New York Philharmonic – Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor. April 27, 2017.

David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.  Orchestra (Seat CC105, $62.50).

Program

Funeral Song, Op. 5 (1908) by Stravinsky (1982-1971).

Forest: a concerto for four horns (2016) by Tansy Davies (b. 1973).

Also Sprach Zarathustra, Tone Poem (freely after Friedrich Nietzsche) for Large Orchestra, Op. 30 (1895-96) by Strauss (1864-1949).

The two pieces performed in the first half of the program certainly were interesting on paper. 

Stravinsky wrote the funeral song in memory of his mentor Rimsky-Korsakov.  It was lost and mostly forgotten after its first performance in 1909.  Even Stravinsky couldn’t recall it clearly; at some point he thought it was composed for wind instruments.  The manuscript was re-discovered in 2015, and tonight’s performance was a New York premiere.

What he remembered correctly in his 1936 autobiography was that “all the solo instruments of the orchestra filed past the tomb of the master in succession, each laying down its own melody as its wreath ….”  From today’s hearing, I would say the instruments all took turn singing the same melody of about three measures in length.

As Stravinsky noted himself (as quoted in the “Angels and Muses” of the Program Notes), at this point his music vocabulary lacked some tools he would later acquire, so the piece did sound quite different from his later works.  (Firebird, first of his three iconic compositions, would come a year later.)  He was probably also correct in questioning if the marked impression the piece made “was due to the atmosphere of mourning” or “the merits of the composition itself.”  The piece certainly would be of great interest for musicologists – I can a few doctoral theses written about it – but didn’t sound particularly interesting for this listener.  It might have been more instructional to program it together with one of Stravinsky’s later works so the concertgoer has a shot at hearing how Stravinsky’s vocabulary changed over the years.

Tansy Davies is a young British composer whose career (as described in the Playbill) has some parallel to Lera Auerbach, whose work (NYx) we heard a couple of months ago.  Davies’s area of concentration is in composition, as opposed to Auerbach’s wider interest.

When one sees “horn” and “forest” in the same title, one thinks of hunting and woods that are quite popular in music (e.g., Wagner’s Siegfried.)  Here are some excerpts from “In the Composer’s Words” that fortify the idea: “celebration of creation,” “mythical instrument,” “sport of hunting,” and “forest imagined in music.”  She added “the four horns represent the most human element of the work, … and the orchestra – the forest – that surrounds them.”  Being an artist today, it is to be expected that she would throw in “climate change becomes … apparent.”

I tried to listen for that, but failed spectacularly.  Instead the one thought that kept permeating in my mind was “what a waste of four competent horn players.”  The beautiful sonority of the horn wasn’t used at all, instead we got this rather monotonous (both in pitch and volume) drone from the four instruments.  I tried listening for the individual parts, I tried imaging the four horns as four parts of a single instrument, and neither way made sense to me.  And in my attempt to understand the horns, I neglected the orchestra completely.  As I type this two days later, I don’t recall anything it did.

So this is a piece that completely went over my head, and is a piece that I have no desire to hear again.  For the record, the horn players are Richard Watkins, Katy Woolley, Nigel Black, and Michael Thompson.  Black is the principal horn of the Philharmonia Orchestra, the others were former principals.  I wonder what they think.

Tansy Davies and Esa-Pekka Salonen after the performance of Forest.  The four hornist can be seen on the left side of the photo.

Richard Strauss’s Also sprach was straightforward in comparison.  I have heard the complete work only once since my blogging days.  The introduction (Sunrise) was as dramatic as ever, even after all these years since 2001: A Space Odyssey made it famous. The rest of the music would have made more sense if I had time to study it before the concert – I was a bit busy after our return from Asia Monday.  I managed to catch some of the program (e.g., the dirge, and dance song.)

The concertmaster had quite a few solo lines.  Tonight Hwang sounded very weak, and was a little flat on some of the high notes.  I have had this “he needs a better violin” complaint for a while, but perhaps our seats just had bad acoustics?  I didn’t think I had that complaint for most of the evening, though.

On paper this should have been an interesting and/or great concert, I came away thinking it was only “okay.”  Not all of that can be attributed to my jet-lagged state, I am quite sure.

The New YorkTimes review can be characterized as a reserved rave.  What I would describe as muddled playing the review would characterize as “obscured by the orchestral texture, much in the way moving objects in a forest are perceived in flashes behind branches and foliage.”  If nothing else, she is a great word-smith.

We were in Hoboken for the afternoon, it was relatively easy to get into town, with enough time for Chinese takeout which we ate inside the car.  The way back was straightforward.  Since the concert ended at about 9:15 pm, we were home by 10:30 pm.