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Film and the Arts
Paavo Järvi Directs the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 04 December 2024 15:04
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Photo by Chris Lee
At Lincoln Center’s wonderful David Geffen Hall on the night of Thursday, November 21st, I had the considerable pleasure to attend an exceptional concert presented by the New York Philharmonic under the superb direction of Paavo Järvi.
The event started splendidly with a sterling performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s extraordinary Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37, featuring the celebrated Yefim Bronfman as soloist. In a useful note on the program, James M Keller comments that “the composition of this work ended up stretching over a good three and a half years, not counting preliminary sketches, which reached back to 1796 — plus a further year, counting the time it took him to actually write out the piano part, and yet another five beyond that till he wrote down the first-movement cadenza.” The initial, Allegro con brio movement—which finishes powerfully—has a quiet urgency at the outset, with the piano entering forcefully after the music intensifies; a general solemnity is maintained throughout and even the composer’s own cadenza has a somewhat brooding—at times even insistent—quality. The Mozartean Largo that follows is more reflective but also lyrical, while the Rondo finale, marked Allegro, is more dynamic and also dramatic—although there are lighter passages—but concludes affirmatively. Enthusiastic applause elicited an excellent encore from the pianist: the Andante second movement from Franz Schubert’s Piano Sonata No. 14, in A minor, D.784.
However, it was the second half of the evening that was the true highlight: an absolutely brilliant realization of Carl Nielsen’s marvelous, too seldom played Symphony No. 5, Op. 50. In an interview preceding the premiere of the work, the composer observed:
I've been told that my new symphony isn't like my earlier ones. I can't hear it myself. But perhaps it's true. I do know that it isn't all that easy to grasp, nor all that easy to play. We've had many rehearsals of it. Some people have even thought that now Arnold Schoenberg can pack his bags and take a walk with his dissonances. Mine were worse. I don't think so.
The somewhat hushed, Tempo giusto opening has a slightly cerebral quality but subsequently the music becomes march-like, even martial, before a more tentative and questioning episode; a complex development leads to a thrilling climax before this Adagio non troppo section ends softly. In a description to a pupil, Nielsen said:
A solo clarinet ends this large idyll- movement, an expression of vegetative (idle, thoughtless) Nature. The second movement is its counterpole: if the first movement was passivity, here it is action (or activity) which is conveyed. So it's something very primitive I wanted to express: the division of dark and light, the battle between good and evil.
The Allegro beginning of the final movement is turbulent and the music remains agitated until a slower, more subdued—if somewhat querulous—section with some dance-like rhythms; this eventually becomes fugue-like, but then placid, while the closing Allegro section is weightyand ultimately triumphant. The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.
Dai Fujikura & More Performed by New York Philharmonic
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 03 December 2024 16:30
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Photo by Brandon Patoc
At Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall on the night of Saturday, November 30th, I had the exceptional pleasure to attend a superb concert—continuing a strong season—presented by the New York Philharmonic under the brilliant direction of Kazuki Yamada in his debut performances with this ensemble.
The event started very promisingly with an outstanding realization of Dai Fujikura’s striking and powerful, impressively scored Entwine, which received its New York premiere with these concerts. In a useful note on the program, Lara Pellegrini provides some background on the composition’s genesis:
Dai Fujikura's Entwine was born of a particular moment, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. In November 2020 the director of the WDR Symphony Orchestra reached out to the composer — who was living with his wife and daughter under lockdown in their tiny London flat — with an urgent request. Could Fujikura, in the midst of the ongoing crisis, compose a miniature that spoke to some part of our global experience? The catch: the work was to be premiered later that season, an unusually quick turnaround for an orchestral piece.
“It was before the vaccine,” recalls Fujikura, winner of the 2017 Silver Lion Award for musical innovation from the Venice Biennale. “We didn't know anything. We didn't know when the pandemic would be over — or if it would be over.”
Fujikura explains:
While everyone else said, “We don't know what we are going to do; we don't know if our orchestra will even exist by the end of the year,” the countries of Europe had a different understanding. I am especially touched by this commission because, in this critical time, they had the capacity to think about creating something new. It is remarkable, and it is very brave.
He has commented further:
I was asked to write a five-minute orchestra work expressing the current world situation and to do it as soon as possible so that the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne could premiere it in 2021.
I started thinking. I began to see that the topic of this orchestra work should be about touch: the physical touch we can no longer take for granted, and how we can feel socially awkward now by stepping out of the door and having to make sure we are standing far enough away from the other people in the street.
I wanted to create an orchestral work where musical materials pass from one instrument to another, like one hand to another: sharing, gathering, even ending up in a crowd. Something we have all missed since the beginning of 2020, and something which we now realize is what all humans need to live from one day to the next.
To do this musically, the orchestra is the perfect conduit. I am hoping the piece will express the dream which we are all missing right now, and whose importance we now truly realize.
An amazing soloist, Yunchan Lim, then entered the stage for a dazzling account of Frédéric Chopin’s extraordinary Piano Concerto in F minor, Op. 21. Much of the initial, Maestoso movement—which finishes on a triumphant note—has a meditative—even moody—quality along with exquisite, lyrical passages, but there are more forceful and passionate moments. The ensuing Larghetto opens and closes softly and is even more inward and song-like; it has a brooding ethos but also episodes of great delicacy, while the Allegro vivace finale is effervescent and dynamic, although again with reflective interludes—it ends spiritedly. Enthusiastic applause elicited a terrific encore from the pianist: Variation 13 from Johann Sebastian Bach’s incomparable Goldberg Variations.
The second half of the evening was even more memorable: an enthralling rendition of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s magnificent Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27. The first movement’s Largo introduction is somewhat lugubrious in tone, its primary motif seemingly expressing a deep longing that pervades the movement; its main body has dramatic elements but also an intense emotionalism—after a stormy climax, it becomes more affirmative, finishing optimistically. The second movement is playful and propulsive with more plaintive measures; it becomes suspenseful and then largely more celebratory, closing very quietly. The Adagio that follows is hauntingly beautiful, dominated by a melody of unsurpassed loveliness—it concludes dreamily. The finale, which is exuberant at the outset, is sunnier in outlook on the whole, with a serene, pastoral interlude superseded by exciting music with a greater momentum; it ends vigorously. The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.
November '24 Digital Week III
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 27 November 2024 19:10
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Play "Body Cosmic" & More at Carnegie Hall
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 27 November 2024 14:51
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Ellen Reid with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Photo by Chris Lee
At Carnegie Hall’s wonderful Stern Auditorium on consecutive nights beginning on Friday, November 22nd, I had the exceptional pleasure to attend two magnificent concerts presented by the extraordinary musicians of the celebrated Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, under the brilliant direction of the Klaus Mäkelä, whose rise internationally has been understandably meteoric.
The first evening started splendidly with a marvelous realization of Ellen Reid’s excellent, admirably orchestrated Body Cosmic, which was co-commissioned by this venue and which received its U.S. premiere with this performance. The composer has usefully commented on the work:
Body Cosmic is a meditation on the human body as it creates life and gives birth. The first movement, Awe | she forms herself, unspools a melody against the pulse of an ostinato, reflecting the surreality of creating new life, so common and yet so astonishing. Dissonance | her light and its shadow explores the conundrum of bringing new life into the simultaneously beautiful and crumbling world, moving between big splashes of smearing brass and tumultuous percussion and moments of warmth and blazing beauty.
This piece was written in response to my own experience with pregnancy and childbirth, a period of time that coincided with my dual residency at the Concertgebouw concert hall and with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Spending time in Amsterdam, working in the Concertgebouw’s storied halls, activated over 140 years of music making, is a looming presence in this work. Thank you to the incredible musicians of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, whose generous artistic contributions rang loudly in my mind’s ear as I wrote this piece.
Afterwards, Reid ascended to the stage to receive the audience’s acclaim.
The renowned soloist Lisa Batiashvili then joined the artists to expertly play Sergei Prokofiev’s terrific Violin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 63, from 1935, in which the elegant ethos and sensibility of the composer’s scores from that period—like that for his incredible ballet of Romeo and Juliet—is discernible. Prokofiev provided some enlightening background on the work:
In 1935, a group of admirers of the French violinist [Robert] Soetens asked me to write a violin concerto for him, giving him exclusive rights to perform it for one year. I readily agreed, since I had been intending to write something for the violin at that time and had accumulated some material. As in the case of the preceding concertos, I began by searching for an original title for the piece, such as “Concert Sonata for Violin and Orchestra,” but finally returned to the simplest solution: Concerto No. 2. Nevertheless, I wanted it to be altogether different from No. 1 both as to music and style.
The variety of places in which [the Second Violin Concerto] was written is a reflection of the nomadic concert-tour existence I led at that time: The principal theme of the first movement was written in Paris, the first theme of the second movement in Voronezh, the orchestration I completed in Baku, while the first performance was given in Madrid in December 1935.
The violin begins the initial, Allegro moderato movement soulfully, quickly echoed by the ensemble, but the music soon becomes lively—its lyricism is tempered with astringency—and the movement closes abruptly. The ensuing Andante assai is enchanting—and is the loveliest of the movements—although again the composer’s irony is apparent. The Allegro ben marcato finale is more overtly comic in inspiration, but with some darker undercurrents, and ends forcefully. Enthusiastic applause elicited an exquisite encore from the musicians, including Batiashvili: Johann Sebastian Bach’s Chorale Prelude on "Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ" (arranged for Violin and Strings by Anders Hillborg).
The second half of the concert was possibly even stronger: a stunning account of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s glorious Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, Op. 27. In his fine notes for the program, Jack Sullivan educatively reports on the circumstances under which the piece was created: “He resigned from his position as conductor of the Imperial Grand Opera in Moscow, as well as from piano engagements, and moved to Dresden for two years to devote himself exclusively to composition.” He adds: “Freed from distractions and buoyed by an apparently happy marriage, Rachmaninoff completed his Second Symphony, conducting the successful premiere in St. Petersburg in 1908; during his first American tour in 1909, he conducted the work with The Philadelphia Orchestra, with whom he later premiered his Symphonic Dances.”
The first movement’s Largo introduction is somewhat lugubrious but also has a dreamy quality; the Allegro moderato main body is at times spirited but much of it is solemn—it builds to a brief climax. In the Allegro molto that follows there is some urgency that intensifies later and the movement concludes suddenly. The succeeding Adagio features a famous melody that is rapturously beautiful—the movement could scarcely be overpraised—while the Allegro vivace finale is often exuberant but with moody passages—it concludes powerfully and affirmatively. A standing ovation was rewarded with another delightful encore: the "Hopak" from Modest Mussorgsky’s Sorochintsï Fair (arranged by Anatoly Liadov).
The second concert was at least comparably memorable, beginning with a superlative version of Arnold Schoenberg’s 1943 revision of his Verklärte Nacht, which I’ve written elsewhere is “one of the masterpieces of late Romanticism.” Sullivan offers a valuable summary:
Verklärte Nacht was originally written for chamber ensemble and expanded for string orchestra in 1917. The narrative behind the notes, based on a poem from Richard Dehmel’s Weib und Welt (Woman and World), depicts two lovers in a moonlit forest. In anxiety and remorse, the woman confesses that she is pregnant by a previous lover; though she fears her current lover’s reaction, she hopes that motherhood will at least instill a purpose in life. The man’s reaction is unexpected: The beauty of the forest inspires him to rise to the occasion and proclaim that love will unite them and make the child genuinely their own. At the end, he embraces her and they continue their nocturnal walk.
Even more remarkable was the second half of the evening: an enthralling rendition of Gustav Mahler’s awesome Symphony No. 1 in D Major—is any composer’s first symphony greater than this one? Schoenberg himself has said about it:
“Everything that will characterize him is already present … Here already his life-melody begins, and he merely develops it. Here are his devotions to nature and his thoughts of death.”
About the work’s 1889 premiere, Sullivan records that:
Mahler provided a detailed program for this version of the piece. In addition to the “Titan” subtitle (after a Jean Paul novel) for the entire symphony, the first movement was called “Spring Without End” (the long pedal introduction evoking “the awakening of nature at early dawn”), the second “Under Full Sail,” the third “Funeral March in the Manner of Callot,” and the finale “From Inferno to Paradise.” Mahler also included another movement called “Blumine,” but later suppressed it. In addition, the symphony was divided into two parts, “From the Days of Youth” and “The Human Comedy.”
The initial movement opens softly, even mysteriously, with an extended introduction preceding lovely, joyous, pastoral music, a mood that is sustained and elaborated throughout it. The subsequent movement is mainly comprised of an effervescent, vigorous Ländler; its Trio is also dance-like, if more serene. The haunting third movement—which was inspired by Moritz von Schwind’s satirical 1850 woodcut, The Huntsman’s Funeral—features an adaptation—in “gloomy and uncanny colors” according to the composer—of the children’s song, “Frère Jacques,” as a funeral march that is more than once interrupted by sardonic Klezmer music; the movement closes very quietly. The finale, which starts with extreme force in what Mahler called a “sudden outburst of a deeply wounded heart,” is more agitated than the other movements although there are numerous subdued—indeed even diffuse and inchoate—passages, but it ultimately acquires an exultant and heroic character—punctuated by exhilarating fanfares—and an accelerating forward momentum that achieves a thrilling climax. The artists were again—deservedly—enthusiastically acclaimed by the audience.
