“It used to be that the virtuoso pianist Yefim Bronfman was not someone you expected to encounter playing in a subterranean East Village club that houses all kinds of contemporary music,” writes Anthony Tommasini in Wednesday’s (1/15) New York Times. “But in the last 15 years or so, Mr. Bronfman, 55, has become a tireless champion of living composers. … On Monday night, Mr. Bronfman seemed in his element for a concert with musicians from the [New York] Philharmonic at SubCulture, an inviting new performance space on Bleecker Street that seats about 120. The house was packed for this program, the second in the orchestra’s adventurous Contact! series, presented with the 92nd Street Y. Mr. Bronfman is artist in residence with the Philharmonic this season.” Poul Ruders’s String Quartet No. 4 (2012) “was given what was billed as its American ‘public premiere’ by four impressive musicians from the Philharmonic: the violinists Fiona Simon and Sharon Yamada; the violist Robert Reinhart; and the cellist Eileen Moon…. The performance was accomplished and intensely dramatic.” Also on the program were Marc Neikrug’s ‘Passions, Reflected’ for solo piano and Marc-André Dalbavie’s Trio No. 1 for Violin, Cello and Piano, with violinist Quan Ge and cellist Maria Kitsopoulos.
Posted January 15, 2014
