "Rhapsody," with the solo part incisively performed by Stewart Goodyear, the focus was Gershwin's songs. Everly told the huge audience, with some pride, that there are 30 songs in this show.  Some of them were in a few show overtures, of which several had choral arrangements by Eric Stark, artistic director of the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir, which sang them.  The large chorus seemed to b...

The repertoire formerly embraced by the term "Negro spirituals" occupies a unique place among music to have emerged from the New World. The melodies and the passion behind the songs forged a sustaining insight that can be appreciated on both musical and spiritual levels. They have generated a wealth of arrangements. Philip Spray, violone and director That range is confirmed and vividly embodied in orchestrations for an early-music ensemble of harp and strings, using arrangements by several historically significant black musicians. Philip Spray directs Alchymy Viols in "Deep River: Spirituals Cross-Currents," a program compatibly presented with countertenor Michael Walker II. The Navona Records release benefits throughout from glowing performances exquisitely recorded.  Michael Walker II in the recording studio Walker's well-centered, floating tone is displayed immediately in the first piece, "Over My Head," sung without accompaniment. Later there i...

Among the puzzling cliches this music critic has found in the writing of some colleagues is the tendency to object to variations in tempo that strike the reviewer as breaking the momentum or introducing hitches in a work's steady movement forward. I think any variations in tempo that the score doesn't explicitly require are not necessarily interruptions in the cohesiveness of symphonic movement, for example. Sometimes they convey the meaning of a composition more fully than a narrowly precise performance.  Granted, complicating the pulse of a piece of music can verge on unsteadiness, for which the conductor ought to be held to account. I'm not saying that  bending "interpretation" in matters of tempo can't be excessive. But often I wonder: Is the reviewer really bothered by that variety such that the music becomes hard to follow, almost unintelligible? Or is the point simply to cavil at an interpretive choice for the sake of showing off familiarity with the pi...