Tito Muñoz Directs Juilliard Orchestra at Lincoln Center

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 06 February 2024 19:17

Written by Jack Angstreich

Tito Muñoz conducts Juilliard Orchestra. Photo by Claudio Papapietro

At Lincoln Center’s Alice Tull Hall on the evening of Saturday, January 27th, I had the immense pleasure of attending a superb concert of twentieth century symphonic music—continuing a terrific season—presented by the marvelous Juilliard Orchestra, here under the remarkable direction of Tito Muñoz.

The program began brilliantly with a splendid account of Silvio Revueltas’s extraordinary, too infrequently played Sensemayá, based on a poem by Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén. An amazing soloist, Fangzhou Ye, then entered the stage for an excellent performance of Sergei Prokofiev’s awesome Piano Concerto No. 2. The initial Andantino movement opens reflectively but soon becomes more passionate—even volatile—for much of its length, although it ends quietly. The brisk, ensuing—and appropriately and characteristically playful—Scherzo—marked Vivace—is virtuosic, propulsive and colorful, while theModeratomovement that follows is dramatic and portentous but with some meditative—as well as some quirkier, more jocular—passages, eventually acquiring a dance-like, almost jazzy rhythm, but it also ends softly and somewhat abruptly. The finale—an Allegro tempestuoso—is more hurried in pace at the outset, but becomes more measured, even lyrical, if eventually more agitated and concludes very excitingly.

The second half of the program was even stronger, comprised of a thrilling realization of Igor Stravinsky’s dazzling ballet score, Petrouchka, in its 1947 revision. The artists deservedly received an enthusiastic ovation.

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