New York Philharmonic Perform Olga Neuwirth

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 26 April 2024 19:01

Written by Jack Angstreich

Thomas Søndergård conducts the New York Philharmonic. Photo by Chris Lee.

At Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall on the evening of Saturday, April 20th, I had the great pleasure to attend a superb concert played by the New York Philharmonic under the brilliant direction of Thomas Søndergård in his debut performances with this ensemble. 

The event began splendidly with an elegant account of Lili Boulanger’s exquisite Of a Spring Morning from 1918, one of her last works and one with strong affinities to what has often been described as Impressionism. Less satisfying to me was an admirably realized US Premiere presentation of Olga Neuwirth’s ambitious and challenging Keyframes for a Hippogriff — Musical Calligrams in memoriam Hester Diamond, for Countertenor, Children's Choir, and Orchestra, the final version of which was completed in 2021, and which featured the excellent Brooklyn Youth Chorus led by Artistic Director, Dianne Berkun Menaker as well as—in another debut appearance with this ensemble—the outstanding soloist Andre Watts. According to the program note by Dirk Wieschollek, “The piece is a tribute to Neuwirth's friend Hester Diamond (1928– 2020), an American art collector and interior designer who brought together traditional art and modern design in a unique way.” The program also records that:

Olga Neuwirth's Keyframes for a Hippogriff was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic through Project 19, the multi-season initiative to commission and premiere 19 new works by 19 women composers — the largest women-only commissioning initiative in history — to mark the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which established American women's right to vote. The project's goal was to give women composers a platform and catalyze representation in classical music and beyond. The planned World Premiere by the NY Phil was made impossible by the COVID-19 pandemic. This is the second of three premieres of Project 19 works this season; the others are by Melinda Wagner (which was premiered April 7) and Mary Kouyoumdjian (being unveiled May 10). 

This is not the first time that the NY Phil has performed Neuwirth's music. In May 2014 the Philharmonic gave the US Premiere of her Piazza dei Numeri on Mario Merz's Ziffern im Wald, conducted by Matthias Pintscher and featuring soprano Jennifer Zetlan, at The Museum of Modern Art.

Wieschollek adds:

This extensively scored vocal work is based on a collage of texts from a wide range of eras and styles. Fragments from the writings of Ariosto, Blake, Dickinson, Zinaida Gippius, Edward Lear, Nietzsche, Melville, Stein, Whitman, Neuwirth herself, and graffiti are interwoven into a dialogue between countertenor and children's chorus, the latter representing hope, the former the futility and loneliness of the individual in a dystopian world. Neuwirth describes the underlying idea thus: “We try to tell the diverse stories of our small lives against the white noise of information, in which technology already seems to have overtaken human interaction.”

Impressively orchestrated throughout—and containing some demotic elements—the composition has some powerful and rewarding passages, but much of it is beyond my competence to evaluate, especially much of the vocal writing.

The second half of the evening was even more memorable, a sterling version of Sergei Prokofiev’s magnificent Symphony No. 5. After the work’s premiere, the composer wrote:

I regard the Fifth Symphony as the culmination of a long period of my creative life. I conceived of it as glorifying the grandeur of the human spirit … praising the free and happy man — his strength, his generosity, and the purity of his soul. 

The remarkable opening of the initial Andante movement has a spacious, almost leisurely quality; the music steadily builds in intensity, concluding forcefully. The scherzo that follows—marked Allegro marcato—is brisk, playful and ebullient, ending abruptly. The succeeding Adagio is solemn, if at times impassioned, with some reflective, if also song-like moments; it finishes quietly. The predominantly energetic and affirmative Allegro giocoso finale—after a brief, slow, serious introduction that recycles material from the first movement—also has a ludic character as well as some lyricism and a few dramatic episodes; it closes triumphantly and exuberantly.

The artists were enthusiastically applauded.