The Dude Is Not In

Gustavo Dudamel cancels at the Philharmonic.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Gustavo Dudamel has the flu. As indicated by the added biohazard symbol.
Original photo by Chris Lee.

Conductor Gustavo Dudamel has cancelled his appearances with the New York Philharmonic this week due to a severe case of the flu. The conductor was scheduled to lead the orchestra in three concerts this week at Avery Fisher Hall.

The announcement came this morning from the New York Philharmonic press department.

Crane Business Weekly

Performances are scheduled though Carnegie Hall is still dark.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

This dangling crane on W. 57th Street has closed Carnegie Hall.
Photo from JoeMyGod.

A sunny, if cold weekend is upon us, and as New York continues to struggle back from the devastating hammer-blow of Hurricane Sandy, here's an update on what's going on.

In some good news for Brooklynites, subway service has resumed along the 4, 5, 6 between Brooklyn and Manhattan. The MTA and Con Ed are still working on draining the subway tunnels for the R and A trains, hard hit by the flooding.

Carnegie Hall is unable to open its doors due to the damaged construction crane dangling over W. 57th St. The entire block (and the 57th St. N, Q, R train station) remains closed. The Friday evening recital with Murray Perahia has been moved to Avery Fisher Hall. The crane is scheduled for removal this weekend.

The New York Philharmonic is open, with concerts tonight at Avery Fisher and a 5pm Sunday chamber performance of the Arnold Schoenberg arrangement of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. The concert, at the Lincoln Center Rose Theater (located in the Time Warner Center) features piano soloist and Philharmonic Artist-in-Residence Emanuel Ax.

The Metropolitan Opera is proceeding with business "as usual." Today there's a matinee performance of Thomas Àdes' The Tempest and an evening show of Le Nozze di Figaro. Next week, look for more news about the company's new production of Un Ballo in Maschera which opens next Thursday.

Here's some classical comfort food to get you through this difficult time. I know it helps me.

Maurizio Pollini Cancels Concerts

Garrick Ohlsson, Louis Lortie, Maria João Pires to step in at Carnegie Hall.
by Paul Pelkonen

Maurizio Pollini lights up in London.
 Perhaps he heard about Mayor Bloomberg's smoking ban?

Breaking news from the Carnegie Hall press office: Italian virtuoso pianist Maurizio Pollini has been forced to cancel all of his planned spring appearances due to illness. This includes both recitals at Carnegie Hall, and a series of May concerts in New York and Philadelphia with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

This is the second year in a row that Mr. Pollini has been forced to cancel his U.S. obligations. A similar announcement appeared in the New York Times in March of last year. A set of concerts with the Philadelphia Orchestra has also been nixed.

Mr. Pollini will be replaced for the April 29 concert by American soloist Garrick Ohlsson, who has agreed to do an all-Liszt recital at the Sunday afternoon concert. This will be the second such program by Mr. Ohlsson in New York this year. A review of the artist's  January recital at the 92nd St. Y is here on Superconductor.

For the May 6 performance, Canadian pianist Louis Lortie will play two sonatas by Beethoven (the Waldstein and Les Adieux) and a selection of Chopin.

At the May 18 concert at Carnegie Hall, Mr. Pollini's substitute will be the award-winning Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires. Ms. Pires will play the Second Chopin Piano Concerto, accompanied by Charles Dutoit and the Philadelphia Orchestra. This concert is part of an ongoing celebration of Mr. Dutoit's tenure with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He is stepping down at the end of this season to make way for incoming music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Mahler, Interrupted

Ringing iPhone stops New York Philharmonic.

by Paul Pelkonen.

He can kill your cell phone with his brain.
New York Philharmonic Music Director Alan Gilbert.
Photo by Pascal Perich © New York Philharmonic.

Tuesday night's New York Philharmonic performance of the Mahler Ninth was stopped dead by an unusual instrument--the iPhone.

An iPhone (using the marimba ring-tone) went off repeatedly in the fourth movement of Mahler's final completed symphony.

According to an eyewitness, the offending phone owner was in the front rows of Avery Fisher Hall when his phone went off. (A post by Michael Jo on the classical music blog thousandfoldecho.com specifies that the interruption happened just 13 bars before the last page of the score.) In other words, in the final moments of a 25-minute movement, that ends a 90-minute symphony.

"Mr. Gilbert was visibly annoyed by the persistent ring-tone, so much that he quietly cut the orchestra," the concert-goer, music student Kyra Sims, reports. She related how the orchestra's music director turned on the podium towards the offender. The pause lasted a good "three or four minutes. It might have been two. It seemed long."

Mr. Gilbert asked the man, sitting in front of the concert-master: "Are you finished?" The man didn't respond.

"Fine, we'll wait," Mr. Gilbert said.

The Avery Fisher Hall audience, ripped in an untimely fashion from Mahler's complicated sound-world, reacted with "seething rage," Ms. Sims said. Someone shouted "Thousand dollar fine."

This was followed by cries of 'Get out!' and 'Kick him out!.' Some people started clapping rhythmically but the hall was quieted down. House security did not intervene or remove the offender.

The ringing stopped. "Did you turn it off?" Mr. Gilbert asked.

The man nodded.

"It won't go off again?" 

The man shook his head.

Before resuming, Mr. Gilbert addressed the audience. He said: "I apologize. Usually, when there's a disturbance like this, it is best to ignore it, because addressing it is sometimes worse than the disturbance itself. But this was so egregious that I could not allow it."

"We'll start again." The audience cheered.

The final movement of this symphony (marked Adagio: Very Slowly and Restrained) is a long slow meditation on death that eventually fades to silence. The work has special significance at the New York Philharmonic, an orchestra that Mahler conducted in the last years of his life. 

Mr. Gilbert turned to the orchestra and said "Number 118." (Again, thanks to thousandfoldecho.com for this detail.) The band picked up the movement from the final fortissimo ending in the brass, and played the work through to its last, quiet pages.

No other phones went off.


Contact the author: E-mail Superconductor editor Paul Pelkonen.