“Good news: With the fifth season of Contact!, the contemporary-music series the New York Philharmonic inaugurated in 2009, comes a performance space that finally suits the informal tone the orchestra desired but never previously delivered,” writes Steve Smith in Friday’s (11/8) New York Times. “That’s not meant as a knock on the two previous Contact! locations,” the more formal Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Symphony Space. “SubCulture, newly opened under the Culture Project on Bleecker Street in the East Village … embraces a range of styles, classical music included…. The new space has … clear sightlines, raked seats to the rear and, to judge by Monday’s performance [led by Esa-Pekka Salonen], a welcome dearth of commerce during events…. The present season … is limited to just two events at SubCulture, each built around a starry guest: Mr. Salonen, already in town to conduct subscription concerts at Avery Fisher Hall, on Monday, and the pianist Yefim Bronfman in January. Of two further programs to be held elsewhere—both part of the laudable NY Phil Biennial—one is a prefab import from the Salzburg Festival, and the other, the only Contact! event to feature emerging American composers, is limited to solo works.”
Posted November 8, 2013
