Concert Review: A Covey of Concertos

The New York Philharmonic plays Brahms and Marc Neikrug.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A man and his instrument: Emanuel Ax at the piano.

The early weeks of this young New York Philharmonic season are heavily focused on the concerto, that peculiar yet popular form that pits a solo artist against an orchestra in a struggle of will and ability. This week’s program featured two pieces by Johannes Brahms (the Tragic Overture and the Second Piano Concerto) flanking the world premiere of a new work (commissioned by the Philharmonic in 2014) by contemporary composer Marc Neikrug.

Concert Review: Across the Narrow Sea

The Philharmonic premieres Mark Neikrug's Concerto for Orchestra.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Kanagawa Oki Nami Ura (The Great Wave) by Hokusai
as it appeared on the score cover of Debussys La Mer.

Kanagawa Oki Nami Ura

This week, the New York Philharmonic launched the first performances of Marc Neikrug's Concerto for Orchestra, a major work by this modern composer dedicated to music director Alan Gilbert and designed to show the players of this famous orchestra to maximum effect. Mr. Gilbert conducted.

Mr. Neikrug's Concerto was framed as the centerpiece in a centuries-spanning program that ranged over 400 years of music making, from the delicate classicism of Mozart to the modern ideas of Mr. Neikrug. Friday's matinee concert opened with Hector Berlioz' overture Le Corsaire. Although the woodwinds sounded muddled in the early pages of the work, the ensemble recovered to deliver a thrilling, salty performance, reveling in this composer's complex orchestrations.

Despite some unusual orchestral textures and a penchant for dissonance that made members of the staid Friday matinee subscription audience somewhat uncomfortable, Mr. Neikrug's creation is a fairly conventional four-movement work. In fact, this Concerto seems more like a symphony under another name, as it has a scherzo, slow movement and blazing finale, forms that have more in common with that genre.