Thursday, October 24, 2013

New York Philharmonic – Joshua Weilerstein, conductor; Arabella Steinbacher, violin. October 15, 2013.

Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, Orchestra 2 Left (Seat CC5, $40.)

Program
Last Round (1991/96) by Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960).
Concerto in E minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 64 (1844) by Mendelssohn (1809-47).
Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88 (1889) by Dvorak (1841-1904).

The youth shall take over the world.  That was the thought that came to my mind when I found out who the conductor and the soloist were going to be.  Joshua Weilerstein was born in 1987, making him 25 or 26.  I don’t know how old Arabella Steinbacher is (and can’t find out as I am again sitting inside a plane,) but remember her as being very young when she performed with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra a couple of years ago.

The program has a “war horse” violin concerto sandwiched between two pieces I had never heard before.  When we were in Italy last summer (Florence in particular,) we had a chance to hear a concert devoted to Piazzolla’s music, but decided to pass since we did not count tango nor jazz as a favorite.  Today’s program started with a short piece by one of Piazzolla’s admirers, Osvaldo Golijov.  According to the Playbill, Golijov is considered one of the great composers of our generation, being inundated by commissions from various prestigious organizations.  This work was written as a tribute to Piazzolla, “Last Round” was an imaginary chance for Piazzolla to fight once more.  The Program Notes contains the composer’s description of the two movements: Movido, urgent – Macho cool and dangerous; and Muertes dei angel (Deaths of the Angel), Lentisimo.

I have some rough idea what tango sounds like, and can’t begin to understand the appeal of jazz.  Alas, the combination of the two genres didn’t make it any more accessible for me.  Indeed it didn’t evoke any images of a tango in my mind, although there is a strong jazz flavor to the music.   Evidently the composer allows for different ways the piece can be performed, for tonight a reduced string orchestra was used.  However, there are multiple parts for the strings, and the first and second violin players were divided up and sat on both sides of the stage.  The music, however, didn’t sound as complicated as the Program Notes would indicate.  From the tepid applause at the conclusion, I suspect many in the audience didn’t get it.

We last heard the Mendelssohn violin concerto played by Itzhak Perlman, and I recall being quite disappointed by the performance.  Again working from my memory, Perlman messed up the first movement, with many misplaced notes, but the third movement was played with his characteristic light touch.  Steinbacher certainly got a better grip on the intonation, but the entire performance was quite flat.  She played the cadenza written by the composer.  That is the one familiar to me.  The annotator seems to think the one written by Ferdinand David is heard more often – right now I don’t remember what it sounds like.

The Mendelssohn concerto is a showpiece of moderate difficulty, and considered light-weight musically by many critics.  I can agree with the assessment in that the listener may admire the skill of the musician and tap along with the rhythm, but they would seldom feel emotionally drained or intellectually challenged.  While Steinbacher had no trouble with the difficult passages, she didn’t have enough flourish (other than exaggerated arm movements at the end of a phrase that reminded me of Sarah Chang) to give a virtuoso impression.  This despite the good sound of her violin, a 1716 “Booth” Stradivarius.

The audience gave her a prolonged standing ovation.  That made me wonder if my assessment was wrong.  Earlier today CS came by to give us a ride to the airport, and he relayed the comment of an orchestra member about the performance that wasn’t complimentary.  That may be one person’s view, but I felt quite a bit of relief. [Note: this review was completed over the course of several days, for this paragraph “today” was October 17.]

I don’t know how many of Dvorak’s symphonies I have heard (he wrote at least nine,) and the eighth is not one of them.  The Playbill lists a phrase (The Birdcall) that is used quite extensively, and I certainly was familiar with that.  However, there are not that many tunes I remember, a surprise for a work by this particular composer.  The symphony consists of the following movements: Allegro con brio, Adagio, Allegro grazioso and Allegro ma non troppo.

This is a good time to say something about the conductor.  He has dual master’s degrees in violin performance and conducting from The New England Conservatory, and evidently is a great violinist as he was the first American to be invited to join the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra (by Dudamel, no less.)  His energy level reminds me of a former New York Philharmonic assistant conductor – Zhang Xuan.  He is perhaps 18 inches taller though.  (CS thinks he is at least 6’ 5”, I just know Zhang is short.)  The orchestra reacted to the range of dynamics he asked for, and was quite precise in the phrasing.

But was there a lot of musicianship in the performance.  I didn’t think so right after I heard it, and continue to not think so a couple of days later (as well as on October 23, sitting inside an airplane reviewing my writeup.)  Good story telling is not simply making sure we play loudly or softly as the music score requires, but in how we string the elements into a coherent piece.  In this I don’t think Weilerstein succeeded.

Yes, the youth will take over the world.  Perhaps the old(er) needn’t be that worried about these two for now: they need to development their musicianship a bit.  I am sure they will get there.  Also, to become an assistant conductor at the New York Philharmonic, or to be a feature soloist, at this young age is nothing short of a great accomplishment.  For that the two should be congratulated.

We drove up today, and found street parking a couple of blocks from Lincoln Center.  It must have been garbage day as there were these huge mounds of filled up garbage bags on the curb.  We parked next to one of the piles and worried if it was okay to do so – it was.

Another piece of sad news: China Fun is closed.  From the outside it looks like it is closed for good, so we lost another place to grab a quick and inexpensive meal in the area.

The concert ended at around 9:30 pm (it started at 7:30) and we were home by 10:45 pm.

The New York Times Review had a lot of good things to say about Steinbacher, it was more mixed about Weilerstein.  Interestingly, this reviewer (Zachary Woolfe) made in passing a rather disparaging remark about the recent Gilbert-led performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.  Not only was he not the reviewer of record (Anthony Tommasini), his view is diametrically opposite to that of the published review also ("loud and wan" versus "vibrant, lucid, and intriguing.")  For those of us who are not "in," what is going on?

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