New York Philharmonic Plays Modern Classics

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 15 January 2024 16:09

Written by Jack Angstreich

Jakub Hrůša conducts the New York Philharmonic

At Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall on Friday, January 12th, I had the privilege of attending a splendid concert—continuing a superb season—presented by the New York Philharmonic, here under the exciting direction of the impressive Czech guest conductor, Jakub Hrůša.

The event began brilliantly with a sterling rendition of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s marvelous Ballade for Orchestra. The celebrated soloist Hilary Hahn then entered the stage for a dazzling performance of Sergei Prokofiev’s extraordinary Violin Concerto No. 1, which is the basis for Jerome Robbins’s memorable ballet, Opus 19 / The Dreamer and was one of the only works by the composer admired by his eminent contemporary, Igor Stravinsky. In his useful note for the program, James M. Keller records that:

This concerto traces its origins to a Concertino for Violin that Prokofiev had begun in 1915 but left incomplete. Some material for that earlier work ended up in his first Violin Concerto, which in any case adheres to modest proportions. (It retained its deceptively “early” opus number from the projected Concertino.) 

In his “Short Autobiography” of 1941, Prokofiev commented on five dimensions of his style, including the fourth, the lyrical strain in his œuvre, of which he characterized this concerto as representative: 

The fourth line is lyrical: it appears first as a thoughtful and meditative mood, not always associated with melody, or at any rate with long melody (“Fairy Tale” in the Four Pieces for Piano Op. 3, Dreams, Autumnal, the songs Op. 9, the “Legend” Op. 12), sometimes partly contained in long melody (the two Balmont choruses, the beginning of the First Violin Concerto, the songs to Akhmatova's poems, Grandmother's Tales). This line was not noticed until much later. For a long time I was given no credit for any lyrical gift whatever, and for want of encouragement it developed slowly. But as time went on I gave more attention to this aspect of my work.

The largely meditative and quirky initial movement has an uncharacteristic prettiness but also a certain solemnity. About the arresting, even more eccentric second movement, the former New York Philharmonic Program Annotator Michael Steinberg, in his book The Concerto, wrote:

a scherzo marked vivacissimo represented the “savage” element as against the generally more lyrical first and third movements. The music, full of contrast, is by turns amusing, naughty, for a while even malevolent, athletic, and always violinistically ingenious and brilliant. It seems to be over in a moment.

The movement is virtuosic, propulsive, fittingly playful, but with abrasive elements. The finale is the most beautiful and song-like of the movements—but with passages of contrasting urgency, although some parts have an almost pastoral or even celestial character—and it ends quietly. Hahn returned to play an exquisite encore: the amazing Andante from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Violin Sonata No. 2 in A minor, BWV 1003, a work which she has recorded.

The second half of the concert was at least equally admirable, consisting of a terrific version of Béla Bartók’s incomparable Concerto for Orchestra. The composer provided the following remarks upon it:

The title of this symphony-like orchestral work is explained by its tendency to treat single orchestral instruments in a concertante or soloistic manner. The “virtuoso” treatment appears, for instance, in the fugato sections of the development of the first movement (brass instruments), or in the perpetuum mobile–like passage of the principal theme in the last movement (strings), and especially in the second movement, in which pairs of instruments consecutively appear with brilliant passages. 

He also said:

The general mood of the work represents, apart from the jesting second movement, a gradual transition from the sternness of the first movement and the lugubrious death-song of the third to the life-assertion of the last one.

The introductory movement begins gravely, even ominously, becoming unexpectedly dramatic but with some mysterious interludes and, like the other movements, finishes abruptly. The more unusual second movement—titled Game of Couples—is ludic, even at times jocose, but with some serious elements, closing softly. The suspenseful Elegia that ensues is more uncanny in atmosphere, preceding the enchanting fourth movement which has humorous, almost cartoonish, interruptions. The energetic, ebullient Finale has great forward momentum but with some more subdued interludes; as it approaches its end, the music acquires a ghostly character, then concludes stunningly. The artists deservedly received a very enthusiastic ovation.

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