MUSIC
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2018
7:00 PM

Americas Society
680 Park Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan

Free
http://www.momentaquartet.com/mf4/

This installment of the Momenta festival -- curated by violinist Emilie-Anne Gendron -- features in impressive lineup.  Pride of place must go to Aaron Copland's Sextet.  What happened was that Copland wrote an orchestral piece, the Short Symphony, that was too difficult in its shifting meters for extant orchestras to play.  His reduction of the work to a chamber piece -- he claimed to have simplified the rhythms, but chamber musicians might beg to differ -- proved a success.  Here, the excellent Momenta Quartet is joined in this bracing piece by pianist Stephen Gosling and clarinetist Benjamin Fingland.  The rest of the program is full of interest, too, including as it does pieces by possible Greatest Living Composer Kaija Saariaho, criminally underplayed Canadian Ann Southam, exuberant Latin-inflected Roberto Sierra, famous conductor Jean Martinon (performances of his compositions are very rare) -- and Nicola Matteis the Younger (undergoing a minor revival these days) from the High Baroque.  Free wine (and, if you must, soft drinks).

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT:  I have a friend whose mother insisted till the day she died that Le Veau d'Or was the best restaurant in New York.  I hope it was better in her day than its rather dusty self is in ours.  Still, you don't see classic French food on every streetcorner.