From string quartets to sax quartets, the classic arts scene in New York is never quiet. Here is just a sampling of some of the classic arts events happening this week.
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Summer Evenings series continues with concerts July 21 and 25 at Alice Tully Hall. The July 21 concert will feature a wind quintet and piano performing works by Beethoven, Samuel Barber, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Otar Taktakishvili, and Joseph Jongen. The July 25 concert will feature the Calidore String Quartet performing works by Haydn, Mozart, Hugo Wolf, Wynton Marsalis, and one work attributed to Benjamin Franklin.
The Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, in collaboration with the New York City Public Schools Summer Arts Institute, presents a free concert July 22 at David Geffen Hall, featuring musicians from the Festival Orchestra performing new pieces composed by members of the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers program. The concert will also include selections from Holst’s The Planets.
July 24 and 25, the Festival Orchestra, led by conductor Eun Sun Kim, will perform an impressionistic program comprising Debussy’s Petite Suite, orchestrated by Henri Büsser; Poulenc’s Sinfonietta; and Manuel de Falla’s Siete canciones populares españolas, arranged by Ernesto Halffter and sung by mezzo-soprano Taylor Raven.
Paris Opera Ballet star Hugo Marchand comes to New York City Center July 23-26, with a program including Maurice Béjart’s Boléro, set to Ravel’s opus of the same time, featuring dancers from the Béjart Ballet Lausanne.. The program will also include a pas de deux from Angelin Preljocaj’s Le Parc, Béjart’s The Firebird, George Balanchine‘s Sonatine, Hans van Manen’s Trois gnoissiennes, and a pas de deux from Carolyn Carlson’s Signes.
Conductor Brad Lubman will lead the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in an all-Mozart program in a free concert at Central Park’s Naumburg Bandshell July 21. The program will include favorites such as Symphony No. 21 and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, as well as a selection of arias sung by mezzo-soprano Erin Wagner.
The Cerus Quartet will give a free concert at Madison Square Park July 22 at 6pm, presented by Carnegie Hall Citywide. The saxophone quartet will play works by Grieg, Piazzola, Webern, and more.
Just north of the city, Bard SummerScape Opera will present Die ägyptische Helena, running July 24-August 2 at the Sosnoff Theater. The rarely-performed opera by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal imagines life for Helen and Menelaus, King and Queen of Sparta, immediately following the Trojan war. The plot, which bears a resemblance to the fictional opera-within-an-opera from Strauss and von Hofmannsthal’s earlier Ariadne auf Naxos, has the quarreling couple get caught in a storm and wash up on the island inhabited by the sorceress Aïthra, who decides to put in her oar and resolve their differences with the aid of some magic.
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