New York City Ballet, one of the planet’s enduring cultural jewels, is finishing up its winter season at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch theater with a bang: classic modern  masterworks by Balanchine and Robbins, including the enchanting Liebeslieder Walzer.

Since December the Ballet has presenting something for everyone-- The Nutcracker, in the enchanting production created by the company’s legendary founder George Balanchine; a run of general repertory, which includes a bounty of modernist classics and new, commissioned work from exciting young choreographers; and then the production of Swan Lake created by the company’s current leader Peter Martins.

Balanchine's Liebeslieder Walzer

Now, for the final weeks of the its annual winter season, City Ballet is presenting two must-see programs:

•  an All-Balanchine program-- featuring Liebeslieder Walzer and Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2, on the evenings Tuesday 2-16,  Wednesday 2-17, Friday 2-19, and Saturday, 2-2

•  an All-Robbins program— featuring West Side Story Suite and Dances at a Gathering, on the evenings of Thursday 2-18 and Tuesday 2-23, and the afternoon of Saturday 2-21.

For more details on these programs, see the New York City Ballet’s website.

Seriously, these programs are must-see.  All of New York’s hard-core ballet enthusiasts will be there.  But especially if you are not particularly hard-core and want to have a better sense of why the names of Balanchine and Robbins are still revered, and will continue to be revered for the next seven hundred years, you should make it a point to catch one of these performances.

Here’s one reason why:  These works are modernist masterpieces--  meaning they are well-made in structure, concept, and detail; they enlighten as well as entertain; and they thrill in the way they show how the elevated standards and lofty goals of high art can survive and thrive in a post-post-modern age.

Here’s another reason why:  the artists of the New York City Ballet—those amazingly passionate, superbly trained dancers!—are endlessly watchable.

Here’s a third reason:  Balanchine himself said that the music used in his theater was so good that, if you don’t happen to like ballet, you could just close your eyes and listen.

Some insights:

-George Balanchine’s plotless Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 premiered in 1941 and is set to the Tchaikovsky work of the same name-- a richly detailed successor to the composer’s better-known first piano concerto.

"Balanchine described the ballet as a contemporary tribute to Petipa, 'the father of the classical ballet,' and to Tchaikovsky, his greatest composer." –New York City Ballet

-Balanchine’s Liebeslieder Walzer, from 1960, is set to Brahm’s Liebeslieder, Op. 52 (1869) and Neue Liebeslieder, Op. 65 (1874). 

“For this two-part ballet of waltzes for piano duet and vocal quartet set to poems by Friedrich Daumer and one, the last, set to a poem by Goethe, the dancers are joined on stage by the musicians and singers. All are dressed in period ballroom costumes. During the first set of eighteen waltzes the four couples dance in interweaving combinations in an intimate, elegantly-appointed ballroom. For these dances, the women wear dancing slippers. After a brief lowering of the curtain, the couples return to dance fourteen waltzes, the women wearing ballet dresses and toe shoes. They leave the stage; returning in their original costumes, then pause to listen to the final waltz set to Goethe's words: 'Now, Muses, enough! You try in vain to portray how misery and happiness alternate in a loving heart!'"  --New York City Ballet

-Jerome Robbins’ West Side Story Suite was premiered in 1995 and is based on the iconic, 1957 musical theater work West Side Story, with music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and choreography and direction by Robbins.

“Admired on both the ballet and Broadway stage, Jerome Robbins excelled at creating profound drama in his works…. A modern love story based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story Suite brings audiences to the feuding streets of 1950s New York City with its crackling energy and heart-rending poignancy.” –New York City Ballet

-For Dances at a Gathering, Robbins used the music of Frédéric Chopin  a rich selection of mazurkas, waltzes, etudes, plus a scherzo and nocturne.  

“One of his most popular masterpieces, Dances at a Gathering distills the spectrum of human relations into the most natural of movements, endlessly spontaneous in their representation of community.” –New York City Ballet

It’s interesting to note that this marvelous work, depicting an almost French Enlightenment balance of decorum and passion, premiered in 1969, a year when social chaos was raging across the nation and the world.  –Classical TV

And during its final week of the season, starting February 25, New York City presents Balanchine’s 1967 masterpiece, Jewels.

–Balanchine’s three-part, full-length ballet Jewels is set to several different scores:  “Emeralds” is set to Pelléas et Mélisande (1898) and Shylock (1889) by Gabriel Fauré; “Rubies” is set to Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra (1929) by Igor Stravinsky; and “Diamonds” is set to Symphony No. 3 in D major, Op. 29 (1875) by Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky.

“Balanchine was inspired by the artistry of jewelry designer Claude Arpels, and chose music revealing the essence of each jewel. He explained: ‘Of course, I have always liked jewels; after all, I am an Oriental, from Georgia in the Caucasus. I like the color of gems, the beauty of stones, and it was wonderful to see how our costume workshop, under Karinska's direction, came so close to the quality of real stones (which were of course too heavy for the dancers to wear!).’” –New York City Ballet

New York’s new music scene, always aglow with the fervor of ongoing cultural metamorphosis, suddenly seems fully on fire.  In recent weeks, sensational concerts including new works have been given by Lincoln Center’s New Visions series, the American Composers Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic’s new “Contact!” series, among others.  And it no longer feels as though these concerts are attended only by new music cognoscenti.  Lots of generally curious music lovers pile in, too (many of these concerts were buzzed up and sold out!), the result, in part, of indefatigable work done over the years by Bang on a Can and other institutions that have helped open new ears to new music.

The Philharmonic’s Contact! Series is an especially welcome newcomer.   Part of the new energy that has seized the orchestra since dynamic Alan Gilbert stepped onto the podium as Music Director a few months ago, Contact! made an auspicious debut last week in concerts at Symphony Space and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The program for both concerts featured four new works that, mirabile dictu, one hopes to hear again; they were introduced by the orchestra’s engaging composer-in-residence, Magnus Lindberg: Arlene Sierra’s Game of Attrition, for chamber orchestra; Lei Liang’s Verge, for eighteen strings; Marc-André Dalbavie’s Melodia, for instrumental ensemble; and Arthur Kampela’s Macunaíma, for an ensemble heavy on percussion, including a complement of spring drum thingies meant to evoke the Brazilian forest.

If you wish you could have been there at Symphony Space or the Metropolitan Museum, or you were there and want to hear the program again, here’s your chance:  this debut Contact! concert will be broadcast on Sunday, December 27 at 2 p.m. on Q2, WQXR’s contemporary online classical music stream. (Listeners may access the broadcasts by visiting www.wqxr.org/Q2: select the Q2 tab on the Player and click “Listen.” The concert can also be heard on iTunes.)

And may we put another event on your radar?  The Contact! Series returns on Saturday, April 17, when Alan Gilbert will be conducting members of the Philharmonic, with baritone Thomas Hampson, at the Metropolitan Museum.  On the bill will be three world premiers:  Sean Shepherd’s These Particular Circumstances, Matthias Pintscher’s Songs from Solomon’s Garden, and a new work by young superstar composer Nico Muhly.

Composer-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic, Magnus Lindberg.

Some celebrations get a bottle of fizz and a takeaway pizza. Hugh Masekela’s birthday got a full symphony orchestra, a community choir, and two new compositions.

For 55 years he’s been the kick-ass force in rebellious South African music: his career was jump-started with a trumpet sent over by the great Satchmo himself.

So when Hugh Masekela’s 70^th birthday was celebrated at the end of last week by the London Symphony Orchestra, it says something about a career, and a musical journey.

This was a fight-to-get-that-ticket event: the Barbican concert hall packed with Masekela fans and expatriate South Africans, plus a smattering of bemused LSO regulars looking slightly buttoned-up for the leap-to-your feet encore: everyone singing and clapping along to the ANC anthem “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika”. (If you’ve never had a chance at that, it was a buzz, I can tell you.)

So what do these “symphony orchestra gets into the groove” sessions give us?

It’s true that some of the arrangements of Masekela’s most memorable numbers teetered on the wrong side of the dividing line between Richly-Orchestrated and Schmaltzy. What can you do when you’ve got a hefty string section just dying to get in on the act?

But personality and raw musicianship can save the day: Masekela on flugelhorn, and Francois-Xavier Roth on the podium.

“Francois’s really getting on down!” Masekela quipped to the audience. “It was all raggedy until he came along on Monday, but then he started dancing around up there, and pointing. When he points at you it’s as though he’s got a little gun!

And it was programming smarts on the LSO’s part to include youth as well as “old geezers” on the card  (that was Masekela coming over all Cockney describing two of his backing-singer buddies from way back). The evening included the world premieres of two short works by talented up-and-comers: Jason Yarde – previously commissioned by the LSO to write a concerto for Masekela back in 2007 – and Andrew McCormack.

Plus we had bucket-loads of amateur enthusiasm with the massed voices of the St Luke’s Community Choir, who were coached in their clap-and-sway by Masekela (and who were saying goodbye to their gorgeous musical director, the tv presenter Gareth Malone).

It was a big night, a fitting tribute to a huge talent. And in a few of the pieces the LSO really discovered the right laid-back, speakeasy sound. Yes – orchestras should do this kind of stuff.

--Piccolo

• Read the Guardian review.  

• Read the Times (London) review. 

• Read the London Jazz review.