New Jersey Symphony – Jun Markl, conductor; Ingrid Fliter, piano. March 9, 2019.

Count Basie Theater, Red Bank, NJ.  Orchestra (Seat U115, $28).

Program

Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune (1891-94) by Debussy (1862-1918).

Piano Concerto On. 1 in G Minor, Op. 25 (1830-31) by Mendelssohn (1809-1847).

Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, Op. 33a (1944-45) by Britten (1913-1976).

La Mer (1903-05) by Debussy.

Some concerts are simply uninspiring.  Despite my best efforts in trying to appreciate it, this concert is one of them.  I can think of other words and phrases: going through the motions, lackluster, phoning it in, … Perhaps the only excuse is a performer plays to an audience, and the audience wasn’t there.

There were many empty seats tonight, not a good sign.  Photo taken a few minutes before concert start.

My problem with the concert started even before I went.  With a title of “Debussy Masterworks” one would expect quite a bit of Debussy in the program.  If you count the minutes, there were 33 minutes of it in a 70-minute program – not even half.  While I understand a concert’s programming depends on input from a pianist, but picking a Mendelssohn piece simply doesn’t make sense, at least not to this listener.

Both Debussy pieces could have sounded better: more surreal in the Faun and more real in La Mer.

I did get more out of the non-Debussy pieces.  Mendelssohn wrote his first piano concerto when he was very young, and the work heralded the large number of compositions he completed during his tragically short life.  This was also the first time we saw the Argentine pianist Fliter (who now lives in Europe).  She was very business-like in dispatching – competently, I might add – the piece.  Going over my blog, I had good things to say about my prior listens to this concerto; I am not sure today’s performance rose to that level.

 Fliter and Markl after the Mendelssohn Piano Concerto.

At the conclusion of the concert.

And to be fair, I also enjoyed the Interludes by Britten.

The next NJSO concert we will be attending will be led by Zhang.  Which makes me wonder, has the NJSO reverted to this Jekyll-and-Hyde, as I characterized it when Lacombe was the music director?  We shall see.

We spent the afternoon at Hoboken before driving down to Red Bank for the event.