New York Philharmonic Perform Chen Yi & More

Details

Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Wednesday, 11 February 2026 20:51

Written by Jack Angstreich

Soloist Yefim Bronfman, photo by Brandon Patoc

At Lincoln Center’s wonderful David Geffen Hall, on the night of Saturday, January 17th, I had the privilege to attend an excellent concert presented by the New York Philharmonic under the sterling direction of Xian Zhang.

The event started auspiciously with the admirably realized New York premiere of the impressively orchestrated Landscape Impression by Chen Yi, which is shot through with a strong sense of urgency and finishes forcefully but resists easy encapsulation. According to useful notes on the program by Thomas May—who “is a writer, critic, educator, and translator whose work appears in such publications as The New York Times, Gramophone, and The Strad”—“The work is inspired by two short poems by Su Shi written in the 1070s, during the Song dynasty.” He adds: “These two poems — Landscape and The West Lake — offer contrasting views of the same site.” And he reports that the composer admires the music of Witold Lutosławski and Isang Yun. On the piece’s close, Chen said: 

I didn't wrap up quietly. I wanted the ending to move toward light and the future — a feeling that could belong both to the poet and to today's listeners. 

The renowned soloist Yefim Bronfman then entered the stage for a magisterial performance of Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54, which was completed in 1845 and is one of the very finest essays in the genre of its period. 

The former New York Philharmonic Program Annotator, James M. Keller, records that “In 1839 [Schumann] had written to his then-fiancée, Clara Wieck” as follows: “Concerning concertos, I've already said to you that I can't write a concerto for virtuosi and have to think of something else.” He astutely adds, “What he produced was not, in fact, a highly virtuosic piece,” and that:

This is a supremely “symphonic” concerto in the democratic way in which the soloist and the orchestra pursue their unified intent. Nonetheless, its rather transparent scoring stands in striking contrast to that of Schumann's symphonies themselves, which can tend toward density in their textures. 

The program notes state, “In 1839, before he embarked on composing his only Piano Concerto, Schumann published an essay on the subject of piano concertos in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik,which he had founded five years earlier”: 

[The] separation of the piano from the orchestra is something we have seen coming for some time. Defying the symphony, contemporary piano-playing seeks to dominate by its own means and on its own terms. … This periodical has, from its beginning, reported on just about every new piano concerto that has come along. There can hardly have been more than 16 or 17, a small number in comparison with former days. Thus do times change. What once was regarded as an enrichment of instrumental forms, as an important discovery, is now voluntarily abandoned. … And so we must await the genius who will show us in a newer and more brilliant way how orchestra and piano may be combined, how the soloist, dominant at the keyboard, may unfold the wealth of his instrument and his art, while the orchestra, no longer a mere spectator, may interweave its manifold facets into the scene.

The initial, Allegro affettuoso movement—which is the closest in sensibility to that of Felix Mendelssohn but with a much more pronouncedly Romantic cast—begins dramatically but immediately adopts a reflective mood; the music intensifies before becoming meditative, even lyrical, once again—the development traces a similar, recurrent course of variation from moody inwardness to stirring extroversion, before a climactic cadenza ushers in a rapid, emphatic conclusion. In the ensuing Intermezzo—its tempo is Andante grazioso—Mendelssohnian affinities are also discernible; the music conveys a characteristic, if somewhat restrained, emotionalism that transitions to the greater dynamism of the Allegro vivace finale, which is the most affirmative in tone of the three movements—here one can most clearly detect the influence of Ludwig van Beethoven—and it closes triumphantly. Enthusiastic applause elicited a beautiful encore from the soloist: the Scherzo, marked Allegro energico, of the Sonata for piano No. 3 in F minor of Johannes Brahms. (On the previous day’s concert, he played the Schumann Arabeske in C major, Op. 18.)

The second half of the evening was even more memorable: an amazing account of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s undervalued and seldom presented Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Op. 17, which received its ultimate revision in 1880. Keller comments:

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov had proclaimed the Second Symphony “a work of genius.” However, Tchaikovsky later came to consider the work to be not so perfect after all, but rather “difficult, noisy, disjointed, and muddleheaded.” In 1879 he set about an extensive rewrite, reporting that he “composed the first movement afresh, leaving only the introduction and the coda in their original form; rescored the second movement; shortened and rescored the third movement; and shortened and rescored the Finale.”

The program notes explain that the “Second Symphony is replete with such Ukrainian folk songs as Down by Mother Volga (played by horn, and then bassoon, in the slow introduction to the first movement), Spin, O My Spinner (as a tune for clarinet and flute in the second movement), and The Crane (the principal theme in the finale)”.

The first movement starts abruptly but then quietly with an Andante sostenuto introduction that builds at length in the Allegro vivo main body to musical passages of a more passionate, even turbulent, character, even as there are more subdued interludes; it finishes very softly. The slow movement that follows—it is marked Andante marziale, quasi moderato—has a more playful ethos although with solemn episodes; it too ends very gently. The succeeding Scherzo—its tempo is Allegro molto vivo—is more energetic with driving rhythms and a charming, ludic Trio section that is recapitulated; it concludes suddenly. The Moderato assai Finale opens grandly and sustains a majestic, somewhat celebratory effect, although with numerous measures in a more low-key register; it closes powerfully and exultantly.

The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.

• Next >