Yannick Leads Bernstein and Brahms

Commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy to honor her husband at the opening of the performing arts center that was to bear his name, Bernstein’s MASS was brashly beautiful, expressing the chaos of a society rent by unwanted war, shattering conventions as it stirred a spectacular stew of rock, classical, jazz, and unabashedly Broadway music. But at the heart of this daring work was Bernstein’s genius for orchestral composition, the same endlessly gifted creative mind that gave us unforgettable concert music from his symphonies to his suites from Broadway hits like West Side Story and Candide.

In this world premiere performance, Yannick and the Orchestra revisit Bernstein’s MASS—answering their 2015 staged version celebrating the Bernstein Centenary, which was recorded by Deutsche Grammophon and is considered one of the signature interpretations of the work. Stripped of its libretto, this wordless MASS is an instrumental masterpiece, as complex and compelling as the artist who created it.

Buzz has followed the young French pianist Alexandre Kantorow from his 2022 win at the fabled Tchaikovsky Competition to his extraordinary performance opening the Paris Olympics on a bridge over the Seine in the rain and his receiving the Gramophone Piano Award 2025. Hailed by Bachtrack as “a pianophile’s dream” for his “riveting intensity and crystalline clarity,” Kantorow will perform Brahms’s powerful Piano Concerto No. 1, the perfect showcase for his “wonderfully fluid and mercurially expressive” playing.