Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, Orchestra (Seat W11,
$72).
Program – A Dancer’s Dream
La Baiser de la fee (The Fairy’s Kiss) (1928, rev. 1950)
by Stravinsky (1882-1971).
Excerpts from Neige (Snow) for Piano Four-Hands, Op. 7
(1918) by Durey (1888-1979).
Petrushka (1911) by Stravinsky.
Artists
Eric Huebner, Steve Beck, Piano.
Ballerina/Columbine – Sara Mearns, The Moor (on film) –
Eric Owens, Petrushka (on film) – Anthony Roth Costanzo, Lover/Puppeteer – Amar
Ramasar, Shadow – Abbey Roesner, Performers/Puppeteers – William da Silver,
Vincent McCloskey, Atmosphericist – Monica Lerch, Steadicam Operator – Giacomo
Belletti, Tripod Camera – Matt Manning, Cover Dancer – Zachary Catazaro.
In the weeks prior to the concert, I received several
emails from New York Philharmonic asking me to make sure I exchange or donate
my tickets if I don’t plan to attend this concert. There was apparently great demand for them
and all three performances were sold out.
Not that we were planning not to go, the correspondences certainly
heightened our interest.
The two Stravinsky compositions are ballet music, neither
of which I had heard before. Petrushka
of course is the better know of the two.
The Fairy’s Kiss was commissioned by Ida Rubinstein who had left
Diaghilev to form her own dance company.
It was to be inspired by Tchaikovsky whom Stravinsky admired
greatly. All together, 16 Tchaikovsky
compositions were referenced. The only
tune that is familiar to me is “Strangers in Paradise.” Of course Stravinsky knew about half of them
before he got started on this piece.
The story is based on the writings of Hans Christian
Andersen, and I quote the plot from the Playbill: “A fairy marks a young man
with her mysterious kiss while he is still a child. She withdraws him from his mother’s
arms. She withdraws him from life on the
day of his greatest happiness in order to possess him and preserve this
happiness forever. She marks him once
more with her kiss.” The ballet is set
in four scenes – The Prologue, The Village Fete, By the Mill, and Epilogue.
As with the entire concert, the more memorable aspects
are the non-traditional ones. Sara
Mearns, who ended up dancing throughout most of the program, stood from the
audience and walked up to the stage at the beginning of the piece. There is a large screen hanging on stage
where different images are projected.
Oftentimes the images are objects on stage shot with a hand-held camera.
For example, for the “By the Mill” scene
we have a small house with a water wheel next to it, complete with a small
piece of transparent plastic to represent the water. Sometimes pre-recorded
video clips are shown. There are also
other dancers who sometimes double as puppeteers. All these certainly make for very busy
viewing on the audience’s part.
To join in the fun, the orchestra members are dressed up
in (what one would like to pass off as) Russian garb – mostly caps and
scarves. They would also move around or
otherwise make fools of themselves. Rebecca Young actually came to the front during
Petrushka and did a few dance moves that were passable as professional.
The Fairy’s Kiss ended up being about 10 minutes longer
than the advertised 44 minutes. Actually
I thought they cut out the piano piece since intermission came right
afterwards. They did perform it as an
Entr’Acte piece at the beginning of the second half. While pleasant enough, there is not much
memorable about the piece. The only
thing interesting is that the composer Louis Durey eventually became a composer
of political music, including choral compositions based on texts by Ho Chi Minh
and Mao Zedong.
Petrushka consists of four Tableaux: (I) The Shrovetide
Fair; (II) Petrushka’s Room; (III) The Moor’s Room; and (IV) The Shrovetide
Fair. The protagonists are all puppets:
Petrushka the clown, the Moor, and the Ballerina. The puppet play has a simple plot: Petrushka
loves the ballerina, but she falls for the Moor instead; the Moor ends up
killing Petrushka; the crowd is reassured that it was all a puppet show; after
the crowd leaves, Petrushka’s ghost rises. While Stravinsky made major revisions to it in 1947, the original version - described by the Playbill as "inventive and colorful to the point of extravagance" - was performed tonight.
The stories for both ballets are simple enough. Yet I couldn’t make heads and tails of what
the dancers were trying to portray. This
is particularly true with The Fairy’s Kiss.
I don’t know in a “real” ballet who would be the protagonist character,
but if it is a woman it would have to be fairy given the number of times it is
mentioned in the synopsis. And I am sure
Mearns wasn’t dancing that part. It is a
little better with Petrushka as both the Moor and the Clown show up in video
clips. There my major issue is that both
Eric Owens (of Alberich fame) and Anthony Costanzo (whom I liked in The
Enchanted Island) were used as only actors, and taped performances at that.
Most of my mental energy was spent trying to understand
the story and keep track of the happenings on stage. If I have to say something about the
performance, I have to guess it was okay.
As in the Wagner Ring Journey performance, being center stage certainly
helps with the clarify of the music.
Not soon after the start of the performance, my reaction
was this is like a combination of New York Pops and New York City Opera. This can either be a statement of praise, or
a statement of disdain, all depending on what your expectations are. There certainly is no doubt that New York
Philharmonic can put out a great Pops concert, but should they? To my surprise, I did read that Mearns and
Ramasar are with the New York City Opera (after I made my assessment,
honest.) Gilbert seems to want to do
these edgy things every now and then.
We decided to take the train in. The concert ended at a little before 10
pm. We rushed out of there right
afterwards and caught the 10:18 train home, with perhaps a minute to
spare. That – unfortunately - was the
highlight of the evening.
The New York Times review concentrates on the dance
aspects and Sara Mearns, and is mixed.
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