New York Philharmonic – Pablo Heras-Casado, conductor; Frank Huang, violin. October 28, 2016.

David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.  Orchestra 1 (Seat T106, $61.50).

Program

Tancszvit (Dance Suites), BB 86a (1923) by Bartok (1881-1945).

Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26 (1864-67) by Bruch (1838-1920).

Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70 (1884-86) by Dvorak (1841-1904).

The headline of the concert was the Dvorak Symphony, but I suspect most people were more interested in hearing the (relatively) new concertmaster Frank Huang play the Bruch violin concerto, so let’s talk about that first.

Most violin students are very familiar with Bruch, with his violin concerto something the students learn at some point, or want to learn.  While not ostensibly so, there are enough challenging elements (glissandos, double stops, spiccatos, ricochet arpeggios, and the like) to make this a virtuoso piece.  There are also many melodies that are easy to remember.

Huang dispatched the piece with ease, looking quite effortless in the process.  As I remarked in my last blog about the New York Philharmonic, performances like this will have people asking “Glenn who?” very soon.  I do appreciate that he chose a piece like this rather than one by Szymanowski (as Dicterow did.)  At the risk of sounding snobbish, I do wonder if he could get his hands on a better violin.  Not that his didn’t sound good, but it lacked the brilliance of a Stradivarius or the fullness of a Guarnerius.

Pablo Heras-Casado applauding Frank Huang at conclusion of Bruch's violin concerto.

The three movements of the concerto are (i) Prelude: Allegro moderato; (ii) Adagio; and (iii) Finale: Allegro energico.  It turns out Bruch is mostly known just for this concerto, and he was among many composers that were competent but mostly forgotten because of A-list composers like Brahms.  There is a great deal of similarity between the opening of the third movement and that of Brahms’ violin concerto.  And the Program Notes points out Bruch’s predates Brahms’s by a good ten years.  Once I recalled Brahms’s opening, I couldn’t get it out of my head.  Another case of listening to one piece of music, and leaving humming the theme of another.

The concert began with the Dance Suite by Bartok, who together with Zoltan Kodaly were among the first ethnomusicologists.  The short (17 minutes per Program Notes) piece consists of six movements, played mostly without pause: Moderato, Allegro molto, Allegro vivace, Molto tranquillo, Comodo, and Finale: Allegro.  The Program Notes contains enough description of the “ethnicity” of each of the movements, and with the tempo markings, the music was easy enough to follow along.  I didn’t quite get why the fifth is described as “so primitive that one can only speak of a primitive peasant character here, and any classification according to nationality must be abandoned.”

There are two prior entries on Dvorak’s Seventh Symphony in this blog, both by the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Gilbert and Maazel.  And again I thought I was listening to it for the first time.  Even more embarrassing is I had more insight into the piece the last two times I heard it.

To those of us who don’t get Dvorak’s Seventh, the Program Notes has a quote from Donald Francis Tovey, which I paraphrase as follows.  Everyone should appreciate the greatness of this symphony.  There are three reasons people don’t.  First is this symphony is powerfully tragic, second is a wannabe may quarrel with Dvorak on how music should be written, and third is people often associate Dvorak with his popular works and don’t bother with the more difficult ones.  I don’t think the symphony is tragic, and critiquing the piece never even crossed my mind.  So it has to be I am too lazy.

In any case, I must say the New York Phil sounded better than the New Jersey Symphony.  There is a unity to the sections that is lacking in NJSO, and the brass section certainly sounded much more confident.  Some of the fast runs still came across a bit muddled, though.

We have seen Heras-Casado before, and the orchestra responded well to him in the Bruch and Dvorak pieces.  With Bartok he was acting as a time-keeper most of the time.  He is principal conductor of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, which I didn’t know was in New York!

The New York Times reviewer probably ran out of adjectives to describe how well Frank Huang played, declaring “the night, though, belonged to Mr. Huang.”  Neither he nor I see “Dvorak’s Seventh” as the headline of the concert.  There was quite a bit of coughing in between movements, I was half-expecting to see him characterizing the audience as “sickly.”  (His colleague did call the NJSO audience old and afraid of the dark!  See my previous post.)

For an 11 am concert we usually would take the train into town.  We decided to drive in today, traffic reports heard along the way were discouraging, but we made it to our usual parking garage in reasonable time.  We ate lunch bought at the food truck before we returned home.