London Symphony Orchestra – Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; Yuja Wang, piano. March 18, 2015.

Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, Right Orchestra (Seat Z16, $65.)

Program

Four Sea Interludes, from Peter Grimes (1945) by Britten (1913-76).

Concerto in F (1925) by Gershwin (1898-1937).

Symphony No 2 in D major, Op. 43 (1901-02) by Sibelius (1865-1957).

As the playbill says, the three pieces for this concert were written within a span of forty years, and it would be interesting to hear the contrasts among them.  Of course one could have put Brahms and Bruckner in the same program and then made equally profound remarks about how their styles differ.  Having said that, I must say this is a delightful program, yet it didn’t quite stimulate to the extent I thought it would.

Soon after Peter Grimes was premiered, Britten excerpted and edited four of the interludes into an orchestral work.  The titles of the interludes are Dawn (Lento e tranquillo), Sunday Morning (Allegro spiritoso), Moonlight (Andante comodo e rubato), and Storm (Presto con fuoco).  The Playbill has a description of the segments that allows the listener to closely follow the music.  There is some novel instrumentation, such as the use of horns to imitate church bells.  On a good day I would probably find this enjoyable, today – perhaps in my jet-lagged state - I just found the whole thing a bit too predictable and trite.  So you can make music sound like the sea’s different conditions, what’s the big deal.   So could Debussy, Wagner, and many others.  Yes, and we heard The Oceanides by Sibelius in our last concert.  I guess the harshest remark would be this: having heard this piece didn’t really make me want to go see the opera.  In its defense, it didn’t make me want to see it less either.

If you asked me what I know about Gershwin, I would say Rhapsody in Blue, American in Paris, and parts of Porgy & Bess.  In the Playbill Gershwin is quoted as trying to show his critics “there was plenty more where that came from.”  After listening to this, both Anne and I agreed the concerto sounded like a combination of all three, only less exciting.  One note was repeated so often that it seemed to dominate much of the music.  It makes me wonder, however, what distinguishes classical music from jazz.  To me at its best jazz makes you want to swing, it radiates happiness and sadness, and it feels whimsical.  Somehow the “traditional” classical music means more to me, although I can’t quite put my finger on it.  Is it the structure, the harmony, or is it something else?

Yuja Wang is one of these young musicians that burst onto the music scene, seemingly from nowhere.  She is now in her early twenties, and today was the first time that we got to see her.  Our seats were on the right side of the auditorium, so we could see only her face and part of her right arm.  There were times I saw rapid arm movements but could barely hear the piano, I wonder if that was the acoustics of our seats, or it was just lousy balance with the orchestra.  She seemed to enjoy herself, and it looked as if she was singing or murmuring along as she played.  The 30- or so minute piece consists of three movements: Allegro, Adagio – Andante con moto, and Allegro agitato.

The thunderous applause really puzzled me.  She played an encore that I had not heard before, but it was in the same “genre” as Gershwin, if there is such a thing.  The one remarkable thing was she used an iPad (or an Android tablet) as her music score, turning the pages by quickly tapping on the device.

There is much discussion in the Playbill about Sibelius’s second symphony’s patriotic element, a defiant gesture towards the Russian occupation.  Frankly I didn’t hear much of it; actually I found it rather sunny.  Described as “significantly tauter” than the first, I still found its 45 minute length a bit long.  However, it is on the whole quite enjoyable.  The part where a theme took a while to be teased out in its entirety still held me in anticipation.  The movements are: Allegretto; Tempo Andante, ma rubato; Vivacissimo; and Finale: Allegro moderato, with the last two movements played without pause.

I vaguely recall listening to Thomas conducting this orchestra (or was it the San Francisco Symphony?) at the Barbican Center years ago, before my concert-blogging days.  However, I must say I don’t have much recollection of that event.  If you ask me five years down the road, I suspect all I remember would be this is the first time I heard Yuja Wang, and it was a concert that didn’t quite live up to (what I considered) its promise.  Also, the exaggerated movements of the Symphony's leader made me wonder if he thought he was the soloist.

I am finishing this writeup on March 21, after attending a New York Philharmonic concert last night.  I will have more to say about the latter concert, but suffice it to say the programming there was much more successful in showing the style contrasts of the different composers on the program.

The New YorkTimes review characterized Wang’s playing as brilliant; the Sibelius symphony as epic; and that the encore, titled “You Come Here Often,” was written for Yuja Wang by Michael Tilson Thomas.