My father’s students included diplomats from the West, who would come to our house with recordings of people like the Amadeus Quartet and Nikolaus Harnoncourt – and not to mention the cassette player for us to play them on.
Enter Nico Muhly, Sven Helbig and Zhou Long, each assigned a movement, each invoking a different musical landscape, a different musical sensibility – and fierce individuals, each. And yet the wonder is that they sound like they belong, or are destined to belong, together. The unifying force is plainly Vogler himself. His musical personality defines the piece.
Last weekend, live streams escalated to marathons. The cellist Jan Vogler organized a 24-hour event called Music Never Sleeps NYC … Music Never Sleeps was a feel-good miracle of coordination and collaboration across musical forms and genres.
Hats off, then, to those living in New York for turning something disastrous into 24 hours of lyrical joy...and I was staggered by the variety, virtuosity and beauty of what they offered. It was all pulled together, in under a week, by the renowned cellist Jan Vogler. What a shining example he has set.
So far Music Never Sleeps NYC has been the most impressive out of the many signs of life the classical music industry has sent in these times of lockdown.
Working with Bill Murray taught me that classical music doesn’t need an explanation.
For all his technical prowess, what impressed most was the expressiveness he brought to Helbig’s heart-on-sleeve Aria, adorning its low-lying main motif with a warm vibrato and full, resounding chords.
From the moment Jan Vogler and his Strad entered, five bars into Schumann's Cello Concerto, every note moved passionately ahead, spontaneously pulsing with energy, larger than life and yet intimate at the same time, reaching the heart of Schumann's eternal dichotomy.
We are touching on a lot of subjects, touching on all the important things about humanity and about our existence — but in an entertaining way.
This surreal evening closes with Bill Murray ambling through the stalls tossing long-stemmed roses to patrons. And a standing ovation. I'm still not entirely sure what we've just witnessed; something fun, intriguing, special, musical, unique, creative, inspiring, something beautiful...more than words can tell.
It could scarcely have had a more auspicious opening and won a rapturous reception from the very elegant capacity house.
Instead of being equipped with an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back, Murray’s secret weapon is his world-class, classical music trio. If there is such as a power trio in classical music, Vogler, Perez and Wang certainly are it.
These New World explorers continued to astonish with their musical and literary range. Above all, they showed that even with a hefty lineup of composers and writers like Bach, Hemingway, Shostakovich, and Whitman, art done right can bring grand lightness and joy to an old and cynical world.
The chamber ensemble headed by Vogler, pianist Vanessa Perez, and violinist Mira Wang gave many different textures to the evening. Vogler’s smartly colored performance of the Bach Cello Suite No. 1 first movement...particularly set a somewhat serious but not studious tone for a rapt, appreciative audience.
Can you imagine a chamber music concert—a quartet, playing mostly classical work by composers with names like Bach, Schubert and Shostakovich—getting six encores? And seven—yes, seven—standing ovations? That’s what happened the other night when New Worlds—a one-night performance featuring Bill Murray and a trio of string players—took the stage for its Washington, DC premiere.
Soloist Jan Vogler struck a convincing balance between introspection and drama, while Manfred Honeck led the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin with a gentle hand.
a rather wonderful new species of performance art few others would have dreamed up or could have brought off so beautifully
This project is extraordinary, but it is something that has come out of friendship, and that is the most important thing.
Jan Vogler leads radiant performances of Tchaikovsky’s string works.
Vogler’s witty and affectionate Rococo Variations — combining Tchaikovsky’s original with the version by Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, the dedicatee — are up there with the best.
Mr. Vogler pushed the expressive envelope to extremes, sullen and heartfelt in the outer movements, furious in the constant motion of the second.
