New Jersey Symphony Orchestra – Gemma New, conductor; Stewart Goodyear, piano. October 8, 2016

Count Basie Theatre, Red Bank.  Balcony Center (Seat E108, $38).

Program

Antearoa Overture (1940) by Lilburn (1915-2001).

Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16 (1868-69, rev. through 1907) by Grieg (1843-1907).

Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 43 (1902) by Sibelius (1865-1957).

The Program Notes describes this as “a program featuring three faces of nationalism.”  The three composers hailed respectively from New Zealand, Norway, and Finland.  From the “One Minute Notes”: Douglas Lilburn’s piece is a musical portrait of the island nation’s breathtaking coastline; Grieg’s ravishing piece is rich with Norwegian melodies and rhythms; and Sibelius’s symphony pulsates with the warmth of the brief sub-arctic summer.

The word coastline evokes in me images of Mendelssohn’s Scottish pieces or Debussy’s La Mer (I know it means “sea”).  With the Maori word for New Zealand in its title, one could also expect some folk native tunes in the piece.  What I heard was a lot of Vaughan Williams’s influence – Lilburn studied in London with him, after all.  And if the piece describes the coastline, it would appear it was on a very calm day with waves gently lapping against a beach rather than a rugged coastline during a stormy night.  Nonetheless, the short piece was performed with a clarity that would rival many better known orchestras.

Grieg premiered his own piano concerto in 1869, when he was 25.  He continued to tinker with the orchestration throughout his life, the 1906-07 version was heard tonight.  The movements are: Allegro molto moderato, Adagio, and Allegro moderato molto e marcato.  This concerto, together with Liszt’s first, were among the few I really liked when I was very young (teens to early twenties.)  Melodies, virtuosity, and a story combined to make these concertos exciting to listen to.  Decades later, I still look forward to listening to them.

Goodyear looked very young (he was a classmate of our friend’s daughter, so in his 30s), and he certainly put in an exhilarating virtuoso performance.  And the melodies sounded as pleasant as ever.  However, I didn’t get the story he was trying to tell.  It was more on the order of “let’s get through these dull intervening passages to get to the next highlight.”  Nonetheless, the melodies and virtuosity made this an overall exciting performance.

In the writeup on an earlier performance of Sibelius’s Second Symphony, I marveled at how complicated the tempo markings were.  The NJSO annotator made the four movements simple: Allegretto; Andante ma rubato; Vivacissimo; and Finale: Allegro moderato.  A bit over-simplified, I think, as there were significant tempo changes within the individual movements.

As with the Grieg piece, this symphony contains lots of difficult passages and pleasant folk-sounding melodies.  One of the most attractive themes appears towards the end where the full melody was teased out after many attempts.  The orchestra tackled the technical aspects well.  However, I am similarly disappointed in that in between the high points it was wandering aimlessly.  What dismayed me the most was the attempts at the final melody were all disjoint: they were played without anticipating what was to come.

Curtain Call after the Grieg Piano Concerto.

When I first started going to NJSO performances regularly I remarked that this was a Jekyll-and-Hyde orchestra, doing well under Lacombe but not so well with other conductors.  I just realized that I hadn’t been wondering about that for a while, and that speaks to the great improvements they have made.  I am not quite back to that view yet, but worry a bit if this will become the norm again.

Several friends took advantage of the sale (ticket prices could be as low as $20), but the balcony was not even 20% filled.  One would think there are more classical music listeners in this part of New Jersey.

Gemma New had been the associate conductor of NJSO for quite a few years.  I assume her departure from the organization is to make room for Zhang to pick an assistant.  I think the same thing happened to Zhang when Maazel left the New York Philharmonic.

We had dinner at church so we could listen to some of the reports on short-term missions.  Concerts in Red Bank and New Brunswick are very convenient for us.