In Monday’s (2/23) New York Times, Anthony Tommasini writes, “Alice Tully Hall, closed for nearly two years, opened its grand, airy and people-friendly new lobby to the public and presented a large roster of fine musicians, ranging from living masters to eager students, who played a program aptly titled ‘First Look.’ In an inspired choice, the first music heard by an actual audience in the extensively renovated auditorium, now called the Starr Theater, was not some brassy fanfare or festive overture, but three mournful, elegiac Sephardic Romances from the 15th century. … The music also was immediately revealing of the question that really matters as Alice Tully Hall returns: what are the new acoustics like? The astonishing early music performer Jordi Savall played a gently melancholic melody on the vièle, an early string instrument. And the quiet sounds—ancient and earthy—carried beautifully in the hall. … I was especially impressed when, after the Sephardic Romances, the pianist Leon Fleisher played a rhapsodic and affecting performance of Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue. I had never found the hall ideal for piano recitals before. But Mr. Fleisher’s tone, especially in softer passages, had a presence and body that seemed to be evidence of the new acoustical bloom.”
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