New York Philharmonic Perform Kurtág & Elgar at Lincoln Center

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 27 March 2026 13:36

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

At Lincoln Center’s wonderful David Geffen Hall, on the night of Saturday, March 7th, I had the privilege to attend a superb concert present by the New York Philharmonic under the stellar direction of the ascendant Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla.

The event started powerfully, with an outstanding version of Edward Elgar’s extraordinary Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 61, which was completed in 1910–the impressive soloist was Vilde Frang in her debut performances with this ensemble. The long, ambitious Allegro that inaugurates the composition opens passionately and Romantically—its long introduction has a symphonic quality, while the entry of the violin is soulful, reproducing some of the initial emotionalism but eventually turning more lyrical before recapturing some of the original turbulence. The solemnity and intensity is sustained throughout the movement although at moments the mood appears more hopeful; it closes somewhat abruptly but emphatically. The ensuing Andante is song-like and has a more positive valence—it becomes more animated and then loftier before concluding gently. The Allegro molto finale is brisk and energetic at first, projecting a much more strongly affirmative outlook but with slower passages. This movement is the most highly virtuosic of the three—although the long, Lento cadenza is more inward in character—and it ends majestically.

The second half of the evening was comparably memorable, starting with György Kurtág’s Brefs messages, Op. 47, from 2010, a work for nine players which, alas, I am not competent to judge. It is divided into four movements: 

I. Fanfare (à Olivier Cuendet) 

II. Versetto: Temptavit Deus Abraham [apokrif organum] 

III. Ligatura Y 

IV. Bornemisza Péter: Az hit…

In excellent notes on the piece, Nicholas Emmanuel—who “has taught musicology at the University at Buffalo and writes on matters of contemporary music, aesthetics, and modernity”—provides a valuable description:

In Brefs messages Kurtág looks back on his career and his relationship to sacred music. The work opens with a brass fanfare dedicated to Olivier Cuendet — a composer, conductor, and longtime creative collaborator of Kurtág's. The movements that follow are all arrangements of earlier works by Kurtág that take as a point of reference vocal music practices of the late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Baroque.

The second movement, Versetto: Temptavit Deus Abraham (God Tested Abraham), is drawn from a set of three verses for piano (or organ) that Kurtág wrote in 1990 and dedicated to the Gregorian chant specialist Laszlo Dobszay. The English horn follows the rough contour of historical chant settings and is joined by bass clarinet in an “apocryphal” imitation of organum, the earliest form of polyphony in the Western tradition. The third movement — an arrangement and expansion of a 1993 piano work — draws on the use of ligatures (a means of notating multiple notes on a single syllable of text to produce fluent melismatic lines) found in mensural notation of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. 

In a neat bit of symmetry, the fourth and final movement of Brefs messages is adapted from the fourth and final movement of The Sayings of Péter Bornemisza (1963–68), a watershed in Kurtág's creative development that Rachel Beckles Willson has described as “unquestionably at the root of much that was to come.” A “concerto” for soprano and piano, it was based on texts of a 16th-century Lutheran minister and modeled, structurally, on Schütz's Kleine geistliche Konzerte(1636/39) and Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire (1912). The first three movements of The Sayings — Confession, Sin, and Death — focus on humanity's helplessness and tendency toward sin. Az hit… (Spring), by contrast, shifts toward spiritual nourishment and, ultimately, the redemption of humanity. 

The program closed beautifully with a sterling account of Robert Schumann’s marvelous Symphony No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 38, the “Spring,” from 1841. James M. Keller—“a former New York Philharmonic Program Annotator and the author of Chamber Music: A Listener's Guide—usefully explains:

As we see from [Schumann’s] diary notations, he already called this a “Spring” symphony when it was still taking form. An entry by Clara [Schumann] states that it was inspired by a poem by Adolf Böttger, and a year later Robert sent a signed portrait of himself to Böttger inscribed with the opening notes and the words “Beginning of a symphony, occasioned by a poem by Adolf Böttger.” The work's opening motto is indeed a wordless setting of the poem's lines, “O wende, wende deinen Lauf, — Im Talle blüht der Frühling auf!” (“Oh turn, oh turn and change your course, — Now in the valley blooms the spring!”). 

The first, Allegro molto vivace movement has an introduction marked Andante un poco maestoso. After a noble fanfare, the music becomes suspenseful but before long acquires a joyous, even celebratory ethos with some seemingly “pastoral” as well as Mendelssohnian elements, even as it also evokes Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony; it finishes exultantly. The exquisite, melodious Larghetto that follows is more serious in sensibility—it becomes livelier in rhythm briefly before concluding softly. The succeeding Scherzo is dance-like and alternately bold and lilting; the first, contrasting Trio section is even more forceful, while the second is ultimately ebullient. The Allegro animato e grazioso finale is exciting and even somewhat playful on the whole but with more restrained, if charming, interludes; it builds to a dynamic climax and then ends triumphantly.

The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.

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