The NY Phil Biennial just wrapped its second run at Lincoln Center with a pair of concerts on Saturday, featuring musicians from the Aspen Music Festival and School, followed by the the orchestra itself. And yet, this was a subdued affair, offering somber and sobering reflection where two years ago, ebullience and energy reigned. Two programs paid homage to the late composer Steven Stucky, whose works were heard alongside those of Pierre Boulez, Per Nørgård and the festival's curator, Esa-Pekka Salonen.
The JACK Quartet opens the NY Phil Biennial 2016.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
They'll melt your face: the JACK Quartet. Photo by Caroline Savage.
Every Biennial begins with a single concert. On Monday night, a crowd of cognoscenti seated in the upstairs auditorium of the 92nd St. Y heard the JACK Quartet open the NY Phil Biennial 2016, the New York Philharmonic's three-week festival celebrating the sharp leading edge of modern art music.
The New York Philharmonic gears up for its second NYPhil Biennial.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
Refracted: NY Phil Biennial curator and Philharmonic composer-in-residence Esa-Pekka Salonen gets Superconductor'd. Photo alteration by the author.
It is admirable for an orchestra to dedicate its time and programming, even for a short while to music of our time. That is the agenda for the second-ever NYPhil Biennial, which starts next Monday night at the 92nd St. Y and promises two weeks of cutting-edge music, contemporary performance ensembles and a slew of works receiving their world or New York premieres.
The New York Philharmonic's 2015-16 season marks the start of a key transitional period for America's longest-lived orchestra: the wane of Alan Gilbert, who announced earlier this year that he is planning to step down as the ensemble's music director in 2017.
That change hangs over this entire season, which also features the arrival of composer Esa-Pekka Salonen as the orchestra's third Composer-in-Residence. Mr. Salonen has made his reputation as a fearless conductor of romantic and modern repertory and as an equally fearless creator of music that remains eminently listenable while pushing forward in bold new directions. In addition to a conducting commitment, the Finnish composer will premiere new works under the aegis of the New York Philharmonic.
This is Mr. Salonen's first appointment with an orchestra in a composing capacity, following the career path he chose since leaving the Los Angeles Philharmonic. "It's a new departure for me," he said in a pre-taped film shown on the Atrium wall. "I can ask (the Philharmonic) for almost impossible things and they deliver."
In addition to the New York premieres of his L.A. Variations and Karawane, Mr. Salonen will also compose a new work for the second NY Phil Biennial, scheduled to start in May of 2016. "I'm a little superstitious about talking about new pieces before they're written," he said. The full Biennial schedule remains unannounced, but the festival will include the New York premiere of The Importance of Being Earnest, a new opera by Gerald Barry. Earnest the first fruit of a new collaboration with Lincoln Center.
Mr. Salonen's 2016 conducting commitments include Olivier Messiaen's Turangalila-symphonie, a massive work that incorporates solo piano and ondes Martinot. This is the featured concert of Messiaen Week, dedicated to the music of the 20th century French mystic. The schedule also features Messiaen's epic Quartet for the End of Time, performed at the Temple of Dendur with an all-star cast including Mr. Gilbert on the violin and pianist Inon Barnatan, the orchestra's current Artist in Association.
This year, the orchestra bucked the usual trend of hiring a violinist or pianist as the orchestra's Artist in Residence. Next year, it will be a singer: the American bass-baritone Eric Owens. Acclaimed for his interpretation of Alberich in Wagner's Ring, Mr. Owens will sing the role of Wotan in a January 2016 concert featuring the final scene of that composer's Die Walküre. "I don't know of any other opera that has this kind of cult following," Mr. Owens said. "It's like Star Trek."
Some other schedule highlights:
Mr. Gilbert will lead two major Mahler works (the Symphony No. 5 and Das Lied von der Erde and explore the music of Sibelius in honor of the latter composer's 150th birthday.
The orchestra schedule features the Mahler Sixth (with Semyon Bychkov) and Ninth under Bernard Haitink in April of 2016.
A three week festival focusing on the piano concertos of Rachmaninoff with Russian pianist Danil Trifonov completing a concerto cycle started earlier this season.
In a new holiday offering, Eric Owens will feature in How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Finally, the season opens with a double bill of film scores, performed live with the movies behind the Philharmonic players. On the slate, late music director Leonard Bernstein's score for On the Waterfront and Nino Rota's score for The Godfather. Truly this is a concert you can't refuse.
Editor'sNote: In honor of Julia Wolfe winning the Pulitzer for her piece AnthraciteFields, we are we are re-posting this review of its New York premiere from last year. Congratulations to Ms. Wolfe!
In Pennsylvania's coal country, the borough of Centralia stands abandoned, due to an underground coal fire that forced citizens to flee the once-thriving municipality. Last week, the NY PHIL BIENNIAL unveiled two works that reminded one of that abandoned town: Julia Wolfe's Anthracite Fields and Steven Mackey's Dreamhouse. In their own way, each composition illustrates the dangers of the American dream, whether in the forced labor and brutal conditions of the coal mines or the uncertainty and terror of the decade following the collapse of the World Trade Center.
The first ever NY PHIL BIENNAL ended Saturday night with the last of three consecutive concerts by the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall. Saturday's concert was led by music director Alan Gilbert, who took the stage with microphone in hand to announce the end of the festival and to thank his orchestra musicians for learning all these new pieces and playing them at a high level.
The Austrian composer-conductor Matthias Pintscher is one of the most important voices in the contemporary music scene. And thanks to his close association with the New York Philharmonic and his working relationship with music director Alan Gilbert, he has been a driving force behind the NY PHIL BIENNIAL, the 11-day new music event that has swept through Manhattan this month in a tidal wave of sonic innovation.
The NEW YORK PHIL BIENNIAL is in its second week. On Tuesday night, six members of the Philharmonic gathered at SubCulture for the second CONTACT! program of the festival, featuring works commissioned for solo performers by a minor galaxy of talented young composers. The concert, hosted by SubCulture co-founder Eric Kaplan showed the brilliance and diversity of each composer, and the talents of featured Philharmonic players in these very different compositions.
The Orchestra of St. Luke's explores the modern British composers.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
Chillin' with Pablo: Orchestra of St. Luke's principal conductor Pablo Heras-Casado
takes a backstage break. Photo by Felix Broede from hs website.
The British composer George Benjamin has emerged as an important voice in the 21st century, with his opera Written on Skin and instrumental works gaining in popularity and performance. On Sunday afternoon, conductor Pablo Heras-Casado and the Orchestra of St. Luke's offered its second program of the current NY PHIL BIENNIAL, exploring works by Mr, Benjamin, this year's Musical America composer of the year, and other composers who are his influences and followers in the current flowering of contemporary British music.
From his heaven-storming early piano works to his current place as a grand statesman of modern music, there is no overstating the importance of composer and conductor Pierre Boulez. On Saturday afternoon at the Rose Theater in the Time Warner Center, the Orchestra of St. Luke's unveiled their first concert of the NY PHIL BIENNIAL: Circles of Influence: Pierre Boulez. This concert celebrated recent works (including four U.S. premieres) and examined the Boulezian influence on contemporary European composers.
The New York Philharmonic makes CONTACT! at MoMA.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
The Mario Merz sculpture Ziffer im Wald inspired a work on this week's CONTACT! program at the 2014 NY PHIL BIENNIAL. Photo from salzburg.gv.at.
In the Alan Gilbert era at the New York Philharmonic, the CONTACT! series has provided a playground for musicians and enthusiasts of modern music alike to hear avant-garde compositions n a more intimate venue than the vast cavern of Avery Fisher Hall. On Thursday night, composer/conductor Matthias Pintscher led members of the orchestra in Beyond Recall, a late-night new music marathon at the Museum of Modern Art. This was the first of three CONTACT! concerts in the orchestra's ongoing NY PHIL BIENNIAL.
Opera is a serious art. Unless its perpetrator is H.K. Gruber, the imaginative Austrian composer whose Gloria--A Pig Tale is the second new stage work to have its New York premiere in the early days of the first NY PHIL BIENNIAL. This new production was a collaboration between New York Philharmonic music director Alan Gilbert, director Doug Fitch and AXIOM, a Juilliard-based ensemble devoting itself to the interpretation of contemporary music.
In the opera world it's known, that on stages lights are shone
and composers look to poets for librettos for their scores.
It's to Edgar Allen Poe and his great poem of great woe
that the Gotham Chamber Opera's new The Raven owes its source.
'Twas by Toshio Hosokawa, and its New York premiere this was,
a new work washed on Gotham's shore.
For music to survive, a new audience must be created. That's part of the philosophy behind the New York Philharmonic's first ever BIENNIAL, a festival which engulfs New York in the music of the late 20th and 21st centuries. A collaboration with the Gotham Chamber Opera, Orchestra of St. Luke's, SubCulture, the American Composer's Orchestra and both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, the NY Phil Biennial will push the musical envelope while hopefully introducing a new generation of composers to interested listeners.
With 11 days and 21 concerts to choose from (whew!) featuring crossovers into the world of opera, modern music and the world premiere of a new symphony by Philharmonic composer-in-residence Christopher Rouse, this promises to be a revolutionary event. Here are five programs that Superconductor readers will not want to miss:
