MUSIC

The Orchestra Now: Before and After Soviet Communism

THURSDAY, MAY 4, 2023
7:00 PM

Carnegie Hall
881 Seventh Avenue, Midtown, Manhattan

$15-$59
TICKETS + INFORMATION

It’s bad form for Capitalists to gloat around May Day. In any event, Szymanowsky (from before) shows how local color (Szymanowsky’s was from the Tatra Mountains — although in early pieces like this he went full-on orientalist) can invigorate Late Romanticism; whereas many pieces like Songs of the Infatuated Muzzein are just silly, this one is genuinely intoxicating. Boris Tishchenko (from during) was a student of one of my favorite composers, Galina Ustvolskaya; I wish he sounded more like her. Tonight’s piece is his memorial to Shostakovich. Geörgy Kurtág (from after) is, quite simply the greatest living Western composer.

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Dissident hotspot Russian Samovar.