Philadelphia Orchestra Present "Liberty Bell" and More at Carnegie Hall

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 15 October 2026 13:03

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

At the wonderful Stern Auditorium, on the night of Tuesday, October 13th, I had the inestimable pleasure of attending a fabulous concert—presented by Carnegie Hall as the first performance in this season’s cycle of the complete symphonies of Gustav Mahler—featuring the superb Philadelphia Orchestra under the brilliant direction of the irrepressible Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

The event started dazzlingly with an extraordinary account of Anton Webern’s magnificent, too seldom played Im Sommerwind, idyll for large orchestra, from 1904, which is often sumptuous and is surprisingly variegated in mood and texture, recalling the tone poems of Richard Strauss. Also outstanding, if projecting an ethos rather at odds with the other works on the program, was a marvelous realization of the New York premiere of Julia Wolfe’s often thrilling Liberty Bell from last year—co-commissioned by this venue—which has idiomatic elements drawn from popular musical forms. The composer, who was present to receive the audience’s acclaim, has said the following in connection with this piece: 

I grew up in a small town north of Philadelphia. The image of the silent cracked Liberty Bell is emblazoned in my memory.

She wrote this as well in her own program note:

My Liberty Bell is not silent. The over 100 musicians on stage are raucous and loud. Battles between independent rhythmic lines form a jagged composite whole. Metal chimes and pitched bell plates are struck to resonate and ring out. Obtaining liberty is not a quiet, tidy process. It is a messy, boisterous, ongoing, interlocking struggle. How can a piece of music embody and communicate the elusive reach for the most basic tenet of the founding of the country? The idea of liberty is everywhere—imprinted on coins, decorating postage stamps, declared in poetry and song, sprinkled through speeches. Music is my way of adding to the clamor. I shout out perseverance, grab tight to optimism, and search for a way forward. Taking the bell’s inscription literally, “unto all the inhabitants thereof,” the proclamation speaks to all who reach for the promise of liberty.

The second half of the evening was even more spectacular, consisting of an astonishing version of Mahler’s incomparable Symphony No. 5 in C-Sharp Minor, the final revision of which was completed in 1904. In one of his last letters he stated: “It is clear that all the experience I had gained in writing the first four symphonies completely let me down in this one—for an entirely new style demanded a new technique.” The initial movement begins with a stirring fanfare that becomes increasingly dramatic, ushering in recurring waltz-like music that is punctuated by bursts of turbulence that sometimes recapitulate the thematic material of the opening, until it ends abruptly. The tempestuousness of the first movement is continued in much of the closely related second, which also recycles motifs from the earlier one, and here too, there are lyrical passages; the music builds to a triumphant climax before concluding softly in a more serene, quasi-pastoral dénouement. 

About the next movement, the composer said: 

The Scherzo is an accursed movement! It will have a long history of suffering! For 50 years conductors will take it too fast and make nonsense of it. The public—oh heavens—how should it react to this chaos that is eternally giving birth to a world that then perishes in the next movement, to these primordial sounds, to this blustering, bellowing, roaring ocean, to these dancing stars, to these shimmering, flashing, breathing waves.

It is characteristically playful and indeed cheerful—and here too there are waltz-like interludes—but it is shot through with suspenseful, even portentous, measures, as well as irenic episodes; it finishes joyfully, even boisterously, with some suddenness. The ensuing, celebrated Adagietto is glorious and celestial, but also with more emotional moments of intense urgency—this reaches a stunning apotheosis, closing very quietly. The Rondo-Finale starts with another, although more bucolic, fanfare—this movement too has a sunny radiance, growing more exuberant at length, ending exultantly.

The artists deservedly were rapturously applauded.