Dawn Upshaw joined violinist Geoff Nutall for the European premiere of Kurtág's Kafka Fragments at the Barbican in London last week, directed by Peter Sellars. The Guardian gave it four stars, citing "Upshaw's emotional honesty and gripping presentation of music that tests a soprano's technique." She joins another Sellars collaborator, John Adams, in performances of Adams's El Niño with the San Francisco Symphony, led by the composer, in early December.
Dawn Upshaw joined St. Lawrence Quartet violinist Geoff Nutall for the European premiere of György Kurtág's Kafka Fragments at Barbican Hall in London last week, under the direction of Peter Sellars.
The Guardian gives the performance four stars out of five. Sellars' staging offers "a visual focus for the performance, where the real power is generated through Upshaw's emotional honesty and gripping presentation of music that tests a soprano's technique," says the Guardian's Andrew Clements. "Upshaw is supremely economical, never squandering a gesture or a vocal inflection, but superbly, compellingly, she creates an expressive world that matches it perfectly."
Read the complete concert review at guardian.co.uk.
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Earlier, Clements' colleague at the Guardian Nicholas Wroe had written an extensive feature profile of Sellars, which included a look at some of the director's other collaborations, notably with John Adams and Rokia Traoré.
One such collaboration that brought together Sellars, Adams, and Upshaw is Adams's El Niño, from 2000, for which Sellars and Adams compiled the libretto and Upshaw performed in the premiere and on the original recording, out on Nonesuch. (Also featured were Willard White and the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.) Now, just in time for the holiday season, the piece, Adams's Nativity oratorio, returns to San Francisco, where it received its North American premiere in 2001.
On December 2-4, Adams will conduct the San Francisco Symphony in three performances of El Niño at San Francisco's Davis Symphony Hall, with Upshaw reprising her role on the first and final performances. Jessica Rivera, who starred in another Adams/Sellars collaboration, 2006's A Flowering Tree, will perform the soprano role on December 3. Mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung and bass-baritone Jonathan Lemalu will appear in all three performances.
Upshaw, DeYoung, and Lemalu will participate in an informal Q&A immediately after the December 2 performance. Adams will be signing CDs in the Symphony Store following the December 3 concert. And prior to each concert, musicologist Susan Key will lead a talk about the program, free to ticket holders.
For more information and tickets, visit sfsymphony.org.
To pick up a copy of El Niño, A Flowering Tree, or any of the albums in the John Adams Nonesuch catalog, with high-quality MP3s of the album included at checkout, head to the Nonesuch Store.
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