On Tuesday and Thursday, February 16 and 18 at 8 PM, Kaufman Center and New York Festival of Song (NYFOS, www.nyfos.org) present The Voluptuous Muse, a celebration of the lush tonality and decadent Romanticism of late 19th- and early 20th- century song. NYFOS will bring its "A-list artistry" (TimeOut NY) to the music of Richard Strauss, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Alban Berg, Gustav Mahler, and Karol Szymanowski. The concerts will be presented at Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Center, 129 West 67th Street (between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue), New York, NY 10023.
Tickets, $40 - $55 with group discounts, are available by calling 212-501-3330, or visiting www.kaufman-center.org. In addition, there are a limited amount ospecial $15 student discounts available by calling New York Festival Of Song at 646-230-8380.
The artists will be tenor Joseph Kaiser, a rising young star of the Metropolitan Opera who just scored a major triumph at the Opéra Comique in Paris in the rarely-performed operetta Fortunio; Dina Kuznetsova, the Russian-American soprano who starred as Tatyana in Eugene Onegin opposite Dmitri Hvorostovsky at the Chicago Lyric Opera; mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey, another fast-emerging Met artist, most recently heard in their new production of The Tales of Hoffmann; NYFOS Artistic Director Steven Blier ("A national treasure when it comes to the art of song" - The New York Times) and Associate Artistic Director Michael Barrett (General Director of the Caramoor Center For Music and the Arts) as pianist/hosts.
NYFOS's next concert at Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Center will be The Sweetest Path, on March 16. This program, which celebrates the first great flowering of French art song, is the second annual collaboration between NYFOS and the Caramoor Vocal Rising Stars program. It will also be presented on March 13 in the Music Room at Caramoor. The NYFOS season ends with The Newest Deal (May 4 and 6), a program of recent American works including the premiere of the Harold Meltzer song cycle Beautiful Ohio*, created for and performed by tenor Paul Appleby, and a complete performance of Gabriel Kahane's instant classic, Craigslistlieder.
Composers
Erich Korngold (1897 -1957). Called (with Max Steiner) "the father of film music," he created famous movie scores, but also romantic instrumental and vocal classical music, including the opera Die Todt Stadt. His work was praised by such composers as Richard Strauss and Giacomo Puccini.
Alma Mahler (1879 -1964), although primarily remembered as the wife and muse of Gustav Mahler, Walter Gropius and Franz Werfel, also composed songs, instrumental works and part of an opera. Fourteen of her songs were published in her lifetime.
Gustav Mahler (1860 - 1911) wrote mainly symphonies and songs, often fusing the two into symphonic lied. He was greatly influenced by Wagner, but his work is also distinguished by the use of folk themes and progressive tonality.
Joseph Marx (1882-1964) was an Austrian composer of opera, symphonies, symphonic poems, choral works, piano concertos, songs, and chamber music, as well as organ and piano music, characterized by modern harmonies and complex polyphony.
Nikolai Medtner (1880 - 1951) was a Russian composer who wrote a substantial number of instrumental and vocal compositions, all of which include the piano. His work was characterized by an intimate connection with Russian poetry and its images.
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) was the last great representative of Russian late romanticism. His music had a thoroughly personal idiom which included lyricism, expressive breadth, often unique structure and rich, distinctive orchestral colors.
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844 - 1908) composed operas, symphonies and smaller-scaled works laced with Russian folk and exotic harmonic elements mixed with traditional Western composition. He is considered a main creator of the "Russian style" of composition, and taught and influenced many prominent 20th-century composers.
Richard Strauss (1864 -1949) was one of the most famous late romantic/early modern era composers. Profoundly influenced by Wagner, he created operas (including the Der Rosenkavalier and Salome), lieder and tone poems.
Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) was born in Russia to a Polish family, and his music drew on Polish folk styles and those of contemporary Russian and French composers. He wrote orchestral and solo instrumental works, as well as songs and choral works in a highly individual rhapsodic style.
Hugo Wolf (1860 - 1903) created instrumental and vocal works, but was most famous for his hundreds of songs, greatly influenced by Richard Wagner. They are marked by their concentrated intensity, using tonality to express feeling.
Alexander Zemlinsky (1871-1942), a protégée of Johannes Brahms, wrote orchestral works, operas, chamber music, choral works and songs, influenced by his teacher, Wagner, Mahler and others. He also taught, and among his students was Erich Korngold.
