It’s time for another roundup of recent classical music reviews.
I attended Yuja Wang’s recital at Strathmore last week and found the playing brilliant but oddly distanced; I later heard third-hand that she may actually have been indisposed, in which case my take should shift from “what’s the matter with her?” to “who can actually play that well when they’re sick?”
Robert Battey attended an uneven but sometimes exhilerating performance by the Cuarteto Casals at the Library of Congress; was impressed by Chris Thile playing, among other things, Bach on the mandolin at Strathmore; and, last night, heard Kristjan Jarvi lead the NSO with what I might call modified rapture. (In between all that, he himself performed the Lalo cello concerto in d minor with the Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic.)
Speaking of cellists: Joan Reinthaler appreciated Zuill Bailey’s pianissimos, but was disappointed with the Strathmore acoustic, in his Schumann recital there with Navah Perlman. (This was Bailey’s second DC recital this calendar year; in addition, he also appeared later the same evening with the National Philharmonic.)
And yet more cellists: Sophie Shao appeared at the Phillips Collection with the pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute in a recital that deeply impressed Stephen Brookes. (Above: the two play the Beethoven fifth sonata in an earlier performance at Curtis.)
To accompany the Byzantium show at the National Gallery, the Cappella Romana offered what Charles T. Downey called “a concert of luminous beauty.”
Finally, Roger Catlin heard the Kronos Quartet give the East Coast premiere of Philip Glass’s sixth quartet — which sounded more traditional, he writes, than the other works on the program.
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