New York Philharmonic Strikes Chord with De Profundis

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 19 October 2023 14:38

Written by Jack Angstreich

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducts New York Philharmonic. Photo by Chris Lee.

At Lincoln Center’s wonderful new David Geffen Hall on the night of Saturday, October 14th, I had the great pleasure to attend an outstanding concert—the second subscription program of the current season—presented by the excellent musicians of the New York Philharmonic under the remarkable direction of the young Lithuanian conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla in her debut with this ensemble.

The event began impressively with a lucid account of the striking, intense and solemn De profundis for string orchestra from 1998 by the contemporary Lithuanian composer, Raminta Šerkšnytė. (The work is strangely reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann’s magnificent score for the Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece, Psycho.) I here reproduce Šerkšnytė’s interesting note on the piece:

This dramatic music, full of contrasts, reflects a certain worldview of a young person (this is my first orchestral composition, which was written as the bachelor’s graduation work). At a young age life is perceived in an extreme, “severe” way, where euphoria quickly changes to disappointment. One searches for the extraordinary, transcendental experience both in life as well as in art, believing in the profound power of the art sacredness. Therefore the opus was named “from the depths” (Latin — “de profundis”), though making no reckoning of the historical “De profundis” tradition.

The composer, who was in the audience, entered the stage to receive the audience’s acclaim.

The brilliant soloist, Daniil Trifonov, then joined the artists for a magisterial rendition of Robert Schumann’s admirable, archetypally Romantic Piano Concerto. The opening Allegro affettuoso movement is surprisingly meditative and lyrical but with grand and virtuosic—even turbulent—passages. The more classicizing Intermezzo, marked Andante grazioso,recalls the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven and is somewhat lighter in mood, while the Allegro vivace finale is highly spirited, even effervescent. Ardent applause elicited a fabulous encore: the pianist’s own exquisite transcription—which he has recorded—of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s immensely popularVocalise.

Even more memorable, however, was the second half of the evening: a splendorous realization of three selections from the marvelous Lemminkäinen Suite of Jean Sibelius. The almost inexplicably too seldom performed Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of the Island was captivating and stirring and the haunting and mysterious The Swan of Tuonela is one of the composer’s finest achievements—it featured a superb Ryan Roberts on the English horn. The program concluded dynamically with the more suspenseful and celebratory Lemminkäinen’s Return.

I look forward with considerable excitement to the following week’s subscription concert with early music by György Ligeti and the first Serenade of Johannes Brahms.

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