Kronos Quartet performed at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday as part of Kronos's Perspectives series, the only artist to be given such a focus this season. It also happens to coincide with the Hall's current festival of Chinese music, and, says the New York Times, "Of the many Western ensembles trooping into Carnegie to play Chinese music (or music about China) the Kronos is by far the most adept at cultural crossing over."
Kronos Quartet performed at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday as part of Kronos's Perspectives series, the only artist to be given such a focus during Carnegie's 2009-10 concert season. It also happens to coincide with (though is not a part of) the Hall's current Ancient Paths, Modern Voices festival of Chinese music and culture, and, says the New York Times's Allan Kozinn, "Of the many Western ensembles trooping into Carnegie to play Chinese music (or music about China) the Kronos is by far the most adept at cultural crossing over."
On the first half of Tuesday night's program was Tan Dun's Ghost Opera, which the group performed with Wu Man on pipa. The piece was written for Kronos and Wu, who performed it together for its first recording, on a 1997 Nonesuch release. Kozinn sees the piece as part of the composer's transition "from his early work as an avant-gardist to his more recent incarnation as a composer of blockbuster film scores, symphonic works and operas."
After the intermission came A Chinese Home, a multimedia presentation that explores recent shifts in Chinese cultural identity and the modernization of rural life, which, says Kozinn, featured "the evening’s most memorable musical moments: Ms. Wu’s full-throttle freak-out on an electric pipa with wah-wah and distortion pedals."
You can read Kozinn's concert review at nytimes.com.
Kronos's Carnegie Hall Perspectives continues with four additional concerts in March, including: a concert dedicated to the music of Terry Riley and the world premiere of Riley's Another Secret eQuation; one program titled Playing with Toys & Technology; another with the New York premiere of Derek Charke's Tundra Songs; and a final performance featuring the Alim Qasimov Ensemble, collaborators on Kronos's most recent Nonesuch release, Floodplain.
The Quartet's next performance is tomorrow night at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. On the program are works from Floodplain, Steve Reich's Different Trains, plus works by Bryce Dessner, Sigur Rós, Amon Tobin, and Michael Gordon.
For more information on these and other upcoming performances by Kronos Quartet, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.
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