Concert Review: The Theory of Massive Attack

The New York Philharmonic goes massive and modern.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Alan Gilbert and Frank Peter Zimmermann on tour in Europe 2012.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2012 rThe New York Philharmonic.

With the announcement of the 2016-17 season only a few weeks away, the New York Philharmonic is playing well for outgoing music director Alan Gilbert. On Friday morning at David Geffen Hall, the orchestra was joined by soloist Frank Peter Zimmermann its second performance of Magnus Lindberg's Violin Concerto No. 2. The Lindberg work, which premiered with the London Philharmonic late last year, was flanked by two heavy 20th century bookends: Respighi's Vetrate di chiesa ("Church Windows") and Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.

Concert Review: This Used To Be Their Playground

The New York Philharmonic returns to Carnegie Hall for its 2015 gala.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Evgeny Kissin played the opening gala of Carnegie Hall.
Photo by Bette Marshall for Sony Classics.

Opening night at Carnegie Hall is a festive occasion each year. This year, the famed venue turns 125 years old, and celebrated that birthday with a program that looked back upon golden moments in its venerated history. The guests though were from up the street: the New York Philharmonic. America's oldest orchestra called the Carnegie stage home for 70 years before upping roots to Lincoln Center.

Concert Review: A Blizzard of Sound

The New York Philharmonic plays Rouse, Lindberg and the Tchaikovsky Fifth.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Yefim Bronfman (at piano) and Alan Gilbert (with baton) at the New York Philharmonic.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2013 The New York Philharmonic.

Despite the lashing snow and battering winds that briefly turned Lincoln Center into a winter playground on Thursday night, the New York Philharmonic's subscription concert under the baton of Alan Gilbert (the first of the new year) was solidly attended. The performance, featuring two works by modern composers and a crowd-pleasing symphony followed the current theory of pairing so-called "new" music with a sturdy war-horse that can drive the point home to even the most stubborn listener.

Concert Review: When the Flutes Exploded

The New York Philharmonic makes CONTACT!
by Paul Pelkonen

Conductor David Robertson.

At New York Philharmonic subscription concerts, the performance of new music or works by still-living composers can be an afterthought, wedged between familiar slabs of Brahms and Beethoven. The CONTACT! concerts are different. They take place away from Avery Fisher Hall, and offer nothing but modern music. Saturday night's concert was at Symphony Space.

This spring's CONTACT! program, curated by Philharmonic composer-in-residence Magnus Lindberg and led by conductor David Robertson, featured two premieres. opened with a Philharmonic commission from New York's own Elliott Carter: Two Controversies and a Confrontation. Mr. Carter is one of this city's most celebrated composers, and at 103 years old, the dean of modern American music.

Concert Review: Out of the Darkness

The Philharmonic premieres Magnus Lindberg's Second Piano Concerto.

by Paul Pelkonen

Piano brawl: Yefim Bronfman does battle with giants.
Photo taken at the Barbican, London © Vienna Philharmonic.

Manhattan concert-goers got a preview of the New York Philharmonic's planned tour program this week, with a set of subscription concerts featuring the world premiere of Magnus Lindberg's Second Piano Concerto. This concert is the last premiere of Mr. Lindberg's three-year term as the orchestra's composer-in-residence.

The somnolent audience for Friday's 11am concert were snapped awake by the opening chords of Dvorak's Carnival Overture. This is a bold splotch of orchestral color that epitomizes this composer's breezy, folk-driven style. Alan Gilbert led the work with energy and rhythmic drive, spotlighting the talented wind and string players.

Concert Review: The Sound of the Northlands

Listening in Suomi at Scandinavia House. 

Parenthetically speaking: the members of counter)induction.

Monday night at Scandinavia House's underground Victor Borge Hall featured members of the chamber group counter)induction, playing works by contemporary Finnish composers Esa-Pekka Salonem, Jukka Tiensuu, Kaija Saariaho and Magnus Lindberg. 

Visitors to New York's concert halls might recognize some of those names:

• Mr. Salonen is an international conductor, who also devotes considerable time to composition. 
• Ms. Saariaho, Carnegie Hall's composer-in-residence is known for her spacious, austere soundscapes. 
• Mr. Lindberg is completing his third year as the New York Philharmonic's composer-in-residence. 

All three are long-serving members of Finland's "Ears Open" movement, a resurgence of sonic creativity in that country.

Mr. Lindberg served as the emcee of the evening, introducing each work. He started by introducing the New York audience to the sound-world of Mr. Tiensuu, arguably the most obscure composer on the bill. Mr. Tiensuu's sound-world incorporates microtones--notes generated between those pitches on a standard scale--but does so in a unique way that recalls the complexities of baroque music. NOUS was a terse toccata, with repeated pounding rhythms and opportunities for virtuosity in its central waltz section. 

Next up was Homonculus for String Quartet by conductor/composer Esa-Pekka Salonen. As the title suggests, this was an intense piece of music. The two violins traded lines with the viola, over short, chopped rhythms that occasionally galloped or capered. constructed atop galloping cello rhythms that recalled another Finnish chamber ensemble: Apocalyptica. 

Similar, alchemical ideas infused Mr. Lindberg's Piano Trio, receiving its New York premiere in this concert. The Trio  was followed by the premiere of Mr. Lindberg's Clarinet Trio, with nimble playing from all three instruments. Mr. Lindberg laid out the thematic ideas in an opening "whirlpool." To build the second and third movements, the material was drawn from the bubbling cauldron, reshaped, and occasionally transmuted with fascinating results.

The second half of the program opened with Ms. Saariaho's Pres, a three-movement work for cello and electronic tones generated by an onstage MacBook Pro. . In a pre-concert interview Ms. Saariaho described an idea she had for an "endless" cello bow, the size of a large suspension bridge. She then moved to the computer station, working with 

It was not impossible to imagine that mega-instrument in the swoops and whooshes generated by the computer. Cellist Sumire Kido played with admirable focus, bringing the dreamy world of Ms. Saariaho's music to vivid life. The three movements incorporated natural and electronic sounds to accompany the cello, and a good balance was achieved in this unusual duet.

The concert concluded with Mr. Lindberg's Clarinet Quintet, a playful 20 minutes that, Liszt-like, packs the ideas of four seperate movements into one economical form. The five players tossed the theme back and forth rapidly, as if the musical ideas were too hot to handle. The most athletic playing here came from clarinetist Benjamin Fingland. Without the ability to play chords, the woodwind had to work twice as hard.

Beyond the actual notes, what made this performance work was the explosive energy built from Mr. Lindberg's taut rhythms and intertwining musical fragments. The work was clearly taxing on the musicians, but they were also enjoying the exchange of energy with eye gestures, shoulder movements and repeated leaps into the complex melodic fray. 

Concert Review: The Burly Show

Alan Gilbert works out the New York Philharmonic.

"And turn! And bend! And flex! And play!" Conductor Alan Gilbert.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2011 The New York Philharmonic.

On Wednesday night, Alan Gilbert led the New York Philharmonic in three sturdy modern works. Composer-in-residence Magnus Lindberg's Feria was followed by the Second Piano Concerto of Bela Bártok with soloist Lang Lang. Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony, a steely-eyed product of his second Soviet period brought the evening to a loud close.

Mr. Lindberg's piece is a sort of orchestral carnival, with many of the musical ideas that have become familiar to New Yorkers over the three years of his residency. A ringing trumpet figure is followed by nervous, chivvying figures in the strings, and complex percussion parts. The orchestra incorporates unusual "found" objects. There is a percussion part for a suspended spring coil, and prominent use of piano. But what made this 17-minute piece work was an eloquent main theme, and a slow central section with subtle references to the Renaissance music of Claudio Monteverdi.

A lengthy pause before the Bartók concerto saw the Philharmonic reconfigured in an unfamiliar way. The entire brass were moved all the way to stage right, with the woodwinds sitting in front along the lip of the stage. The first violins occupied the center of the stage behind the piano. Since Bartók's composition omits strings in the first movement, and mutes the brass in the second. this divided seating seating made musical sense. 

Lang Lang is known for his Liszt, but here he showed no fear in taking on the technically challenging (and at one point in the second movement, unplayable) music of the other famous Hungarian composer. Mr. Lang brought an energetic, driving presence to the piano part, playing the staccato notes from the shoulder and pounding the keys with drill-bit precision. For the elegant glissando runs up the keyboard, his left hand would hover in the air, playing its own, invisible part before crashing down to continue the piece. Mr. Gilbert and his orchestra provided sturdy accompaniment.

Written in 1944, Prokofiev's Fifth is one of his more popular works, heard frequently when there's a large orchestra that has a tuba player with serious lung power. The symphony anticipates the forthcoming Russian victory over the Nazis. It represents a sort of high point in the composer's return to the Soviet Union, a high that would not last as the following Sixth drew the wrath of Stalin's censors.

Mr. Gilbert chose a broadly spaced interpretation. It featured strong playing from the Philharmonic brass, now returned to their customary stage left position. Across a broad sonic bridge built by the strings, the brass players duelled with Prokofiev's pounding percussion, producing a stirring first movement. This is the kind of music this orchestra plays very well, and they charged ahead like a Soviet armored division.

Opening with a bubbly clarinet theme, the Scherzo sprang to vivid life, evoking a Stalinist utopia with just a hint of Russian sarcasm underneath the rhythms. The second slow movement (which shares material with the composer's Cinderella ballet.) Most impressive was the inexorable crescendo, building to a slow, heavy climax that seemed to roll over the listener like a May Day tank.

The finale (opening with the same bassoon theme as the first movement) drove the whole conception home. The most memorable thing about this last movement is a prominent percussion part, led by the echoing "thok, thok, thock" of the wood block. But that's not the conductor's fault. 

Concert Review: Cords, Chords, and Crossed Clarinets

The Philharmonic makes Contact! at the Met.

Austrian composer H.K. Gruber performs Frankenstein!!
Photo: Intermusica page on H.K. Gruber. 

On Friday night, the New York Philharmonic unveiled its third season of Contact! the intimate series which features ultra-modern music played by a chamber-sized orchestra. Music director Alan Gilbert, finally returned from giving concerts in Europe, conducted. The program was held at the Grace Rainey Rodgers auditorium in the Egyptian wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (The program will repeat tonight at Symphony Space.)

Concert Review: Time Travel with the Philharmonic

A girl and her Strad: Lisa Batiashvili.
Photo © 2008 Sony Classics

On Friday afternoon, Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic presented a program that time-traveled backwards, starting with the modern music of Philharmonic composer-in-residence Magnus Lindberg and ending with the post-Beethovenian symphonic writing of Johannes Brahms.

Arena, written as a final piece for the initial Sibelius conducting competition in 1995, is a challenge for any conductor. This shifting, surging carpet of sound is laced with rhythmic tricks and tempo changes containing many hidden pitfalls for the man holding the baton. Mr. Gilbert avoided all of these, leading his forces in a nimble performance. This performance of Arena was a taster for the season finale in three weeks, which will feature Al largo, a new work by Mr. Lindberg, paired with Beethoven's Missa Solemnis.



The Finnish connection continued with a superb reading of the Sibelius Violin Concerto. One of that composer's most popular (and most optimistic) works, the Concerto featured soloist Lisa Batiashvili. She played with elegance and precision, from the technical double-stops and difficult cadenzas of the first movement to the soft, singing lines of the second. The raucous finale, based on a Finnish folk dance, raised the energy level of the entire performance, allowing the orchestra and soloist to soar together to a triumphant close.

Alan Gilbert's interpretation of the Brahms Second Symphony was less successful. This is the most bucolic of Brahms' four symphonies, evoking the sunny countryside and cheerful peasant vein that Beethoven also explored in his Pastorale Symphony. However, in Mr. Gilbert's hands, the first three movements of the work lacked momentum and drive. The orchestral textures drawn from the Philharmonic were very beautiful, and lovingly played. But the thrust itself was missing. Only in the Finale did the work really take off, as the orchestra bit into the theme and began to race for home. It was a lovely tour through the Austrian countryside, but one wishes that Mr. Gilbert would step on the accelarator more often.