Festival Preview: White Light Festival 2018

Lincoln Center bridges music, art, theater and spirit in its annual offering.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Image of white light hitting a compact disc.

Running from October 16 to Nov. 18, the White Light Festival is Lincoln Center's annual celebration of the human spirit as expressed through the magic of music and art. Each year has a different focus on aspects of the human condition, seeking to answer the questions of existence:

• Why are we here?
• What are we doing here?
• And where around Lincoln Center can we afford to get something to eat after the show?

Concert Review: The 19-ton Orchestra

Christine Brewer and Paul Jacobs at Alice Tully Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

In recital: soprano Christine Brewer sang at Alice Tully Hall on Sunday.
Photo courtesy Lincoln Center.

Of the keyboard instruments, the pipe organ is the one that can approximate not only the sound of a full symphony orchestra, but the unique tone of the human voice as well. On Sunday afternoon, dramatic soprano Christine Brewer and organist Paul Jacobs gave a concert in Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall. This performance, part of the 2015 White Light Festival, paired Ms. Brewer's big, potent instrument with the Alice Tully Hall Organ.

Concert Review: White Nights at White Light

The Estonian National Symphonic Orchestra at Lincoln Center.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Forever young: conductor Neeme Järvi.
Photo © 2013 Orchestre de la Suisse Romande

Estonian conductor Neeme Järvi is of the old school, and not just because the conductor is now 76. On Sunday evening, he brought the Estonian National Symphonic Orchestra and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir to the White Light Festival at Lincoln Center. Their purpose: a program of Sibelius, Tormis, Mozart and Arvo Pärt at Avery Fisher Hall. Billed as The Word Made Flesh, this concert was part of this year's White Light Festival.

Concert Review: Don't Let Them Be Misunderstood

The Cleveland Orchestra returns to Lincoln Center.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Franz Welser-Möst leads the Cleveland Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall.
Photo by Stephanie Berger for the Cleveland Orchestra © 2008.

Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra have been absent from Lincoln Center since 2008 when they presented a five-day festival pairing the symphonies of Anton Bruckner with music by John Adams. On Monday night, conductor and orchestra returned to Lincoln Center for another combination of classical and modern composers: in this case Ludwig van Beethoven and Olivier Messiaen. This unusual, but effective pairing was a major concert of this year's White Light Festival, the performing arts center's annual Fall exploration of the numinous in the lively arts.

Festival Preview: De-Lux Aeterna

A look at Lincoln Center's month-long 2013 White Light Festival.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Anna Caterina Antonacci performs Era la Notte as part of the 2013 White Light Festival.
Photo by Magalie Bouchet © 2013 courtesy of Lincoln Center.

The White Light Festival has become the signature fall offering of Lincoln Center. Once again, New York's biggest performing arts center invites artists from all over the world and from different genres and disciplines to participate in an exploration of music, spirituality and the soul.

White Light 2012 was marred by the arrival of Hurricane Sandy. That devastating storm that destroyed and shut down whole swathes of New York. (The performances went off, but the minds of New Yorkers may have been on other things than spirituality and contemplation of the soul.) This year's Festival offers a promising slate of artists, and hopefully more clement weather. The month-long offering starts with a free performance on Oct. 24 (at the David Rubinstein Atrium) and continues through Nov. 19.

Concert Review: The High Ground

Emanuel Ax and Mahler at the White Light Festival.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Emanuel Ax played at this year's White Light Festival.

On Sunday afternoon, as their city staggered along its path to recovery from Hurricane Sandy, New Yorkers gathered at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater to hear an unusual hybrid of solo recital and concert featuring New York Philharmonic Artist-in-Residence Emanuel Ax and members of that same orchestra in a program billed as Song of the Earth.

The concert (part of this year's White Light Festival)  featured that penultimate work by Gustav Mahler was present , in its currently en vogue chamber arrangement by Schoenberg. This concert was really about establishing connections by placing music in proximity: the Mahler piece was preceded by piano works by Schoenberg and before that, Johann Sebastian Bach.

The Bach work was the E♭ minor Prelude and Fugue (No. 8) from Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Mr. Ax has only started playing Bach in public this year, and still uses the sheet music. Nevertheless, the slow, ascending steps of the Prelude led to a climax, followed by the descending, spiraling figures of this complex, fascinating fugue. As always with this artist, there was a beauty of tone and clarity of expression which held the attention rapt in the darkened theater.

Concert Review: Slamming Beethoven

Four Quartets at the Clark Studio Theater.

Stephen Dillane.
Photo by Stephanie Berger.
© 2011 Lincoln Center/White Light Festival.

On Wednesday night, the tiny Clark Studio Theater (a black box space tucked into Lincoln Center's towering Rose Building on W. 65th St.) played host to a revival of Four Quartets. Part chamber music recital and part poetry slam, this was one of the most intriguing works presented at the 2011 White Light Festival.

The two-hour program paired the Four Quartets, long, hard-hitting poems by T.S. Eliot, (recited by actor Stephen Dillane) with Beethoven's Op. 132, played by the Miró String Quartet. Even if one is unaware of the deep connection between these two works, poetry paired with string quartet to create an almost unearthy meditation, the sound of two artists staring down eternity.

However, there is a connection. The Four Quartets were inspired by a gramophone record Eliot had of the Beethoven work, one which he would listen to often. Each of the poems corresponds to one of the four classical elements, and the extended structure of East Coker and The Dry Salvages allow the two works to be performed as a unit.

British actor Stephen Dillane presented these poems from memory, with a grim, matter-of-fact delivery. He entered, pacing across the black-painted acting surface. He stopped, stood and delivered each of the poems' five individual sections. At the end of each, he'd move again. Each movement formed an invisible pattern, a complex set of imaginary ley lines under the stark flourescent lights.

The performance by the Miró Quartet was the exact opposite. They played under low, incandescent lamps, facing each other, and shutting out the audience. This introverted and intimate playing provided contrast to Mr. Dillane's readings, the themes of Beethoven's brilliant, technically challenging writing threading together, like Eliot's thoughts on paper. 

This is one of Beethoven's challenging late works, the thirteenth quartet written by the composer. The performance may have been made more challenging by the substitution of second violinist Tereza Stanislav, replacing the recently departed Sandy Yamamoto. (Ms. Stanislav's position with the ensemble is temporary. William Fedkenheuer is scheduled to take over as a permanent replacement.)

The lineup change did not affect the cool efficiency brought to the performance by the Miró Quartet. They teased out the theme in the opening movement, laying out Beethoven's aural traps in the form of false developments. When the theme developed and recapitulated, it did so to thrilling effect. The dance movement was executed with agile joy. The long slow movement had the effect of a slow simmering balm, a healing poultice for Eliot's painful imagery.

The finale, with its introduction, pause, and giddy fugue was an exercise in stellar contrapuntal playing, with major contributions from cellist Joshua Gindele. This was edge-of-the-seat musicianship, brilliantly played. Equally brilliant, brightly glowing screen of a fellow's Blackberry in the last movement. This older, suited gentleman found writing e-mail more important than Beethoven. His was a different kind of "white light."

Concert Review: Through a Prism, Darkly

Spectral Scriabin at the White Light Festival.

Spectral Scriabin: Eteri Andjaperidze at the piano. Lighting design by Jennifer Tipton.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2011 Lincoln Center White Light Festival.

At a classical music performance, the light is almost always white. Whether a solo pianist or a mighty orchestra blasting out a Strauss tone poem, the musicians are invariably lit to aid clarity and the perception of the tiny black dots written on the stave.

But in almost all other genres of music, players and singers perform bathed in the individual components of the spectrum. Gobos, gels, and electronic VariLites are employed to make those lights shift across the spectrum and change shape.

Colors and sound: Scriabin's wheel of colors and tones.
Image from Wikimedia Commons.

In his short life, the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin tried to bridge this gap. A synesthetic (he saw colors accompany music) Scriabin created a system assigning individual hues to sounds. For the performance of his final completed symphonic work (Prometheus: A Poem of Fire), he even commissioned a luce ("color organ") designed to bathe the listener in different shades.

Spectral Scriabin, the collaboration between pianist Eteri Andjaperidze and lighting designer Jennifer Tipton does not use a color organ. But this year, it was encored as part of Lincoln Center's White Light Festival, with three performances at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, located "off campus" in the rapidly developing neighborhood west of midtown Manhattan.

At the second performance on Friday night, Ms. Andjaperidze began the program in absolute darkness, playing Vers la flamme as the light slowly rose. She then let the sheet music fall slowly to the floor before moving on to the Four Preludes, followed by four Etudes. Dim circles of colored light materialized behind and around the pianist, creating a ghostly effect.

As the program moved into Scriabin's later, more esoteric piano pieces, the lights changed:

Two blue circles.

Three circles in red. 

Four in violet, overlapping.

A glowing disc below the piano.

Images overlapped as the complex works flowered and bloomed under Ms. Andjaperidze' fingers. Moving into the Poémes (written as the composer climbed towards the heights of the Poem of Ecstasy and Prometheus) played this increasingly difficult music with smooth legato and precise tone, hovering in the mystic negative space created by the composer's preferred use of "fourth" intervals over the standard fifths.

The concert ended with a more familiar work, the challenging Sonata No. 4. In this watershed composition, Scriabin smashed through the standard tonal system, creating a brave new world of sound that may have only existed in his own head. Ms. Andjaperidze brought powerful inspiration to this work, spinning out notes that hung suspended, floating in the circles of colored light. Like the leaves of sheet music, the notes drifted slowly down to earth as they penetrated the listener's mind.

Concert Review: Reality Check

Britten's War Requiem at the White Light Festival.

Okey-Dokey. Conductor Gianandrea Noseda led huge forces in Sunday's War Requiem.
Photo by John Super © 2011 London Symphony Orchestra.

The enormous resources called for in Benjamin Britten's War Requiem were almost beyond the means of Avery Fisher Hall on Sunday afternoon. They included the full strength of the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, a small chamber orchestra (drawn from LSO players and squeezed in around the conductor's podium), three vocal soloists and the American Boychoir. The kids had to sing through a door leading offstage.

In these tight quarters, the spacious antiphonies of this complicated work (premiered in 1962 at the dedication of the new Coventry Cathedral following the destruction of the original by Luftwaffe bombs in 1940) didn't quite work. Giandrea Noseda did an admirable job of marshaling his forces, achieving a remarkable aural balance of the four groups. He conducted with vigor.

The London Symphony Chorus was a force unto itself, declaiming the Latin text of the mass with the authority of the Metatron. The fiery incantations of the Dies Irae (featuring ear-splitting playing from the brass in the "Tuba Mirum") blazed forth with power. They were also key contributors to the success of the later movements, especially the slow-moving setting of the Agnus Dei.

The Offertorium is the dark heart of this strange piece. Here, the composer re-tells the story of Abraham and Isaac. However, Isaac is sacrificed by his father in the accompanying Wilfred Owen poem: an echo of the horrors of war. This is Britten at his most cutting. The hollow fugue at the end was a grim, Shostakovich-like joke.

Tenor soloist Ian Bostridge sang repertory that was suited to his unique instrument. Mr. Bostridge took advantage of Britten's high vocal lines, airing them easily over the chamber ensemble. He added emotional weight to these words, making the bleak landscapes of war-torn Europe flicker with ghostly light.

He was paired with baritone Simon Keenlyside, an opera star in his own right. Mr. Keenlyside's smallish, dark-hued instrument was perfect for "At the thrust of Lightning in the East" in the Sanctus. Soprano Sibina Civilak also sang beautifully from the space between the orchestra and chorus, tossing off some glorious notes in the Lacrimosa.

The small cadre of boy trebles also made an important contribution from their offstage post. The two singers joined voices on on the last poem, "Strange Meeting." The scene: an encounter between two wounded enemy soldiers in a tunnel full of corpses. As Mr. Bostridge and Mr. Keenlyside sang out the lines of the poem, the women of the LSO Chorus echoed with  "In paradisum" from the Libera me section of the Mass. This made for a stratospheric, if icy climax.

Benjamin Britten was a committed pacifist, and did not pull punches in his work that combines the Latin Mass for the Dead with battlefield poetry. This is one of the composer's most dramatic and most popular pieces, a work that is all too apt for today's audiences. The White Light Festival may be about bringing its audience out of their daily lives, but under Mr. Noseda the Requiem was a sharp reminder of reality.