New Jersey Symphony. Xian Zhang, conductor; Juan Esteban Martinez, clarinet. March 27, 2026.

NJPAC, Newark, NJ.  Tier 1 (Seat F111, $52).

Martinez after performing Mozart's Clarinet Concerto.

Program

Divertimento in D Major, K. 136 (1772) by Mozart (1756-1791).

Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622 (1791) by Mozart.

Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68, "Pastoral" (1808) by Beethoven (1770-1827).

This is a "safe" program with pieces that are easy to appreciate and to enjoy.  And enjoy it I did.

We had not been to Prudential Hall for about a year, and our first reaction was at how weak the acoustics sounded.  And I complained about the acoustics then.

If you ask me what makes a piece of music a "divertimento," I won't be able to answer you.  Gemini AI tells me it "is a lighthearted entertaining musical genre from the 18th century ... has no fixed form but typically consists of several short movements ... common movements include minuets, marches, and variations."  So I am a bit puzzled by the claim in the Program Notes that "K. 136 is really misnamed as a divertimento," given the broad definition of the genre.  The "fault" lies in not having a minuet.

Actually, in my college days I was taught Mozart was the composer who contributed a lot to this genre, so who is to object to what he chose to call K.136?

Enough of the musicology debate.  The piece itself was a delight, crisp, and has enough structure to keep the intellect going if one wishes to so engage.  This was written when Mozart was 16, so perhaps he was still experimenting with different composition techniques.  That would support the Program Notes statement "where Mozart flirts with imitative writing in this otherwise homophonic work."  In case I forget in the future: fugue is imitative, harmony is homophonic (close enough?).

Only strings were used in Mozart's Divertimento.

The last time I heard Mozart's Clarinet Concerto was August, 2016, with Martin Frost as the soloist.  My jaw kind of dropped at how nice the piece was, and how Frost adeptly handled the instrument.  Martinez performed equally well, albeit without quite the showmanship of Frost.  And the acoustics of the venue worked a bit against him.

A few months ago I was remarking how limited the Cello repertoire was, it seems it's equally sparse in the clarinet world, and I have heard most of it.

Martinez in his bio lists Anthony McGill (of NY Phil) as one of his teachers.  He is a native of Colombia, moved to the Dominican Republic at a young age, and is a graduate of Yale and Peabody.  He is the orchestra's principal clarinet, and he played in the second half of the program.  Per his Facebook posting, this is his first performance of this concerto.

After over two hundred years, Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony has morphed from being a revolutionary piece to being today's standard classical/romantic work.  Some of the revolutionary elements: a descriptive program (albeit single sentences/phrases), no pauses between last three movements, and use of instruments to mimic sounds of nature (rain, thunder, bird songs).  These are all techniques and features deployed routinely without a second thought nowadays.

The orchestra did a good job.  For example, I felt the flow was so smooth that I didn't object to the repetition of some passages, and the bird songs were done very well.  The timpani, trombones, and piccolo were used sparing (mostly for the thunderstorm) and they added realistic sound effects (to the extent possible on stage).  But I didn't feel I was sitting by the brook, nor drenched by the rainstorm; I was sitting in Tier 1 observing.

A much larger ensemble performed Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony.

Just so I won't forget.  This symphony premiered on December 8, 1808.  On the program were Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Fourth Piano Concerto, Choral Fantasy, and part of the Mass in C Major.  I imagine I will be "Beethovened" out if I attend this 4-hour concert.

Again, this was not a well-attended concert.  We moved up 2 rows after the intermission.

New York Philharmonic. Nicholaj Szepts-Znaider, conductor/violin. March 27, 2026.

David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.  Orchestra (Seat T1, $136).

Szepts-Znaider greeting Huang after performing Bruch's violin concerto.

Program

Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26 (1864-66; rev. 1867) by Bruch (1838-1920).

Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks), Op. 28 (1894-95) by R. Strauss (1864-1949).

Variations on an Original Theme, Enigma, Op. 36 (1898-99) by Elgar (1857-1934).

On the program tonight were three semi-popular pieces for the concert repertoire.  I "arrived" at this concert after having changed the original "Thursday D" subscription twice.  At $136 this was also the most expensive of the New York Phil concerts I have for the season.  (I just renewed for next season, tickets average about $110 for next year.)

First about Nicholaj Szepts-Znaider.  Per this blog I had encountered him three times before tonight, all as solo violinists with New York Phil, performing the Sibelius (twice) and Beethoven violin concertos.  Per my website, the experiences were all positive.   He was called Znaider then, and I will refer to him as such to save on typing (no disrespect intended).  When we were visiting Lyon, France a couple of years ago, I found out he was the music director of the Lyon Orchestra.  We did go to a concert in Lyon, but it was to hear a visiting orchestra (Avignon).

While Bruch's list of compositions runs over three pages on Wikipedia, the Program Notes (fairly or not) claims "Still, if Bruch's production were reduced to the single piece ... his reputation would change hardly at all."  There is much truth to this sentiment, for me anyway, as I cannot name one other piece he wrote that I have heard.  Nonetheless, the famous violinist Joachim called this concerto "the richest and the most seductive" of the four German concertos in his repertoire.  (In case there is any doubt, the others are Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Brahms.)

Indeed the concerto was "rich and seductive," and Znaider did a great job.  As I had remarked in an earlier blog entry, his Guarneri violin sounded exceptionally bright, and its sound carried well into the auditorium.  There was no pause after the relatively short first movement.  Some have observed similarities between this concerto's second movement and that of Brahms's.  While Brahms was five years older, he didn't compose his violin concerto, with its famous oboe solo, until 1878, a decade later.

I don't know how conducting works in a situation where the soloist also doubles as the conductor.  Unlike with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, where there are no conductors, in this instance Znaider doubled as the conductor, for passages where the soloist wasn't playing.  Frank Huang, the concertmaster, seemed to do more pronounced gestures with his bow when the soloist was otherwise occupied.  As Huang usually doesn't do that, I assume it was to help keep the ensemble in sync. Most "proper" conductors conduct with the score, but evidently the score can be memorized.  Indeed Znaider conducted all three pieces without score.

Znaider at first joked he would play the Brahms concerto as an encore, but did play "Estrellita" transcribed by Heifetz.  Google didn't recognize it, I managed to find it by typing in the search term "Heifetz Mexican melody 100 years old," words I caught when Znaider announced the piece.

The complete title for Strauss's piece is Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, After the Old Rogue's Tale, Set in Rondo Form for Large Orchestra, which is about as long as the piece itself (well, 15 minutes).  In my view - and as Strauss describes it - it is a tone poem with no plot other than Eulenspiel's pranks eventually catch up with him, and he is executed by hanging.  One can simply listen to the piece as an abstract yet humorous composition, chuckle at Strauss's composition techniques, and attempt to catch the motifs scattered throughout.  Eulenspiegel's sentence is the diminished seventh interval F-G flat, which Strauss calls a "motif" despite its being used only once as far as I could tell.  I expected the ending to be macabre, but it isn't at all.

The Program Notes has a passage describing how Eulenspiegel was both praised and panned by contemporary critics when it premiered.

After performance of Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel.

If the Enigma variations is Elgar's only composition, then I suspect he would not enjoy the reputation he does today.  (My attempt at an inverse of Bruch and his violin concerto.)  The composition was "interesting" only because people had to decipher which of Elgar's friends and acquaintances were being depicted in the various variations.  That could be a worthwhile exercise for his contemporaries who ran in the same professional and social circles, but for an audience listening to it 100 years later, that WN (VIII) refers to Winifred Norbury, a gracious arts patron, is of no particular importance (with all due respect to Mr. Norbury).  Elgar claims there is a larger enigma which many believe is subterfuge as no such enigma exists.  As a theme and variations, the connections are not particular clear.

Well, Znaider put on a different outfit to conduct Elgar.

The organ is listed as an instrument - indeed one could see the organ console on stage.  One would naturally think it would be used in GRS (XI) as George Robertson Sinclair was an organist.  I frankly didn't catch the organ at all - neither did Anne.  I would at least like to hear what the "fake" organ inside the auditorium sounds like.  (Per Wikipedia, the organ is used in the last movement.)

We missed the 9:38 pm train back to NJ by a couple of minutes; that gave us an excuse to have a slice of pizza before the next train.

New York Philharmonic. Gustavo Dudamel, conductor. March 19, 2026.

David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center, New York.  Orchestra (Seat W109, $96).

Dudamel, Merriweather, Lang, Barron and Tines.

Program

the wealth of nations (2025) by Lang (b. 1957).

Artists

Fleur Barron, mezzo-soprano; Davone Tines, bass-baritone

New York Philharmonic Chorus, Malcolm J. Merriweather, director.

Starting in September, Dudamel, after a wait of several years (he was announced as the Music Director in February 2023), will become the actual Music Director of New York Philharmonic.  Everything the organization does nowadays has been to play this up.  The series renewal package I received in the mail recently has him prominently figured on the cover, ads about his Radio City Music Hall are plastered all over town (well, around the Lincoln Center area anyway), and - as far as I can tell - even the logo, now just New York Philharmonic in plain letters, has been changed to usher in the new era. And what is the new purple color that seems to have been adopted.  Despite all that,  I do look forward to seeing how the orchestra would change because of new music leadership.

Having said all that, I still find today's concert a bit puzzling when I was first found out about it.  I haven't read the book by Adam Smith, and have no intention to read it; I do know it is about capitalism and its underlying principles.  How does one turn that topic into a musical composition?  It's like setting algebra or Riemannian geometry into music.  Actually the abstraction behind mathematics may work better, in my opinion.  Perhaps an economics or political science student will find much excitement in a tome extolling capitalism and free markets, most people would find the principles dry, whether they agree with them or not.  That same indifference would carry over to the musical version of the book.

I had a dialog with Gemini AI and am quite impressed with how much it knows about this work.  (To pass along the disclaimer: there may be mistakes in the results.)

First was whether Dudamel had a hand in getting this work commissioned.  By all indications he did, although David Lang probably was working on this before Dudamel was named the Music Director (designate).  Some of the libretto used sounded like a condensate of Smith's ideas, but Gemini insists that they are taken verbatim from the book.  Gemini quoted a few examples, and I go along with it.  Words by Frederick Douglas (a social reformer and abolitionist), Eugene Debs (socialist) and others were interwoven into the libretto to provide a counter-argument and balance.  I didn't get the feeling Lang was trying to negate all of Smith's thinking, but the fact that the seventeenth movement, dedicated to the speech Debs made before he was sentenced, was the longest, speaks to where Lang leans in this spectrum.  Dudamel has been quite adept at staying out of politics or policy, so I wonder whether he had much input into the messaging.

It is Lang himself who compares his work with probably the best known oratorio: Handel's Messiah.  There is a "sinfony" and a "pifa" at the beginning and the middle, for instance.  I am thankful for one major difference: the "wealth of nations" is much shorter at about 70 minutes.  And what is all this "no capital letters" anyway?  I have made similar remarks about other composers who try to name their works in an unusual way: pretentiousness is a poor look, especially if the product doesn't justify it.

I guess it's the same pretentiousness (chutzpah may be a better description) to think something like this can be pulled off.  Ironically, I feel the music can stand on its own (not sure what libretto could be used, any Greek mythology would do).  There are contrasts, climaxes, a nice melody here and there; and the orchestra, chorus, and soloists certainly produced a great sound.  And if you are into minimalist music (Gemini calls Lang a post-minimalist) you may actually appreciate what's been achieved.  With the words projected above the stage, however, you may end up scratching you head the whole 70 minutes, most of it anyway.

A solid group of musicians.

When I looked at the NY Phil webpage to find the Program Notes, I noticed that rush tickets would be available for today's performance.  I was surprised that the pull of Dudamel and the novelty of the oratorio were not able to pull off a full house (altogether there are four performances).  Indeed there were scattered empty seats in the auditorium this evening.

Vienna Philharmonic. Andris Nelsons, conductor. March 1, 2026.

Carnegie Hall, New York.  Dress Circle (Seat DD30, $135).

After performing Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra.  The concertmaster had quite a workout during the violin solo.

Program

Also Sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30 (1896) by Strauss (1864-1949).

Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 43 (1901-02) by Sibelius (1865-1957).

I have mixed feelings about the program for today.  On the one hand, it's good to have an opportunity to hear a world-renowned orchestra perform two definitive pieces composed at the turn of the 20th century.  On the other hand, one wonders why an organization with such a reputation would go with two standard "warhorses" from the period.  To be fair, the orchestra had a series of concerts during this visit, and one should look at the totality to assess the overall program.  But I suspect few in the audience had tickets to multiple concerts.

With that said, I was looking forward to the concert.  There is something to be said about listening to two familiar works that are "soul-stirring."  To the superficial listener, Strauss's first "movement" is worth the price of admission, and the last movement of Sibelius is so filled with tension that it's always nice to sit through.

The unfortunate fact is the concert didn't deliver much beyond the simple take-aways I listed above.  Was it a good concert?  Of course.  The parts were easy to discern, the contrasts were clear, the sounds were crisp, the soloists were impressive (though some could be louder for those in the upper reaches of the auditorium).  Yet I was listening to the performance, and wasn't in the middle of it.

Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra is a tone poem based on Nietzsche's novel where he introduces his key concepts like the "death of God," the "Superman" as a human ideal, and the "will to power."  (Quoting from what Google tells me.)  Even after hearing the piece many times, I still can't grasp which of Nietzsche's concepts are being put to music.  I have always found it somewhat unfortunate that the dramatic part is concentrated in the first couple of minutes, even though one can the subsequent passages are a lot more thought-provoking (even without being sure what thoughts are being provoked).  I did learn in this hearing that the violin solo occurs in "The Dance Song."

I heard the Sibelius symphony performed by the New York Philharmonic a few months back (November 2025).  While I don't remember much of the actual performance, I did describe it in glowing terms.  I am quite sure I won't use similarly glowing terms for tonight's performance.  That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it, though.  Indeed the coda was very satisfying.

Sibelius produced interesting and full orchestral sounds without using an organ and many percussion instruments.  (The organ wasn't removed during intermission.)

Anne couldn't come, so I exchanged her ticket.  The person who bought the ticket said Anne missed a great concert.  I am not sure I would go that far.

I took the train to Penn Station and walked to/from Carnegie Hall.  On the way back I stopped by Shake Shack for a burger.