New Jersey Symphony. Markus Stenz - conductor; Juho Pohjonen - piano. November 2, 2019.

Count Basie Theater, Red Bank, NJ (Rear Orchestra, Seat U116, $36).

Program

“Chaos” from Les Elemens (1737) by Rebel (1666-1747).

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

Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73 (1877) by Brahms (1833-1897).

When Lacombe was its music director, I often described the NJSO as a “Jekyll and Hyde” orchestra, doing great when Lacombe was conducting, not so great when guests took the podium.  One thing about the NJSO today, it does quite well under the batons of guest conductors, even in the case of a conductor who was the “lead the music” type.  Today’s performance provided affirmation, for me at least, that orchestras can, and do, improve.

There is no other to describe Jean-Fery Rebel, a French composer, as being obscure.  I had never heard of him, and this NJSO series was the premiere performance of this short piece.  The Program Notes describes Rebel as from a French musical dynasty, and was trained as a violinist and harpsichordist, and a member of the Vingt-quatre Violons du Roy string orchestra.  He composed “Chaos” at age 71 to add to the dance suite Les Elemens.  As the Notes says, the dissonances were revolutionary for the time; however, it is a stretch to say they could have been mistaken for music composed two centuries later.  All in all, it was an interesting piece, although I probably won’t recognize it if I were to listen to it again.

We heard the Grieg piano concerto performed in an NJSO concert about three years ago (October 2016).  My remark about the solo performance was that the soloist could do the melodies and the virtuoso well, but failed to string the passages into a coherent story.  Tonight’s was a completely different experience, instead of moving from highlight to highlight, the performance took the audience on a compelling journey from start to finish.  I do need to analyze the concerto more to catch the Schumann influence, though.

Puhjonen acknowledging the orchestra after Grieg's Piano Concerto.

The name Pohjonen sounded familiar.  He also looked familiar when he came on stage.  I was therefore surprised that I had heard him only once, in 2011, at a Mostly Mozart concert.  He certainly made a lot of improvement in the intervening eight years.  The MM Program Notes described him as “one of the brightest young instrumental talents to emerge from Finland;” today he is “one of today’s most exciting and vibrant instrumentalist.”  I have no quarrel with that.

I am quite familiar with Brahms’s second symphony and thus had a favorite “interpretation” in mind.  Tonight’s performance didn’t quite follow that script, but was nonetheless enjoyable.

This was Stenz’s conducting debut with the NJSO.  As remarked at the beginning of this entry, he certainly pulled it off.  He was quite energetic, and his “lead the beat” style resulted in some minor precision problems, but the orchestra responded very well to his direction.

Stenz and the NJSO.

We were seated in the rear orchestra section, but had a good view of the stage.  The attendance was quite good at this level, I wonder what it was like in the balcony.