MUSIC

New York Philharmonic: Trifonov and Babayan Play Bartók

WEDNESDAY – SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16 – 19, 2022
7:30 PM WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY
11:00 AM FRIDAY
8:00 PM SATURDAY

David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center
10 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side, Manhattan

$54.50-$197.50
TICKETS + INFORMATION

Anyone would agree that the orchestral version of Bartók’s explosive music for two pianos and percussion isn’t quite as great as the chamber version — but then again, that’s like saying that the movie version of Goldfinger isn’t quite as good as the book. Daniil Trifonov and Sergei Babayan are certainly two explosive pianists. Conductor Hannu Lintu (another Music Director tryout, one imagines) also brings two pieces from his Finnish home: typically transfixing Saariaho and Sibelius’s ultra-concentrated final Seventh Symphony (the rest — 30 long years — was silence). Opening up the show is Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments — a piece by one of my favorite composers in memory of one of my other favorite composers for one of my favorite instrumental configurations that I still can’t figure out why I don’t like (wait: I think I get it! I always expect it to be neo-Classical — my favorite Stravinsky — but it’s not quite there yet).

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Kwame Onwuachi’s in-house Afro-Caribbean restaurant Tatiana (not to be confused with the one in Brighton Beach) isn’t open late enough for post-concert dining — a scandal if you ask me (maybe you can eat and drink beforehand and then concentrate hard on music for two hours, but I sure can’t) (to me, this is emblematic of Lincoln Center’s inability to conceive of the classical music segment of its audience as comprising anything other than the suburban and the decrepit). For an urbane experience, go to Bar Boulud after the show and eat and drink to your heart’s content.