If the second installment in the
New York Philharmonic's Contact!
series ended up as something of a mixed bag, never mind: both the orchestra
and music director Alan Gilbert should be commended as strongly as
possible for continuing the series. Certainly the audience is there;
Symphony Space was sold out. And just to be clear: to hear fresh
thoughts from young composers is not only exciting from a listener's point of view, but should be an essential
part of the orchestra's mission. And it didn't hurt that the
musicianship was at a uniformly high level.
Maestro Gilbert led
members of the orchestra in three world premieres, by Sean Shepherd,
Nico Muhly and Matthias Pintscher. Of the three, Pintscher's
songs from solomon's garden
made the strongest impression, with Thomas Hampson as the baritone
soloist. Pintscher called the texts some of the most "beautiful love
poetry ever written," and Hampson, singing the texts in Hebrew, bore
this out with some deliciously fluid singing. And as in his other works (e.g., his Five
Orchestral Pieces from 1997), Pintscher has a keen ear for arresting
orchestral colors. Afterward, I recalled last fall's
opening night at the Philharmonic, when Renée Fleming sang some seldom-done Messiaen. It
is heartening to hear world-class artists give care, passion and artistry to unfamiliar pieces.
The host for the evening was WNYC's John
Schaefer, always comfortable onstage eliciting offbeat comments from
composers. In a humorous introduction, Shepherd explained that his
title, These Particular Circumstances,
came to him when he was observing the untitled piece in rehearsal. It
is an accomplished effort in seven sections: “floating, circling,
spinning, grinding, sinking, teetering, soaring," and combines some
ferocious gestures with musical quotations (including an amusing one
from Holst's The Planets).
Muhly's Detailed Instructions
is in three movements, with a slightly unusual orchestration (no
violins), and he also got some laughs with his
easygoing preface. The first movement has a sweetly pulsating texture, the
middle sounds slightly Copland-esque, and the last clearly nods to
Philip Glass. The ovations for the two were long and loud, and again, a concert like this is exactly the kind of risk-taking in which
the Philharmonic should be engaged. To judge from the audience response,
the risk is paying off, bigtime.
Update: for more writers' comments, see the Q2 blog post, here.