"Fountain of Youth" with the New York Philharmonic

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 19 November 2024 15:13

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

At Lincoln Center’s splendid David Geffen Hall on the night of Tuesday, November 12th, I had the exceptional privilege to attend an extraordinary concert presented by the New York Philharmonic under the superb direction of Santtu-Matias Rouvali.

The event began brilliantly with a stellar account of Julianne Wolfe’s thrilling Fountain of Youth from 2019, which shows the influence of rock music. (This ensemble has previously commissioned two works from this composer: Fire in my mouth from 2018 and unEarth from 2023) At the end of the piece, Wolfe entered the stage to receive the audience’s acclaim. 

The magnificent soprano Miah Persson—who looked fabulous in a stunning, burgundy gown—then joined the artists to exquisitely perform Richard Strauss’s glorious Four Last Songs from 1948. The first three songs are settings of poems by Hermann Hesse, beginning with the most affirmative, Frühling (“Spring”), followed by the more resigned September. The next son— the celestial and Wagnerian Beim Schlafengehen (“Going to Sleep”)—features “a violin solo derived from the final trio of Der Rosenkavalier,” according to the excellent note for the program by James M. Keller. About the final song, the irenic and radiant Im Abendrot (“In the Sunset Glow”)—which is from a text by Joseph von Eichendorff—Keller says that that it quotes “the transfiguration motif” from the composer’s marvelous tone poem, Tod und Verklärung (“Death and Transfiguration”).

The second half of the evening was comparable in power: an awesome rendition of the magisterial Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 82, by Jean Sibelius. Keller explains: “The Finnish government commissioned Sibelius's Fifth Symphony to mark the composer's 50th birthday in 1915.” And he adds:

Sibelius's Fifth Symphony occupied the composer for seven years, since he probably began sketching it as early as 1912 and revised it considerably following the provisional premiere, which he conducted in Helsinki on his 50th birthday. A second version was unveiled in 1916, and then, after still more work, the Fifth Symphony reached its final form in 1919.

The composer wrote in a letter in 1918:

My new works, partly sketched and planned. The Fifth Symphony in a new form — practically composed anew — I work daily … The whole — if I may say so — a spirited intensification to the end (climax). Triumphal. 

The annotator reports: “Sibelius goes on to tell his correspondent that two of the other pieces currently in his thoughts are his Sixth and Seventh Symphonies.” He comments that the composer recorded “in a notebook in late 1914”: 

I begin to see dimly the mountain I shall ascend. God opens His door for a moment and His orchestra plays the Fifth Symphony. 

The initial movement which begins majestically traverses a considerable range of moods becoming portentous, suspenseful, and heroic before an inchoate section; the gloom ultimately recedes and the music acquires a celebratory ethos, concluding exultantly. The slow movement—marked Andante mosso, quasi allegretto—has a dance-like character—sometimes recalling Sibelius’s transcendent Valse triste—with strong Romantic inflections, and is almost carefree at times, closing somewhat abruptly. The exalting finale, which is quietly exciting at its outset, is not without lyricism, much of it having a propulsive rhythm, and it ends joyously. The artists were enthusiastically applauded.

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