In Wednesday’s (5/9) Wall Street Journal, Stuart Isacoff reports on Spring for Music, the festival at Carnegie Hall spearheaded by Mary Lou Falcone, David Foster, and Tom Morris, which “comprises six orchestras from around the country, selected for proposing especially creative programs, and offers audiences seats for just $25. ‘I believe programming is an art, not a formula,’ Mr. Morris says. … One particularly interesting concert this time around will take place on Wednesday, when the New Jersey Symphony, under the direction of Jacques Lacombe, presents the little-heard Piano Concerto by iconoclastic 20th-century composer Ferruccio Busoni, along with works by two of his equally individualistic students, Kurt Weill and Edgard Varèse. … ‘The links between these featured composers are not so obvious,’ Mr. Lacombe explains. ‘But they all knew each other and worked together in Berlin in the early part of the 20th century. And there are some wonderful programmatic connections. The Busoni concerto and Varèse’s “Nocturnal”—a work based on Anaïs Nin’s “House of Incest”—both call for male chorus, for example. In the case of Weill, you see the attempt of a young composer to try out a lot of things, and you can sense the influence of Busoni at times.’ ”
Posted May 9, 2012
