Nézet-Séguin conducts contrasting religious pieces

Two pieces of music with similarities — but so different! Gioachino Rossini’s Stabat Mater and Leonard Bernstein’s Kaddish both are choral works with religious texts, yet are radically diverse. Yannick Nézet-Séguin led massive forces in a Philadelphia Orchestra program that juxtaposed these two approaches to faith. Bernstein’s 1963 composition is…

Pelléas et Mélisande casts a spell

Pelléas et Mélisande at the Metropolitan Opera, Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting, January 2019.
 

To get the most out of Pelléas et Mélisande you need to immerse yourself in its strange land. It is possible to …

Amahl returns for a Christmas visit

Every December, the Philadelphia Orchestra schedules Christmas-related concerts. Yet it never performed Gian-Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors until now. That’s an inexplicable oversight, especially when we consider the composer’s Philadelphia connection, as a student and, later, faculty member at the Curtis Institute of Music.