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Reviews
New York Philharmonic Performs "Swaddling Silk and Gossamer Rain" and "Cinderella"
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 04 June 2026 13:40
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Photo by Brandon Patoc
At Lincoln Center’s wonderful David Geffen Hall, on the night of Thursday, May 28th, I had the privilege to attend an excellent concert presented by the New York Philharmonic, under the distinguished direction of Elim Chan.
The event started very promisingly with the brilliant realization of one of the New York premiere performances of Noriko Koide’s unusual but remarkable Swaddling Silk and Gossamer Rain, from 2022. In a Gramophone podcast interview she stated that:
Western music is not my mother tongue, right? I'm a Japanese composer. So, it's like I have two different OS installed inside me — Javanese music and Western music, and sometimes pop music.
There, according to annotator Kathryn Bacasmot, who is described as “an independent writer about music,” the composer “explained that after reading” Mariko Asabuki’s novel Timeless, “she wanted to express its unique atmosphere.” About her musical influences, she told her publisher that “Western music language and gamelan music language often have the exact opposite direction.” Bacasmot adds that “Koide describes her compositional style as comprising ‘delicate timbre and subtle resonance.’”
Philharmonic principal Carter Brey then entered the stage as soloist for a very accomplished rendition of Camille Saint-Saëns’s memorable Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 33, from 1872. The initial Allegro non troppo begins forcefully, indeed dramatically, with a sense of urgency generally sustained throughout the movement, but at times the music has a more affirmative character as well as a lyricism that eventually comes to the fore. The ensuing Allegretto con moto is more intense and turbulent but also has song-like passages, while the concluding movement, marked Tempo primo, builds to a rousing climax, closing triumphantly. Enthusiastic applause elicited a welcome encore from the cellist (who is retiring from the ensemble at the end of this season): his own arrangement of the classic song, “Strange Fruit,” which was made famous by Billie Holiday, and served here as a memorial to George Floyd.
The second half of the evening was even stronger, consisting in an admirable account of selections from Sergei Prokofiev’s marvelous score for the ballet, Cinderella, which was composed from 1940 to 1944. According to James M. Keller, “former New York Philharmonic Program Annotator and the author of Chamber Music: A Listener's Guide”:
In 1946 the composer assembled music from the ballet into three separate orchestral suites. The music performed in this concert contains three selections from the Cinderella Suite No. 1, the most popular of the three, with the rest from the original complete ballet score.
“In an extended preface to the score,”Prokofiev wrote:
What I wished to express above all in the music of Cinderella was the poetic love of Cinderella and the Prince, the birth and flowering of that love, the obstacles in its path, and finally the dream fulfilled.
The fairy story offered a number of fascinating problems for the composer — the atmosphere of magic surrounding the fairy godmother, [etc.]. … The producers of the ballet, however, wanted the fairy tale to serve merely as a setting for the portrayal of flesh-and-blood human beings with human passions and failings. …
Apart from the dramatic structure I was anxious to make the ballet as “danceable” as possible, with a variety of dances that would weave themselves into the pattern of the story, and give the dancers ample opportunity to display their art. I wrote Cinderella in the traditions of the old classical ballet: it has pas de deux, adagios, gavottes, several waltzes, a pavane, passepied, bourrée, mazurka, and galop. Each character has his or her variation.
The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.
Film Series: Open Roads—New Italian Cinema 2026
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 29 May 2026 19:45
- Written by Kevin Filipski
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| Benedetta Porcaroli and Lucrezia Guglielmino in The Kidnapping of Arabella |
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| Barbara Ronchi in Elise |
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| Jasmine Trinca in The Eyes of Others |
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| Jasmine Trinca in La Gioia |
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| Tecla Insolia in Primavera |
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| Valeria Golino and Pilar Fogliati in A Brief Affair |
New York Philharmonic Present Haydn & Mozart at Lincoln Center
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 29 May 2026 13:53
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Photo by Chris Lee
At Lincoln Center’s wonderful David Geffen Hall, on the morning of Friday, May 22nd, I had the privilege to attend a fabulous concert presented by the New York Philharmonic, under the stellar direction of Marek Janowski,
The event started splendidly with an accomplished account of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s exquisite Serenade No. 6 in D major, K.239, the Serenata notturna, from 1776. (It featured violinists Frank Huang and Qianqian Li, violist Cynthia Phelps, and bassist Max Zeugner.) The initial Marcia movement, marked Maestoso, is charming and effervescent, although with a more subdued but graceful, contrasting section. The ensuing Menuetto is stately and march-like too, while its Trio is more playful and ebullient. The energetic Rondeau finale, marked Allegretto, is also delightful—it has a more serious, slower interlude.
Even more memorably, Philharmonic principal Christopher Martin then entered the stage as soloist in a superb rendition of Franz Joseph Haydn’s brilliant Trumpet Concerto in E-flat major, from 1796. The Allegro, firstmovement has a noble, even majestic, quality but acquires a great depth of feeling as it unfolds—it features a marvelous cadenza. The succeeding Andante is more solemn and restrained but lovely—it closes quietly. The Allegro Finale is lively, indeed jubilant, and enchanting.
The second half of the program was even better: a masterly realization of Felix Mendelssohn’s extraordinary Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56, completed in 1842. The composer wrote interestingly on the work’s genesis:
In the evening twilight we went today to the palace where Queen Mary lived and loved; a little room is shown there with a winding staircase leading up to the door: up this way they came and found Rizzio in that dark corner, where they pulled him out, and three rooms off there is a dark corner, where they murdered him. The chapel close to it is now roofless, grass and ivy grow there, and at that broken altar Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything round is broken and mouldering and the bright sky shines in. I believe I have found today in that old chapel the beginning of my Scottish Symphony.
The beginning movement has a somber introduction, marked Andante con moto, that precedes its complex, more characteristically Mendelssohnian, and passionately Romantic main body—its tempo is Allegro in poco agitato—with many turbulent passages; it finishes softly. The following, Vivace non troppo is dance-like, spirited, and often dynamic but not without a certain gravity at times—it too concludes gently. The subsequent Adagio more intensively elaborates the serious elements in the earlier movements; it closes serenely. The last movement is generally faster, with considerable forward momentum and some impressive fugal writing—one can discern the influence of Ludwig van Beethoven most strongly here—it builds finally to a powerful and affirmative climax, ending triumphantly.
The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.
New York Philharmonic Performs Post-War Classical at Lincoln Center
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 27 May 2026 14:47
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Photo by Chris Lee
At Lincoln Center’s wonderful David Geffen Hall, on the night of Saturday, April 25th, I had the exceptional privilege to attend an amazing concert featuring the New York Philharmonic, splendidly conducted by the magnificent and beautiful soprano, Barbara Hannigan.
The event started auspiciously with a marvelous realization of Richard Strauss’s extraordinary Metamorphosen, A Study for 23 Solo Strings, from 1945. In an earlier review I described it as “a tour de force and a paragon of late Romanticism—music that often has a neo-Wagnerian character but that also recalls the work of Gustav Mahler, particularly the Adagietto from his Symphony No. 5.” Other close analogues might be Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, a possible influence, and Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, which has some of the same hushed intensity. The late musicologist Michael Steinberg—who was Program Annotator for the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony—commented on the destruction of Munich—the composer’s birthplace—during World War II, as follows:
The National Theater, called the Court Theater in the old days, was destroyed during the night of October 2–3, 1943. A few weeks later he penciled a 24-measure sketch that he labeled Trauer urn München (Mourning for Munich). A figure in quick notes in the middle of the texture would become a crucial component of Metamorphosen. On the morning of March 13, 1945, he learned that the Vienna Opera had burned down the night before; later that day he began to write Metamorphosen.
He went on to identify a theme that appears late in the piece:
It is the funeral march from Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, Eroica, and Strauss writes “IN MEMORIAM!” at the moment of its appearance. It is as though this were the hidden theme of which all this music is the development, the metamorphosis. Strauss himself insisted that when he wrote his Mourning for Munich sketch and its variant in Metamorphosen, he was not aware of the Eroica connection. The idea, he said, just “escaped” from his pen, and it was only while composing Metamorphosen that what now seems so inevitable as well as so moving became clear to him.
The annotators also adduced some further relevant connections:
On the morning of March 13, 1945, Richard Strauss learned that the Vienna Opera had burned down the night before, after an Allied bombing raid. For distraction from his misery, he had started to reread the complete works of Goethe. Almost certainly the title Metamorphosen came from Goethe, who used that word not only in his scientific writings, but also in reference to his own intellectual and spiritual development. Strauss copied two of Goethe's poems into his Metamorphosen sketchbook. The title of the first is Know Thyself, a task, Goethe suggests, as necessary as it is impossible. The second says that even in an incomprehensible world one must
Behave with good sense
As each day brings what it brings.
Always remember: it's worked so far,
And so it will surely work till the end.
Even more memorable, however, was the glorious presentation of the second composition of the evening, which proved to be another tour de force: François Poulenc’s stunning opera, La Voix humaine, Tragédie lyrique en un act, from 1958, adapted from the famous monodrama by Jean Cocteau, here magnificently sung from the podium in a dazzling performance by Hannigan.
The eminent critic Martin Seymour-Smith, in a fascinating assessment, said of Cocteau that he “was one of the most versatile of all modern writers; but his greatest achievement is undoubtedly in the theatre; he was a successful playwright in both avant garde and traditional forms.” In the 1950s and ‘60s, Cocteau was championed by the critics of the magazine Cahiers du cinéma as one of the great French auteurs, deserving a place alongside such masters as Jean Renoir, Max Ophüls, Robert Bresson, Jean-Pierre Melville, and Jacques Becker, for his immortal series of films that included The Blood of a Poet, Beauty and the Beast, Les Parents terribles, Orpheus, and The Testament of Orpheus. He was also a scenarist for Bresson’s Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, Melville’s Les Enfants terribles, and Georges Franju’s Thomas l’imposteur, the latter two adapted from Cocteau’s own novels. His play, The Eagle with Two Heads, which he himself filmed in 1948, was the basis for Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Mystery of Oberwald from 1980, which starred Monica Vitti. The Human Voice was unforgettably filmed by Roberto Rossellini in 1948 with Anna Magnani.
With perfect justice, Hannigan and the musicians received an unusually enthusiastic ovation.
