New York Philharmonic Play Debussy & Saariaho

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 20 February 2025 14:50

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

At Lincoln Center’s excellent David Geffen Hall on the night of Tuesday, February 18th, I had the exceptional privilege to attend a splendid New York Philharmonic subscription concert—which continued a strong season—impressively led by Karina Canellakis.

The event started very promisingly with an admirable realization of Kaija Saariaho’s powerful and striking Light and Gravity from 2009. The background to the work is usefully discussed in an informative program note by Nicholas Swett, who is described as “a cellist, writer, and music researcher who is a PhD candidate and Gates Scholar at the University of Cambridge, and who has annotated programs for Carnegie Hall, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the BBC, Music@Menlo, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and others.” He writes:

The Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho came upon Weil's writings as a teenager. She later described how 

the Finnish translation of her book Gravity and Grace was one of the few things I packed into my suitcase when I travelled to Germany in 1981 to continue my studies in composition. … The combination of Weil's severe asceticism and her passionate quest for truth has appealed to me ever since I first read her thoughts.

Weil's work became a lifelong resource; in a 2021 interview Saariaho said, “I never totally understood what she is saying, but I am still trying. And I don't agree with her thoughts, but they force me to create my own opinions and they are very contemporary.”

In the early 2000s, while on the set of her opera L'Amour de loin, Saariaho discovered that her interest in Weil was shared by the director Peter Sellars. In 2006 they worked with librettist Amin Maalouf to channel their admiration into La Passion de Simone, an oratorio based on Weil's life and work. The piece followed the tradition of J.S. Bach's St. John and St. Matthew Passions, in which the composer interleaved declamatory recitatives describing the final stages of Jesus's life with more emotional, poetic commentary to be sung by chorus and soloists. Saariaho wrote 15 movements, or “Stations,” for a massive orchestra, a choir, the recorded voice of actress Dominique Blanc reading Weil's writings, and a solo soprano, who narrates and tenderly addresses Simone as “my sister.” Early performances of the oratorio were staged by Sellars. Saariaho dedicated the work to her children, and 15 years after its premiere she maintained, “this piece is maybe the most important piece I ever wrote.” 

In January 2009 conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic put on a well-received production of La Passion. Salonen told Saariaho that he especially liked the Eighth Station, the composition's shining cornerstone. At the start of that movement, the soprano sings just one phrase. Her words eerily double a recorded reading of Weil's explanation for the absence of God in everyday life — that he “withdraws himself” because he doesn't want to be “loved like the treasure is by the miser.” The soprano's lonely melody is repeated several times with slight variations by a diverse suite of instruments, a strategy that structures the meditative middle chapters of many of Saariaho's large-scale works. 

Saariaho made an orchestral transcription of the Eighth Station and dedicated it to her fellow Finn. She called it Lumière et Pesanteur (Light and Gravity) after two cardinal elements of Weil's philosophy. 

A remarkable soloist, Veronika Eberle—who debuted with this ensemble with these performances—then entered the stage for a memorable account of Alban Berg’s estimable Concerto for Violin and Orchestra from 1935. The first movement has a somewhat mysterious, Andante introduction, but its main body, marked Allegretto, is agitated and concludes relatively quietly and unexpectedly. The second and final movement opens portentously and with considerable urgency but this Allegro section is followed by a more reflective although still highly emotional, Adagio conclusion that then turns more intense once again; after several, mostly more subdued episodes, it closes rather gently. Enthusiastic applause elicited a rewarding encore from Eberle: the second movement, Andante dolce Theme and Variations, from the Sergei Prokofiev Sonata for Solo Violin.

The second half of the event was even stronger, beginning with a haunting account of Olivier Messiaen’s exalting, seldom played The Forgotten Offerings: Symphonic Meditation for Orchestra, from 1930. The composer authored these stanzas in conjunction with the piece:

Arms extended, sad unto death,
On the tree of the Cross you shed your blood.
You love us, sweet Jesus: we had been forgetting that.

Driven by folly and the serpent's tongue,
On a course panting, unbridled, without relief,
We had been descending into sin as into a tomb.

Here is the spotless table, the spring of charity,
On the banquet of the poor, here the Pity to be adored, offering
The bread of Life and of Love.
You love us, sweet Jesus: we had been forgetting that.

The initial part is luminous, if solemn, while the second is turbulent and breathless in pace, and the ultimate segment is hushed, serious and introspective.

The last work on the program was its greatest: Claude Debussy’s astonishing masterpiece, La Mer: Three Symphonic Sketches—it was partly inspired by Hokusai’s amazing woodblock print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa—which was gloriously rendered here. The often contemplative, opening movement—titled From Dawn till Noon on the Sea—begins evocatively and bewitchingly; it unforgettably climaxes just before its sudden close. The next movement, The Play of the Waves, is more energetic, even hurried at times and invokes East Asian music; it finishes softly. The concluding movement, Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea, starts suspensefully and almost ominously and then becomes tempestuous with driving rhythms but also with moments of calm and shimmering passages—it vaguely recalls the compositions of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, particularly his Scheherazade—and it ends brilliantly and stunningly.

The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.

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