A work by the Arkansas-born composer Florence Price, and a performance by Vikingur Olafsson were among the highlights.<\/b>
\nIn addition to writing reviews, features and news during the week, our critics and reporters offer a glimpse into the research we\u2019 ve done on YouTube. Read the rest of our classical music coverage here. Mystical Musical Orgasm
David Lang\u2019s \u201cjust (after song of songs) , \u201d from 2014, which I first encountered at the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music on Sunday, is an exercise in mesmerizing simplicity and a wallow in gorgeous intimacy. Three female vocalists enumerate attributes and possessions of two lovers, drawn from the biblical Song of Songs, in short-breathed phrases with discreet instrumentation gradually added. The male\u2019s utterances begin with the words \u201cjust your\u2026\u201d and descend; the female\u2019s start with \u201cand my \u2026\u201d and often rise. The few times the lovers speak together (\u201cour \u2026\u201d) , the music takes on a sort of orgasmic shudder, as understated as the rest. JAMES R. OESTREICH
Read our review of Tanglewood\u2019s Festival of Contemporary Music. Bleak, Gentle and Sweet
The most daring presentation of this summer\u2019s Mostly Mozart festival was \u201cThe Dark Mirror, \u201d a musical-theatrical adaptation of Schubert\u2019s \u201cWinterreise.\u201d Using the composer Hans Zender\u2019s orchestration of the original piano part (which I found riveting) , the director Netia Jones created an almost cinematic staging of the cycle for the tenor Ian Bostridge. For an alternative staging, here is the director David Alden\u2019s stark, ominous film version, with Mr. Bostridge and pianist Julius Drake. Catch the moment toward the end of the opening song when the minor-key music shifts to major and the camera zooms in on Mr. Bostridge. The setting is bleak, but the singing gentle and sweet. It\u2019s utterly wrenching. ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Read our review of the staging. Not Defeat, But Triumph
In 1927, in the wake of the lynching of a young black man outside the Bethel A. M. E. church in Little Rock, the Arkansas-born composer Florence Price moved her family north. Six years later, with the premiere of her Symphony in E Minor by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Price became the first black woman to have a large-scale work performed by a major American orchestra. As the musicologist Rae Linda Brown has written, \u201cMarginalized in her occupation by gender and race, Price persevered, and her story is not one of defeat but one of triumph specific to African-American women.\u201d I was reminded of Price\u2019s life and music last weekend, as white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, Va.; I turned to the slow movement of her pathbreaking 1933 symphony, a regal hymn that echoes the Largo of Dvorak\u2019s \u201cNew World.\u201d The movement concludes in poised splendor, as the main hymn theme returns in the brass, serenely punctuated by bells, with the clarinet unraveling eloquent counterpoint. WILLIAM ROBIN A Surprise Aida
The hashtag Jennifer Lindsey uses to describe her dual career as a violinist and singer is #sopranolinist. On Wednesday she got to embody it fully when, in the midst of an open dress rehearsal for Verdi\u2019s \u00ab\u00a0Aida\u00a0\u00bb in California, the leading lady failed to appear for an entrance. Ms. Lindsey, who was both an understudy for the title role and a member of the orchestra\u2019s violin section, rose to her feet, instrument in hand, and delivered a performance that wowed audience members and colleagues. CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM Iceland\u2019s Glenn Gould
Vikingur Olafsson made his Mostly Mozart festival debut recently with a late-evening recital at the Kaplan Penthouse, part of the popular Little Night Music series. He has gained attention for his brilliant performances and recording (on Deutsche Grammophon) of Philip Glass\u2019s piano \u00e9tudes. His captivating accounts of six of them showed why. I was equally impressed, though, by his fleet, free-ranging performance of Bach\u2019s thorny Sixth Partita. Here he is in 2011 playing the work\u2019s Rondeaux of the Second Partita. He takes it at a breathlessly fast tempo, yet plays with crispness and clarity and never seems hard-pressed, even in a finger-entangling passage about halfway through. In this moment, Mr. Olafsson sounds like Iceland\u2019s Glenn Gould. ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Read our interview with Mr. Olafsson, and watch him perform on Facebook Live. Busman\u2019s Holiday
For some, listening to music of the pioneering atonalists Schoenberg and Webern can be hard work, scarcely ideal for a vacation, but if the performances are expert and committed, it can be a joy. The San Francisco Bay Area-based Telegraph Quartet\u2019s performances on YouTube were enough to persuade me to trek from Bar Harbor, Me., to nearby Blue Hill on Sunday to hear the ensemble play Schoenberg\u2019s (tonal) String Quartet No. 1 and Webern\u2019s Rondo at Kneisel Hall. The group\u2019s traversal of the Five Movements by the master miniaturist Webern here is very fine, too. Check out the scherzo-like gem of a third movement, and it may make you, too, hungry for more. JAMES R. OESTREICH The Other Schumann Concerto
Kirill Gerstein, performing at the Mostly Mozart festival this week, followed Robert Schumann\u2019s Piano Concerto in A minor with a brief encore: not a showy crowd-pleaser, but the lovely second movement of Clara Schumann\u2019s Concerto in A minor. She wrote the piece when she was only 14, with orchestration help from Robert Schumann, who later became her husband. (She played the solo part in the premiere, which was conducted by Felix Mendelssohn.) The concerto is clearly the work of a young musician \u2014 it has more beauty than depth \u2014 but the second movement\u2019s duet for piano and cello, in its lyricism and smart understanding of the two instruments\u2019 voices, shows the promise of a composer headed for greatness. JOSHUA BARONE
Watch our Facebook Live concert and interview with Mr. Gerstein. Portrait of a Future Wife
Mr. Gerstein\u2019s exploration of the relationship between Brahms and the Schumanns started in a concert with the Mostly Mozart festival\u2019s orchestra, then continued in an intimate recital later that evening at the Kaplan Penthouse. Here is Mr. Gerstein in 2013 playing Schumann\u2019s \u201cCarnaval, \u201d one of my favorite of the composer\u2019s inventive piano suites (and, judging from this fanciful and brilliant performance, one of Mr. Gerstein\u2019s as well) . Listen to the section titled \u201cChiarina, \u201d a musical portrait of Clara, who was going on 16 at the time. Robert was 25 and did not yet know young Clara would become his wife. Still, the music suggests that his feelings were already churning. ANTHONY TOMMASINI<\/p>\n

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