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that decisive moment

Border Percussion: The 8 Best Classical Music Moments of the Week on YouTube

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Stephen Hough playing at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday.Credit...Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times

Our critics and reporters offer a glimpse of what’s moved and delighted them on YouTube. Read the rest of our classical music coverage here.


at 2 minutes 20 seconds

President Trump’s push to build a costly wall along the United States-Mexico border is at the center of American politics. So it was moving to see how music can transcend the wall that currently separates California from Tijuana, as American and Mexican musicians gathered on both sides on Jan. 27 to perform John Luther Adams’s “Inuksuit,” part of a monthlong percussion festival at the San Diego Symphony, programmed by Steven Schick. Watch, from the Tijuana side, as musicians play and the audience peers through a metal mesh wall at their counterparts on the American side — the avant-garde music equivalent of David Bowie’s “Heroes.” MICHAEL COOPER

at 17 minutes 47 seconds

Young Concert Artists, which has fostered the careers of emerging musicians for 57 seasons, had a first on Wednesday: a live stream to its Facebook page of a recital by two YCA winners at Merkin Concert Hall. The fine violinist Benjamin Baker, 28, joined by the gifted pianist Daniel Lebhardt, brought virtuosity, refinement and youthful exuberance to a daunting program that included Britten’s Op. 6 Suite and Elgar’s rhapsodic Sonata in E minor (from 1919), along with an inventive premiere by Tonia Ko for solo violin. For me, the high point came at the start, with their magnificent account of Schubert’s Fantasy in C, a late masterpiece that would be played all the time were it not so difficult. I especially like the touch of sly Hungarian dance they brought to the first statement of the Allegretto’s vigorous main theme. (The players don’t take the stage until almost 14 minutes into the video. Just scan ahead. It’s worth it.) ANTHONY TOMMASINI


At 1 minute 24 seconds

Thomas Adès’s annual visit to the Boston Symphony Orchestra last week did not disappoint. There was Beethoven that giggled with cleverness, Stravinsky both steely and sumptuous, and a deliciously overblown suite from the composer-conductor’s own opera “Powder Her Face.” Best of all by far, though, was a smoking account of Ligeti’s Violin Concerto. Augustin Hadelich, the soloist, ordinarily strikes me as simply a very, very good violinist, but he played this 1992 classic with scarcely believable commitment, as if it were a repertoire piece with which he was determined to make his name. Here’s the cadenza to the final movement. Mr. Adès wrote it in 2013, but there’s no sense of the composer’s own distinctive voice. Instead, it blends in seamlessly: sketching out what has come before, all the while pushing through the bounds of virtuosity. DAVID ALLEN


At 8 minutes 44 seconds

When Steve Reich revives iconic pieces, tickets tend to sell briskly. But no one should overlook his newer works. The premiere recording of “Pulse” (2015) was released this week by Nonesuch Records. Members of the International Contemporary Ensemble engage in it with the composer’s sly, late-career manner of balancing tension and release. For much of the 14-minute piece, the electric bass sticks to a mostly rhythmic role. While strings and winds tease out Mr. Reich’s rich, canon-style writing, the sole amplified instrument provides a smoothly running engine, but little more than that. That is, until everything changes and the bass breaks free of its established pattern, twisting from its otherwise restrained melodic profile. After this cascade of serenely unpredictable material, Mr. Reich gives the bassist a brief break. But when all the instruments come together, again, for the final minutes of the work, some of that same energy persists. SETH COLTER WALLS


at 9 minutes 37 seconds

Performers who are also active composers can bring special insights to repertory staples. This is certainly true of Stephen Hough, who gave a fascinating program at Carnegie Hall this week, juxtaposing several visionary Debussy works with major scores by Schumann and Beethoven. His recital sent me back to a performance he gave of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in 2013 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the London Proms. In the first few minutes he astutely discusses the piece, playing excerpts. The performance is brilliantly crisp, no-nonsense, and stunningly fresh. About five minutes in, Mr. Hough makes a couple of gnarly, pummeling variations sound like outtakes from “The Rite of Spring.” ANTHONY TOMMASINI

Read our review of Mr. Hough’s Carnegie recital.


AT 57 SECONDS

Happy belated birthday to Schubert, who turned 221 on Wednesday. His song cycles have been on my mind since Jonas Kaufmann gave a performance of “Die Schöne Müllerin” at Carnegie Hall recently, with encores that dabbled in “Schwanengesang” and “Winterreise.” Mark Padmore, who has already recorded “Winterreise” with the pianist Paul Lewis, has just released another version of the cycle, accompanied by Kristian Bezuidenhout on a Schubert-era fortepiano. Mr. Padmore is a master of this music, but the surprise star of the record may be Mr. Bezuidenhout — or at least the revelatory brightness and twang of his piano. You can hear a taste of its sound in this video of the two performing Franz Lachner’s “Das Fischermädchen” (an homage to “Schwanengesang”). Mr. Bezuidenhout plays the Graf fortepiano with the kind of clarity and lyricism that make “Winterreise” worth, yes, yet another listen. JOSHUA BARONE

Read our review of Jonas Kaufmann at Carnegie Hall.


AT 12 MINUTES 46 SECONDS

Last weekend, Stéphane Denève led the New York Philharmonic in selections from Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet.” The suite followed the ballet’s plot, which meant it excluded diverting interludes like “Dance With Mandolins.” This wasn’t the first time moments like that were left out: Before the ballet had its Russian premiere in 1940, several years after Prokofiev wrote the score, he was forced to revise it heavily. The ending, once happy, became tragic, and a series of divertissements were cut. Still, Prokofiev found ways to recycle some of the music elsewhere — such as in his Fifth Symphony, which you can hear in this video of Valery Gergiev conducting the Mariinsky Orchestra. The exhilarating opening of the second movement is a scherzo passage originally meant for the ballet. If only we could hear more lost moments like this. Where is the suite of discarded “Romeo” dances? JOSHUA BARONE

Read more about the history of Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet.”


at 58 seconds

When the Metropolitan Opera introduced its new production of Puccini’s “Tosca” on New Year’s Eve, both the soprano Sonya Yoncheva, as Tosca, and the tenor Vittorio Grigolo, as Cavaradossi, were singing these touchstone roles for the first time. Though wonderful as Puccini’s ill-fated lovers, they sounded a little green that night. But when I returned later in the run, they were in a zone, singing with fervor and intensity. I was reminded of Ms. Yoncheva’s Desdemona in the Met’s 2015 production of Verdi’s “Otello.” Here, in an excerpt from the love duet (with Aleksandrs Antonenko as Otello) she conveys innocent vulnerability while also showing Desdemona’s passion — early hints of a Tosca to come. ANTHONY TOMMASINI

A correction was made on 
Feb. 2, 2018

An earlier version of this article misstated the key of an Elgar violin sonata. It is in E minor, not E major.

How we handle corrections

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