Music Review: Alan Gilbert, Emanuel Ax and the New York Philharmonic

    Its summer and we all want things to be just a little easier, and that includes the NY Phil and its audience.   We wish for easy and free parking and there it was right across from Lincoln Center.  We ask for a program that is fun and somehow doesn't tax us too much and Mr. Ax, Mr. Gilbert and company are glad to oblige with a program that was more laid back than it looked at first glance.
 
     First up was Mr. Ax and pauseHaydn.  The rendition was nothing if not fleet, as if the soloist had to get home for a favorite TV show.   We sat on the piano side and couldn't help but be impressed by Mr. Ax's virtuoso playing, but by the time we got into it was over.  Just what we expect from an opening piece but we kind of expect more from a first rank pianist.

      The other two pieces are more linked in my mind.  The First Christopher Rouse's Symphony No. 3, in its NY premier, promised a lot with a huge orchestration.  One expects a composer to make a great statement with such a huge force behind him but Mr. Rouse choose instead to make a lot of little statements featuring a hodge-podge of different styles from different sections of the orchestra.   It was fun in its way and people enjoyed it but it seemed a little too much like the composer showing off all his tricks.

    After the intermission we had the privilege of listening to the music of Richard Wagner, sort of.  The piece, A Ring Journey, arranged by Mr. Gilbert after suite by another conductor, Erich Leinsdorf.  Somehow it may have been one conductor to many.  Despite heroic work by Philip Myers  and the rest of the brass section the work lost the heroic feel of the actual ring.  One problem was the work was a juke box musical of themes from the ring, played out of order.  The result was as flat and strangely un-Wagnerian as I recall Mr. Leinsdorf's Wagner conducting was at the MET in my youth .  Laid back Wagner for summer, not bad exactly but perhaps a little too easy even for summer.

 

Tosca on Steroids

I usually think of concert performances of opera something that is for situations where a staged opera would be difficult and there is no other way to hear the score. Rare operas have often been given this way, the Opera Orchestra of New York has been doing this for years and other ensembles have as well. This year I was grateful to hear Kirov Orchestra and Valery Gergiev do a concert version of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Snow Maiden” in concert form since it is unlikely that I’d get to see it again (as it turns out its usually performed in concert form in Russia where its very popular). I was surprised to see The New York Philharmonic announce concert performances of Tosca, after all it’s hardly rare and both of New York’s opera companies give it regularly. It was part of out subscription so we went even though we know it by heart. It gave us the chance to here Lorin Maazel conduct opera, something he rarely does here, save for a few Walküres at the Met this season, but does often in Europe.
We were glad we went as it was really an out there experience. Having the singers and the choruses, there were two New York Choral Artists, and Brooklyn Youth Chorus, on the stage with the orchestra allowed everyone to be a little louder. This was especially evident since Maazel did everything possible to enhance the sound and emotions. This was a big Tosca with sweeping emotional love and hate. No room for subtlety in this production, every emotion was magnified to the max. This is not a bad thing since Puccini was into grand gestures and melodrama but rarely have I seen it go this far in a modern production, the word pornography entered my mind during the love scenes. The 3 lead singers acted their parts, although they wore traditional concert dress not costumes. It was fun to watch them act as they sang; it seemed somehow like in a silent movie. In the first act when Tosca points to the painting of Mary Magdalene and is jealous of the model the audience chuckled since she was pointing at the first tier boxes.
The cast was excellent and well into the style of the evening. Tosca was Hui He, who is not well known in the United States but has sung many Puccini heroines in the A list opera houses of Europe. She sang well while at the same time she showed torrents of emotion. She was the audience favorite of the night and received long ovations after her arias and cheers at the end. I look forward to seeing her in staged operas. Walter Fracarro sang wonderfully and acted with more restraint, as he did when he sang Cavaradossi at The Met. He was warmly received by the audience but if he had hammed it up a bit he would have got the cheers his singing deserved. I have heard some world class Scarpias but George Gagnidze will own this role for years to come. Both singing and acting he is cold and evil personified. He got loud cheers from the audience; his performance was everything you could want from a villain. The other principals didn’t really try to act but sang well and kept up their side musically.
There is one other joy to seeing a familiar opera in concert - you can see the orchestra and appreciate their considerable contribution to the evening. Several solos from horns, cellos and violins that I have never really noticed before were played brilliantly, it was a pleasure to watch and listen. They seemed to have no problem with Maazel’s interpretation. Although one critic seemed to think they were a little sloppy Thursday night they worked it out by the second night on Saturday. This time of the year the audience seems younger than usual as the older regular patrons are out in their summer homes. This made for a more enthusiastic audience than usual and lots of well dressed young women teetering around in very high heels during the two intermissions, perhaps a ‘Sex in the City’ after effect. It was a perfect audience for an over the top evening. As we left we saw the film director John Waters chatting happily with his companion, the perfect out there celebrity sighting for an over the top evening.

Lang Lang, Tan Dun , New York Philharmonic

The great thing about attending a world primer is that you get to hear a piece without any pre-conceived notion about what you are about to listen to. Unfortunately the silly people who run the education department of the New York Philharmonic decided to have a speaker tell us what we were to think about Tan Dun’s new piano concerto before we heard it. The speaker was described as a ‘composer’, although I don’t know or much care exactly what he composes. He also played a video of him interviewing Tan Dun who said his piano concerto was like martial arts. I don’t know what this middle brow drivel is supposed to add to the musical experience but I suspect its one of the reasons more people don’t take classical music seriously. Fortunately it was easy to ignore the assault on our intelligence once the musicians came onstage and the concert proper commenced.

The piano concerto was clearly written with Lang Lang in mind, both his fiery percussive playing he is known for and there more lyrical style he seems to be moving towards. The concerto makes ample use of percussion including the solo piano. This aspect of the music is undeniably exciting. This concerto also lets the soloist go in the area his going as he becomes more mature and gives him lots of melody to play, which he does with greater feeling than I remember him displaying in the past. It must be remembered that both Tan Dun and Lang Lang play western music and the fleeting influence of Chinese music is an influence in the same way the folk music has influenced European composers for the last 100 years. It is hard to really judge the success of a new work on first hearing but it was an exciting performance featuring one of music’s most charismatic players. Lang Lang, Tan Dun and the conductor Leonard Slatkin received an extended standing ovation from what seemed to be a sold out house.

After intermission the Philharmonic played the complete ballet music from Stravinsky’s The Firebird. Mr. Slatkin did not seem to have a strong unifying conception of the music but the Philharmonic played both ensembles and solos with grace and precision. The audience certainly seemed to leave the concert happily and it was a fun evening. I couldn’t help but think that it’s a bit ironic that Stravinsky has become the composers to pair with a modern composer to keep the conservatives in the audience happy. This concert repeated 4 times Wednesday – Saturday, I attended on Thursday.