Thursday (1/3) on the Wall Street Journal online, Pia Catton reports, “In an unexpected announcement, one new work of contemporary classical will replace another next month at Carnegie Hall. On Thursday the venue announced a change in the programming for the Philadelphia Orchestra’s performance on Feb. 22, when the orchestra was scheduled to perform new work by British composer Oliver Knussen. According to a Carnegie Hall spokesman, that piece has not been completed. So, in its place, the orchestra will present the Carnegie Hall debut of Gabriela Lena Frank’s ‘Concertino Cusqueño.’ Ms. Frank was commissioned by the orchestra, under the music direction of conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, to compose the piece, which had its premiere in October. In his review of the work, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s music critic, David Patrick Stearns wrote: ‘Any given passage could be Asian, English, Shostakovich, or, in its solo use of the principal string players, an Arcangelo Corelli concerto grosso. Soon, these points of reference meld into a distinctively Frank sound world—that rocks.’ … The orchestra will also perform Verdi’s ‘Requiem,’ as well as 20th-century works by Ravel and Stravinsky on Feb. 22.”
Posted January 4, 2013
