“The Berlin Philharmonic and its chief conductor, Simon Rattle, will give not one but two major opening-night concerts in New York next fall,” writes Michael Cooper in Tuesday’s (12/10) New York Times. “On Oct. 1, they will open Carnegie Hall’s 2014-15 season at a gala featuring the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, followed by three more concerts at Carnegie…. The next week they will give a pair of performances of one of their most acclaimed musical events of recent years—a staging of Bach’s ‘St. Matthew Passion,’ directed by Peter Sellars—to open Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival. Those performances will be in the cavernous Park Avenue Armory, which will be configured along the lines of the Philharmonie in Berlin, with the audience surrounding the players, choristers and soloists.… The Berlin Philharmonic’s eight-day, six-concert New York visit was made possible by a collaboration among Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and the Park Avenue Armory.… The ‘Passion’ will be given in the 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall at the armory…. The New York Philharmonic used [the space in 2012] for ‘Philharmonic 360,’ which featured Stockhausen’s ‘Gruppen’ (‘Groups’), a rarely performed piece meant to be played by three separately positioned orchestras with an audience in the middle.”
Posted December 10, 2013
