Saturday, November 04, 2017

New York Philharmonic – Alan Gilbert, conductor; Joshua Bell, violin; Kelly O-Connor, mezzo-soprano. October 31, 2017.

David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.  Orchestra (Seat X103, $66.25).

Program – Bernstein’s Philharmonic, A Centennial Festival
Boundless (Homage to L.B.) by Roukens (b. 1982).
Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium) for Violin, String Orchestra, Harp, and Percussion (1953-54) by Berstein (1918-1990).
Symphony No. 1, Jeremiah (1942) by Bernstein.

We have been in the Boston area since mid-October.  I needed to take care of a few things back home and took advantage of the reduced-price offer for this concert.  This is a multi-week event celebrating Bernstein’s centennial (one could argue the celebration should be held next year, as Bernstein was born in 1918.)  We hadn’t planned on any of these concerts, our plans to be out of town was one factor, but my general lack of interest in Bernstein’s music was another.  This concert – or rather the Program Notes – certainly added quite a bit to my knowledge of Bernstein as a composer.

The other thing I didn’t expect was Gilbert was to be the conductor.  He came out to tremendous applause from the audience.  He asked the audience to observe a moment of silence for the victims of the morning’s terrorist attack.

Joey Roukens is a young Dutch composer who wrote this piece on commission from the Concertgebouw Orchestra, and its premiere was conducted by Gilbert.  The piece consists of three movements - manically, glacially, propulsively – played without break.  The changes in tempo was so obvious that not much guesswork was required.  Between the annotator’s notes and the “composer’s words” segment one could get a pretty good picture of what Roukens is trying to say.  To me the first movement has a strong dose of jazz, the second reasonably successfully evoked Bernstein conducting Mahler’s Adagietto, and the last movement was a free for all.  The composition probably is more nuanced than that, but the highest compliment I can give it would be that it can be passed off as a Bernstein piece to folks that are not Bernstein scholars.

Also, the piece was designed as a companion piece to the Serenade, with very similar instrumentation.  There are a few major differences though: no solo violin, a larger set of percussion instruments, and the use of a keyboard.

The Serenade was modeled after Plato’s Symposium with dialogs from different characters: (i) Phaedrus: Pausanias (Lento – Allegro marcato); (ii) Aristophanes (Allegretto); (iii) Eryximachus (Presto); (iv) Agathon (Adagio); and (v) Socrates: Alcibiades (Molto tenuto – Allegro molto vivace – Presto vivace).  The work was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in memory of the deceased conductor.  There is a lot of discussion whether Bernstein tried to fit his music into the titles, or the inspiration did come of the speeches made by the individuals.  Since I also know little about Plato, I didn’t try to find out which argument was correct.

I remember having trouble with Joshua Bell’s playing on several occasions, most on intonation issues with familiar pieces. Today I had no reservations at all that he did a great job.  The piece is not overtly difficult, but calls for many double stops and high notes.  Bell did them well.  There was a movement (iv, I believe) that was essentially a duet with the cello, and Bell went to Carter Brey to thank him at the end, well and good.  I noticed that he ignored Huang, wonder if that was an oversight or on purpose.

Carter Brey being acknowledged at the conclusion of Bernstein's Serenade. 

Bernstein’s Symphony No. 1 is based loosely on the story of Jeremiah and his Lamentations.  Indeed the first sketches Bernstein made was a “lamentation” for soprano and orchestra while he was still at Harvard.  When the work was premiered, Bernstein provided some notes for it.  “Prophecy” is to parallel the intensity of the prophet’s pleas with his people, “profanation” is a scherzo describing the destruction and chaos brought on by the pagan corruption within the priesthood and the people, and “lamentation,” set to Hebrew poetic text, is a more literary conception of the cry of Jeremiah.

The Playbill says the piece lasts about 27 minutes; it lasted perhaps 22.  I didn’t hear a break between the first and second movements, and was wondering why the soloist would come out for the second movement – and I was sure I didn’t doze off.  O’Connor generally did well, although the full orchestra drowned her out on occasion.

Kelly O'Connor taking a bow.

Most people who know anything about Bernstein know he shot onto the conducting scene by substituting for Bruno Walter on short notice in a nationally broadcast concert.  So people paid a lot of attention when this Symphony was premiered a couple of months later, with the Pittsburgh Symphony, in its hometown.  The performance got uniformly great review, and Bernstein became an instant composing conductor (or the other way around, as Salonen often debates.)

I guess the life lesson here is one should always try to be well prepared as there is no telling what opportunities would come along.

Attendance at this concert (last of five in this series) was quite good; I am sure the discount helped.  The people next to me didn’t stay for the second half, so I moved one over, which gave me an excellent view of the stage.

The New YorkTimes reviewer loved the concert.  The review also contains some useful details of the pieces.

I took the train in.  The concert ended early enough that I made the 9:38 pm train back, so I was home a little after 11 pm.


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