New York Philharmonic – Ludovic Morlot, conductor; Olli Mustonen, Piano. January 10, 2009.

Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, Orchestra 4 Rear (Seat JJ4, $58)

Program
Gondwana (1980; U.S. Premiere) by Tristan Murail (b. 1947).
Piano Concerto in F major, K. 413/387a (1782-83) by Mozart (1756-91).
Oiseaux exotiques, for Solo Piano and Small Orchestra (1955-56) by Messiaen (1908-92).
La Mer: Trois esquisees symphoniques (The Sea: Three Symphonic Sketches; 1903-05, rev. 1910) by Debussy (1862-1918).

Morlot burst onto the scene in early 2006 as a last-minute stand-in for Christoph von Dohnanyi, and he got good reviews. This is now compared to the “Lenny moment” when Bernstein, at age 25, substituted for Bruno Walter. Morlot was a bit older at 32 (he is now 34), and the piece that was particularly outstanding was a piece by Elliot Carter. We actually attended that particular concert series (on March 4, 2006); I thought Morlot was okay, but didn’t have much to say about Carter’s piece.

Now Morlot has graduated to conducting a regular subscription series; he remains BSO’s assistant conductor. Today’s program was interesting in that one wonders why the Austrian Mozart would appear between three rather modern pieces by French composers. The program notes talks about how a concert program is arrived at, but it still doesn’t explain the weird juxtaposition of the pieces. Another aspect was the massive movements of seats between pieces which took up a lot of time, despite the efficiency of the black-tie staff.

Gondwana is the southern portion of Pangaea, the supercontinent some believe existed 250 million years ago that eventually broke up into today’s continents. Perhaps Mr. Murail had visions of what this looked like, because I have no idea why he thinks the music would represent this land at all. He is well-known for spectral music, which just sounded limited in range and monotonous to me. His use of ¼ tones reminds me of a piece I played at Cornell (“The apotheosis of the earth” by Karel Husa, I think; there we didn’t have to count precisely) which I found confusing even while I was performing on stage (at Carnegie Hall, by the way). Perhaps that’s the whole idea. The piece was first performed tonight in the US, nearly 40 years after it was composed. With any luck it won’t be played for another 40 years, and that would be okay. Alas, Murail now teaches at Columbia, so there may be no escape! He made a curtain call after the performance.

Morlot was very precise in his conducting. One could see clearly whether a particular measure contained 2, 3, or 4 beats. And the pattern continued with the rest of the program.

I wasn’t very familiar with this particular Mozart concerto. It is in three movements: Allegro; Larghetto; and Tempo di Menuetto. Cadenzas for the first and second movements were written by Mozart himself. Mozart evidently had some trouble selling it when it was completed.

Olli Mustonen, who conducts, performs, and composes (!), has a very unique style which is either brilliant or affected, I can’t decide. The Mozart sounded more disjoint (or spirited, depends on one’s view) than most Mozarts I have heard. There were parts I really enjoyed, and there were sections I felt a bit embarrassed about. Another first was he had the music in front of him. I can understand if he was a last-minute stand-in, but supposedly “they” started the decision process a couple of years ago.

I knew of Messiaen, but don't remember hearing any of his music. The small orchestra consisted of about 15 players, no strings, and a huge gong that sometimes took 2 people to mute. Mustonen did a brilliant job in this instance, pounding out the rapid passages with ease. Supposedly there are different colors and bird songs in the piece; I don’t have perfect pitch (color) and have limited knowledge of ornithology (birds), so most of it just flew over my head. Nonetheless the activities on stage were quite interesting to see.

We actually heard the most recent NY Philharmonic performance of La Mer conducted by David Robertson, and I had a so-so review of the piece. It was much more enjoyable this time though. Whether it is the conductor, or Debussy sounded down-right traditional compared to Murail and Messiaen, I don’t know. To be fair to Morlot, Robertson’s program was quite contemporary also.

Our seats were in the back of the orchestra section. They had a good view of the orchestra, and the acoustics was quite good. They are among the least expensive of seats, go figure.

Strangely enough, I actually quite enjoyed the concert. The New York Times review opens with a couple of paragraphs of high praise that's not quite supported by the rest of the generally narrow-in-scope article. The reviewer describes Mustonen's performance as "quirky."

Heavy snow was forecast for tonight. When it looked okay at around 5 pm, we decided to drive into the city. Turns out to be a good decision: we zipped in and out of town without any trouble. The water heater in our house broke, so we stopped by Ellie and Kuau’s place after the concert to take a hot shower. And there was no more than 1/2 " of snow on the ground.