Bruckner, Henze, Price, Schubert and a trailblazing cellist are among the recent highlights.
The cellist Matt Haimovitz’s playing sizzles. And yet over a long program, it can be strangely easy to start to forget him. His skill becomes something you take for granted; it’s a humble way to present virtuosity.
His latest contemporary-music vehicle is a multivolume series, “Primavera,” in which he’s invited 81 composers to respond to spring-indebted paintings by Botticelli and the contemporary artist Charline von Heyl. After his own arrangement of the Kyrie from Josquin’s Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae, we hear Missy Mazzoli’s tribute to the same work — with a rhythmic gait that suggests both Minimalism and American folk dance.
The plunging motifs of Tomeka Reid’s “Volpaning” and the aggressive energy of its climax, seem to depict a flying object finding its preferred momentum only as its journey is concluding. It’s energizing and heart-rending at once. Taken alongside other worthy commissions by the likes of Sky Macklay, Jennifer Jolley and Alex Weston, Haimovitz’s makes a persuasive argument on behalf of his chosen composers, who take center stage throughout. SETH COLTER WALLS
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