New York Philharmonic – Lorin Maazel, Conductor; Rober Langevin – flute, Nancy Allen – Harp. October 14, 2011.

Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, Orchestra 1 (Seat V105, $70.)

Program

Symphony No. 38 in D major, Prague, K.504 (1786) by Mozart (1756-91).

Concerto in C major for Flute and Harp, K.299/297c (1778) by Mozart.

Jeux: Poeme danse (1912-13) by Debussy (1862-1918).

Iberia, from Images for Orchestra (1905-08) by Debussy.

After a two-year hiatus since his retirement from New York Philharmonic, Maazel came back to conduct the orchestra.  His bio in the Program Notes says he will be leading the Munich Symphony starting next season, good for him.

Our concert starts at 2 pm, a rather unusual time.  It would mean coming back to NJ during the start of the commuting rush hour, so we decided to take the train in.  Everything worked reasonably smoothly, we caught the 11:30 am train up, and got back at around 5:30 pm.

The first part of the program consisted of two 30-minute works by Mozart.  The Symphony was composed when Mozart was in Vienna, and premiered in Prague, where it was well received.  Apparently that’s enough reason to call the Symphony by that name.  This symphony is not the most familiar of Mozart’s symphonies, although we did listen to it at last year’s Mostly Mozart Festival.  With the exception of the second movement which was a bit mechanical (and a bit long), it was a delight.  The orchestra was not as precise as I expected it to be, but this minor flaw was easily overlooked in the overall performance.  The Symphony is comprised of three movements: Adagio – Allegro; Andante; and Finale: Presto.

The Concerto appears to be standard repertoire for a flute and harp dual concerto, if there is such a thing.  It was last performed by the same artists (conductor, orchestra, and soloists) in 2007.  The music is nice, but I have a bit of problem with the overall balance.  Considering the sizes of the instruments, there is no reason why the flute should sound so much louder than the harp, but most of the time it did.  The other balance issue is between the soloists and the orchestra.  Supposedly orchestras of those days were small, and the Program Notes mentions the Prague Symphony premiered with an orchestra of about 20 people.  The music score specifies 11 woodwind and percussion instruments, that would leave about 9 string players: 2 in each section plus one bass, perhaps.  Even with a reduced orchestra, I counted about 6 first violins.  And today’s violin is probably much brighter sounding than violins of Mozart’s day (just go to any concert with period instruments to find out).  If that doesn’t mess up Mozart’s intent, I don’t know what would.

There were some technically challenging episodes (at least to a non-player), including the cadenzas, that were played well.  The movements of the Concerto are Allegro; Andantino; and Rondeau: Allegro.  The cadenzas were written by Karly Hermann Pillney.

The two Debussy pieces were unfamiliar to me, and each had (somewhat) a story-line associated with it.  Jeux was envisioned by dancer Vaslav Nijinsky as ballet music where the eventual scenario had one man and two women playing in a park, kissing, and then disappearing after a tennis ball is thrown at them.  How that story can become a ballet escapes me, what is more intriguing was that the original line had three men frolicking in the park interrupted by a plane crash.  While it was difficult to imagine the story unfold as the music is played, that there is such a storyline helped immensely in the appreciation of the music, which was whimsical at times.

Debussy never visited Spain for any length of time, having crossed the border for a few hours once, but managed to write Iberia in a convincing Spanish manner, without using any actual folk melodies.  He supposedly was a bit conflicted as to whether there is a story associated with the music, saying on one hand “it is useless to ask me for anecdotes about this work,” but on the other describing the transition from the second to the third movement as “things waking up … a man selling watermelons and urchins whistling.”  Indeed one can easily envision the scenes associated with the three movements: (i) By the Highways and By-ways; (ii) Parfumes of the Night; and (iii) Morning of a Festival Day.

The full orchestra was used for the Debussy pieces, and the effect was great.

One cannot help but wonder if Gilbert is an improvement over Maazel.  Certainly Maazel held his own with today’s concert, and I suspect he will be equally commanding with a complex symphonic work.  At 81 he may need to conserve his energy a bit, but today’s concert was about 100 minutes in length, on the long side.

Another observation.  This Orchestra is simply a well-oiled machine, you can throw anything at it and it will spit it out readily.  Contrast that with the Orpheus where complex pieces leave you sitting on the edge of your seat.

On 10/18/2011, I found this review from the New York Times.