Musical America Blogs

by Sedgwick Clark

Last night as we girded our loins for the murder, rape, and mayhem report on the 11 p.m. news, and I impatiently awaited inspiration for the weekly and almost inevitably tardy words that absorb you now, Central Park reverberated with what sounded like World War Three. We were surprised because we had expected the Philharmonic’s post-concert fireworks the night before. Living a couple hundred feet from Central Park but not having a view of it from our apartment, this child of 9/11 may never feel really comfortable with fireworks again. The unease was not helped by the claps of genuine thunder a few minutes later. After a Philharmonic Parks concert several years ago, a woman subject to panic attacks who lived in the apartment next door forced herself to walk out to Central Park West to actually see the fireworks and reassure herself that our city was not under siege.

If I needed reassurance, Anthony Tommasini’s review in Thursday’s Times (7/15) explained it all: Due to Monday’s weather report, the Philharmonic had skipped the fireworks on Tuesday in anticipation of rain, switching them to the end of Wednesday’s Central Park concert. The first Parks concert was particularly interesting because the Philharmonic was sharing it with the same Shanghai Symphony, conducted by Long Yu, that made such an impressive showing at Carnegie Hall’s China festival last fall, which is the only reviewer-like remark I’ll make since I didn’t hear the Parks concert: Nothing could have dragged me to endure Lang Lang play Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. (Tony was gentlemanly, as always, but couldn’t avoid describing “a Lang Lang trademark—he teased melodic lines for maximum expressiveness and jerked the music this way and that.”) I do hope that Lang Lang acquires a sense of structure someday because he has the most ravishing color palette of any pianist I know. If only he wouldn’t Bang Bang.

Another reason I skipped the Parks concert was the audience. I attended my first Philharmonic concert in Central Park with a college buddy, soon after I arrived in New York in August 1968. Lorin Maazel conducted Glinka’s Russlan and Ludmilla Overture, Paganini’s First Violin Concerto, with solo violinist Ruggiero Ricci, and Tchaikovsky’s Fifth. It was nearly 100 degrees, and we were sitting three-quarters of the way back in a jam-packed Sheep Meadow. The players doffed their coats, but Maazel and Ricci kept theirs on, to my astonishment. The audience was attentive and appreciative.  All I remember about the performances was that Maazel omitted the big pause toward the end of the finale, before the majestic march treatment of the motto theme played by clarinets in the first bar of the piece. (Stoki used to do the same thing, presumably to keep the audience from applauding prematurely.)

But the last time I went, a few years ago, I took an out-of-town friend who wanted to hear the concert for largely sociological reasons. I wanted to hear an excellent young violinist, Karen Gomyo, whom I’d heard at the Bard Festival a couple of years before. We sat about three-quarters of the way back in the Great Lawn, where the concerts have been held since the refurbishing of the Sheep Meadow in the late 1980s, and all we could hear were cell-phone conversations, radios, and a level of noise that obliterated any semblance of the live performance. I was even hit in the head by a frisbie. Okay, my friends at the Philharmonic, if I had really wanted to hear the concert I would have sat in the reviewers’ seats you kindly provide up front. But a point of sorts, I guess, of this incoherent blog entry is that audiences have changed. With the broadening of this elite art to wider audiences, something has been lost. At least in my experience.

 by Sedgwick Clark

Friday night I’ll be dog sledding with Sergeant Preston of the Yukon!

Gawd, does that date me. How many of my loyal readers have the vaguest notion of what I speak? The title music for this mid-’50s TV show was the Overture to Donna Diana by Emil Nikolaus von Rezniček. True, the Sarge couldn’t quite compete with the Lone Ranger, whose show was forever associated with Rossini’s William Tell Overture, but once heard, it was never forgotten.

Bramwell Tovey will open the final program of his New York Philharmonic post-subscription Summertime Classics series (July 8, 9, and 10) with Donna Diana, and I was delighted to read Steve Smith’s review of the Phil’s penultimate program in today’s Times, asking “why these works don’t play a bigger role in the Philharmonic’s standard routine.” Tovey has been putting together enjoyable programs since the series began in 2004—just as André Kostelanetz used to do for the orchestra’s Promenade concerts—and most of the pieces would be just what the doctor ordered to enliven the usual dour subscription offerings. Seriously, can anyone imagine a frothier opening to a concert than Chabrier’s España? In 2007, Franz Welser-Möst led the Cleveland Orchestra in Suppé’s Light Cavalry Overture at Carnegie Hall’s opening-night concert, and tomorrow night, Tovey will lead it in Avery Fisher Hall.

I can’t wait.

by Sedgwick Clark

Alan Gilbert’s first season as music director of the New York Philharmonic ended last week in a blaze of press release glory. His first and last concerts contained world premieres by his appointed composer-in-residence, Magnus Lindberg—EXPO and Al largo, respectively. The first concert, broadcast on PBS’s Live from Lincoln Center, also offered Messiaen’s Poèmes pour Mi, sung by Renée Fleming, and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. The last concluded with Beethoven’s imposing Missa solemnis.  Daring programming to say the least.

In between I heard superbly played readings of Mahler’s Third, Ives’s and Rachmaninoff’s Second, a world premiere by Christopher Rouse entitled Odna Zhizn (A Life), and a masterfully conducted, inventively staged performance of Ligeti’s opera Le Grand Macabre, the triumph of Gilbert’s first season. He also proved his accompanist mettle in Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with Emanuel Ax, Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto with Yefim Bronfman, and Sibelius’s Violin Concerto with Lisa Batiashvili, all playing at the top of their form. There’s no doubt that this orchestra performs at its technical Everest for him. The Lincoln Center Festival’s presentation of the complete works of Edgard Varèse should profit immensely from Gilbert’s keen ear and the Philharmonic’s playing of the orchestral works on July 20.

The jury is still out, however, regarding the music that lights his emotional fires. Typically for his generation, Gilbert appears most comfortable in works of the past hundred years or so—music whose expressivity arises more from accuracy of the composer’s notes and bar lines than a performer’s personality. The Classical era also seems to be a comfort zone to today’s performers. I’ve mentioned before that Gilbert’s conducting of the Juilliard Orchestra in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro overture at an early concert in the renovated Alice Tully Hall was extraordinary: witty, affectionate, ideally paced.

The Romantic era is something else, and Gilbert’s Berlioz, Mahler, and Rachmaninoff seemed to me emotionally at arms’ length, despite (or perhaps because of) their immaculate ensemble. In many ways, he reminds me of Eugene Ormandy, whose performances were nearly always reliable if not always inspired. There was one infuriating Ormandy/Philadelphia gloss I’ll never forget, though: Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde in the 1970s, with Janet Baker singing gamely along with the conductor’s rushed tempos. Come the final “ewig” of the last-movement “Abschied,” Ormandy—who has seen fit to inflate Mahler’s pianissimo ending to a fat mezzo-forte—just stops, puts down his baton, turns to the audience, and gestures to Baker. I wanted to scream.

Gilbert’s Missa solemnis wasn’t quite that detached. His care for the vocalists’ pronunciation of the text (e.g., the hard g in “agimus”) and the controversial choice of having the timpanist play B natural instead of B flat in his solo near the end of the piece indicated that he has thought deeply about it. But whatever he felt about the Missa wasn’t communicated. Bruno Walter refused to perform Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 until he was age 50 because he didn’t think he was ready, and I respectfully suggest that Gilbert wasn’t ready for the Missa. It struck me as a prosaic rendering of a work that cries out in frustration for belief in something—God, man, Harvard, who knows?—and in the end collapses into ambivalent consolation. He conducted the last chord offhandedly, without a hint that anything important had elapsed in the past 70 minutes. In fact, nothing had. Gilbert may be the blessed anti-Maazel to the Times, but he won’t build an audience with such performances. As I think so often after a concert: Bernstein! His performance of the Missa in his final season as NYPhil music director was galvanizing, and his Concertgebouw recording on DG is my favorite.

Still and all, whatever my criticisms of some of his performances, Gilbert’s programming next season offers loads of delicious music not heard at the Philharmonic in years. We can all look forward!  

by Sedgwick Clark

We like to define our favorite artists as “another this” or “another that.” One of my first professional articles, for the Village Voice in the mid-1970s, was about promising young pianists. My editor wanted some sort of angle to enliven a standard subject, so she asked me if there were “a new Horowitz” among this group. That night at Carnegie Hall I ran into Claudio Arrau’s personal manager, Friede Rothe, and told her of this angle. “But Sedge, dear,” she replied, “who wants to be another Horowitz?” I had my title.

We just can’t resist it—this branding of an upcoming young artist with a famous elder’s pedigree. Gustavo Dudamel, the 29-year-old Venezuelan firebrand who just concluded his first season as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic [see my May 26th blog], is only the latest to be labeled “another Bernstein” by some critics. At least there are obvious similarities: his demonstrative, emotional conducting style, his romantic interpretive approach, his instant audience appeal; and he has admitted that he listened to many Bernstein recordings when he was young(er). In another case, a recent article suggested that the New York Philharmonic had found a new Bernstein in its first-rate, if rather restrained, new music director, Alan Gilbert! Such nonsense can only be detrimental to a developing career.

So many musicians’ reputations fade after their demise, but not Leonard Bernstein’s. The books written since his death at 72 in 1990 attest to that. Nearly all their titles begin with his full name, followed by an explanatory subtitle. Schuyler Chapin’s little “[L.B.] Notes from a Friend” (Walker, 1992), should be the uninitiated’s first read—short and sweet, an infinitely engaging memoir of the man and musician as we all want to remember him.

In 1994 came a pair of biographies: The first was just plain Leonard Bernstein without a subtitle by Humphrey Burton (Doubleday), and the second was “[L.B.] A Life,” a johnnie-come-lately effort by Meryle Secrest (Knopf). Burton, a Bernstein friend and colleague for 30 years, who directed many of the conductor’s videos, had the Bernstein family’s blessing and entrée to his papers. Secrest did not, and most reviewers considered the “official” Burton effort more authoritative.

A time followed in which his main record companies, Columbia/CBS (now Sony Classical) in his earlier period and Deutsche Grammophon in his last 15 years, rereleased nearly all (if not all) of his recordings on CD. DG has released the lion’s share of the videos on DVD, most recently the Schumann symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic. Kultur has released two nine-disc sets, the first of 25 New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concerts and the second of several concerts with various orchestras. Bernstein videos have also turned up on EuroArts (Bruckner’s Ninth with Vienna) and Medici Arts (a rehearsal and performance of Shostakovich’s First and Peter Rosen’s film Leonard Bernstein—Reflections, which includes a performance of Milhaud’s Le Boeuf sur le toit, made at the same time as the 1976 EMI recording).

The past three years have seen a Bernstein book per annum, and there are several more in the works—including a coffee table book of photos from his last six years by the New York photographer Steve J. Sherman to be published by Amadeus in October, a study of West Side Story, a biography aimed at children, and various studies aimed at separate aspects of his art.

In 2008 the New York Philharmonic published “[L.B.] American Original: How a Modern Renaissance Man Transformed Music and the World During His New York Philharmonic Years, 1943-1976” by Burton Bernstein and Barbara B. Haws, Lenny’s younger brother and New York Phil archivist/historian, respectively. The subtitle pretty much tells the story, and is more than a little reminiscent of Joseph Horowitz’s subtitle for his controversial 1987 book, Understanding Toscanini (“How He Became an American Culture-God and Helped Create a New Audience for Old Music”). It’s a collection of essays by several well-known commentators (including Horowitz) on the maestro’s multi-faceted interests and career. The texts rarely depart from the “rah-rah Lenny” program (“Bernstein was a born conductor”), and lord knows there’s plenty to rah-rah about. But despite the many insights, for me the main attraction of this handsomely designed, 223-page oversize volume is the wealth of photos, which bring the man’s persona vividly alive. Great conducting shots abound, of course. Open the book at random, and—ahh, here’s a shot of Bernstein getting a haircut in an open pavilion in Moscow during the Phil’s 1959 Soviet tour, surrounded by Soviet girls, some of whom are actually smiling, but none as broadly as Lenny and his barber. Also, ominously, are many photos of him with his ubiquitous cigarette, reminding us of the lung cancer that eventually claimed him.

I’ve not yet finished Barry Seldes’s book, “[L.B.] The Political Life of an American Musician” (University of California Press, 2009), but its subject is a fascinating one: the consequences of his liberal politics during his career—which embraced Cold War America, the Army McCarthy Hearings, being blacklisted by the State Department in 1950, the founding of Israel, the Sixties’ upheaval in civil rights and Vietnam, being placed on the Nixon administration’s “enemies” list—and how these contentious events affected his composing.

Composer Jack Gottlieb was Bernstein’s assistant at the New York Philharmonic from 1958 to 1966. His new Working with Bernstein (Amadeus Press, 2010) has the immediate distinction of being the first book on Bernstein in the last 20 years not to be entitled with his full name. More importantly, it’s a witty, irreverent memoir that no Bernstein fan should miss. “Is this book biased?” he asks in his Introduction. “You bet it is! However, I fervently hope it is not hagiographic.” It’s not. “The man certainly was not a saint,” Gottlieb continues, “and I dearly want to be honest in my assessment. . . .” He appears to be, even if he has undoubtedly pulled some punches. He divides his book into two parts: (1) a “grab bag” of reminiscences, anecdotes, and observations of working with his boss and (2) his program notes about Bernstein’s music. Of many revelations, I discovered that my favorite Bernstein concert work, Chichester Psalms, consisted of largely recycled music written for an abandoned stage project in 1964, the year he took a sabbatical from the Phil to compose: a collaboration with Jerome Robbins and Comden and Green in an adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth. Maybe I knew that factoid before, but Gottlieb details what music came from where. Recycling is a noble art dating at least back to Handel, Mozart, Beethoven et al., but to my mind it rarely had it so good.

by Sedgwick Clark

My friend and MusicalAmerica.com editor Susan Elliott bequeathed this piece to me the morning after Sunday’s Tony Awards show on CBS. She is rarely shy about injecting her own opinions into Web site pieces—which is one reason the site is so fun to read, in my humble opinion—but in this case, she wrote, “I don’t want to post it on the site because it’s pure, irresponsible opinion off the top of my head.” Which is why I’m pleased to rescue it from cyberspace.—S.C.

Denzel Washington accepted the award for Best Actor in a Play without knowing who was giving it to him: “Who is it that presents these things?” he asked without the slightest embarrassment. The American Theater Wing, you ingrate.

Theater actors strive for eons for these little statues. Hollywood actors take a few weeks off from their latest billion-dollar movie contracts, get gift roles (e.g., Troy Maxon in August Wilson’s Fences) and are rewarded for their marketing power at the box office.

Ditto Catherine Zeta-Jones as Desirée in Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. On the Tony broadcast (less so in the theater), she performed the most God-awful rendition of “Send in the Clowns” ever—bringing new levels of nausea to the term “treacly.” Talk about obscuring the composer’s voice with your own affectations—small wonder the show ran into overtime, so long were her dramatic pauses between phrases.

The segment from American Idiot belonged on the Grammy Awards—bunches of quasi-talented punk rockers throwing their heads around to show how incredibly angry, tough, dangerous (pick one) they are. The broadcast’s distorted audio of their segment reminded me of a high school performance of Fiddler on the Roof viewed recently. Then there was the confused and occasionally out-of-focus camera work, inclusive of the show’s overused strobe lights, video screens (yes, it’s come to that, TV broadcasts of stage productions that use video), and all those angry young teenyboppers, looking like go-go dancers let out of their cages.

While it is not without its merits—thanks largely to the Brits and revivals—quality on Broadway is increasingly elusive. The Tony Awards broadcast certainly confirmed that. 

My Own Take

In a remote area of New York I tuned in late to part of the Tony broadcast, arriving during the American Idiot segment that Susan didn’t warm to and proving my own alienation from much of the evening’s proceedings by hitting the mute button. I missed Lady Catherine’s “Send in the Clowns” but caught her acceptance speech and ecstatic boast, after thanking her husband Michael Douglas, that she was the one sleeping with him. Unlike the more laid back Oscars, the Tony mode is always in an unseemly race to finish by 11 p.m., and this year it missed the deadline by a couple of minutes. From what I observed, Zita-Jones’s pause-ridden interpretation couldn’t have taken more time than the interminable shuffling on and off of so-called producers (actually, for the most part, investors).

Come Fly Away

If “quality on Broadway is increasingly elusive,” as Susan says, I lucked out Tuesday night at the Marquis Theater with the Twyla Tharp-Frank Sinatra musical, Come Fly Away. Tharp “conceived, choreographed, and directed” this kinetic evening of dance without dialogue, and Old Blue Eyes appears courtesy of vocal tracks of his recordings backed by a live band of fabulous players. Without a storyline, the dancers enter and develop relationships, revealing an abundance of personality, charm, and allure. The less than two-hour duration, including a 15-minute intermission, is perfect. Don’t hesitate to see it.

Psycho at 50

Astonishing as it may seem, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho opened exactly 50 years ago yesterday. I watch it when I can on TCM (if only to hear Bernard Herrmann’s extraordinary score, which is the second main reason I watch Vertigo and North by Northwest so often, too). But my wife, who saw its first run with her sister when she was 11, adamantly refuses to allow it on the screen when she is home. As for the laserdisc and DVD copies I own, they remain shrinkwrapped. AOL ran an excellent appraisal of Psycho‘s influence yesterday and linked the shower scene. It looks so tame now in comparison to its gory successors, and far shorter than I remembered, but PK wouldn’t even consider watching it .

by Sedgwick Clark

A love affair between Igor Stravinsky and Coco Chanel must be among the least expected subjects for sexy summer film fare. It should come as no surprise that the composer of a ballet in which a sacrificial virgin dances herself to death and the designer of the 20th-century’s most famous perfume had sex lives. But the image of this bare-assed couple coupling on the floor is bound to stretch one’s comfort level.

Dutch director Jan Kounen’s cinematographic concern for historical accuracy is evident in every frame of Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, which opens in New York on June 11. The depiction of Le Sacre du printemp‘s scandalous premiere in the Champs-Elyseés Theatre, on May 29, 1913, takes the breath away, and impresario Sergei Diaghilev, choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky, and conductor Pierre Monteux look uncannily true to life. Cut to seven years later. Chanel, who had attended the ballet premiere, is a rich and successful designer. Stravinsky is a refugee composer in Paris, struggling to support his family of four children and a wife who suffers from tuberculosis. They meet, are attracted, and Chanel offers him and his family the opportunity to live in her villa to compose. The inevitable occurs.

The story fascinates, but the pacing is glacial even for an “art” film. Director Kounen remains emotionally at arm’s length, and Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen’s Stravinsky is defiantly one-dimensional, taking the composer’s aversion to expression in his early photos too much to heart: “I will not speak until you have finished taking my picture,” Stravinsky told an interviewer in 1939. “I must be photographed plainly, seriously. I detest being snapped in so-called action, with the mouth open.” Only later in life did he allow candid photos to be taken. 

I don’t know much about Coco, but she comes off as calculating and self-involved rather than passionate in Anna Mouglalis’s icy portrayal. Consequently their love scenes are pretty sexless, despite the nudity. No surprise that the actress found those scenes boring to shoot, according to last Sunday’s New York Times. “We just wanted it to be over.” Igor’s consumptive wife, Catherine (Elena Morozova), is the only one of the three principals allowed to have convincing human qualities. 

Perhaps this intellectualized film is all true to Chris Greenhalgh’s novel. But Stravinsky told his amanuensis, Robert Craft, that the opening night of Le Sacre du printemps made him angrier than he had ever been, before or since, and Mikkelsen betrays only minor annoyance at the pandemonium. Anyone who knows and loves Stravinsky’s music will feel that there is much more to the man than this.

Le Grande Macabre Broadcast This Week       

For those unfortunates who couldn’t get into the New York Philharmonic’s sold-out run of the Ligeti opera a couple of weeks ago, the performance will be broadcast countrywide this week. Tune into 105.9 FM WQXR in New York on Thursday, June 10, at 9:00 p.m.; check local listings for full details or visit nyphil.org to listen online.  

Quotable Chuckle

“Ligeti was a fine composer, probably a genius, but Le Grand Macabre is not an immortal composition. It is not to be confused with the B-minor Mass, no matter how much it’s ballyhooed.”—Jay Nordlinger, City Arts, June 15, 2010

Jack Beeson (1921-2010)

I’m sad to report that only a month after writing about American composer Jack Beeson (“Why We Left Muncie,” May 6), word came from his publisher, Boosey & Hawkes, of his death in New York on Sunday, June 6, of congestive heart failure. The 88-year-old composer had won an ASCAP Honor on May 21, 2009, and an American Music Center Letter of Distinction on May 3, 2010. In January of this year, Beeson was one of the American composers whose music was performed at Juilliard’s invaluable FOCUS! festival. Reviewing the concerts for MusicalAmerica.com, Peter G. Davis noted the “two lovely arias from The Sweet Bye and Bye (1956) by Jack Beeson, perhaps the only composer of the period whose elegantly crafted operas will certainly live on.”

Looking forward

My week’s scheduled concert:

6/10 Avery Fisher Hall. New York Philharmonic/Alan Gilbert; Lisa Batiashvili, violin. Lindberg: Arena; Sibelius: Violin Concerto; Brahms: Symphony No. 2.

by Sedgwick Clark

Last week Alan Gilbert scored the biggest success of his first season as New York Philharmonic music director. The event was the orchestra’s ambitious staged concert version of György Ligeti’s wild mid-1970s opera, Le Grand Macabre. And wonder of wonders, the three performances sold out the house.

We’d better give the public relations people credit now because they’re inevitably blamed when sales are poor. I don’t recall ever being so inundated with press materials. I was besieged by e-mails called “PHIL FLASH,” which (among many other missives) included dress rehearsal photos, new dress rehearsal photos, and a release about a Grand Macabre flipCam Series, whatever the dickens that is. “Making of Le Grand Macabre” (henceforth LGM) videos arrived in my New Mail box seemingly every other day and may be found on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/Breughelland), which includes three “humorous” skits of Gilbert talking with the LGM character Death, presumably intending to show what a regular guy the conductor is. A couple of the videos involving director Doug Fitch and one of percussionist Christopher Lamb discussing Ligeti’s use of the instruments are actually interesting in part.

Attempts to “humanize” the music director of an orchestra are, I submit, wrong-headed and frequently embarrassing, for his or her essential qualities will become apparent in performance. And in this regard, Anthony Tommasini in the Times and Peter G. Davis in Monday’s Musicalamerica.com were unequivocal.

“The hero of this production, of the whole endeavor,” wrote Tommasini, “is Mr. Gilbert, who conducted the score with insight, character and command. The Philharmonic players seemed inspired as they executed this complex music with skill and conviction. . . . This was an instant Philharmonic milestone.”

“[S]urely,” wrote Davis, “the presiding force that made the evening so seamless and exciting was Gilbert on the podium. Pacing, instrumental gesture, textural richness, hair-trigger coordination of every complex element—it was all there, along with a thrilling take-no-prisoners musical exuberance that other performances of Le Grand Macabre I’ve heard never quite duplicated. Suddenly the New York Philharmonic’s future looks very bright indeed.”

These raves came hard on the heels of Gustavo Dudamel’s New York debut [see last week’s blog] with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the end of his first season as music director of that orchestra. His two concerts at Lincoln Center were the conclusion of a 12-city countrywide tour that garnered mixed reviews—a first for the Venezuelan dynamo’s heretofore spotless image. New York magazine music critic Justin Davidson compares the two maestros and their orchestras in this week’s issue (“Sometimes it takes L.A.’s anxious ambitions to prod New York to be superb.”)

Representatives of both orchestras have disingenuously denied any competition between these talented young maestros and their bi-coastal orchestras, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the LAPhil has been smarting and that the NYPhil’s administrative halls and the offices of Gilbert’s p.r. firm, 21C, have been resounding with “gotchas.”

The fact is, unless we’re to descend to television’s patience level in decision making, any intelligent critical decision regarding these two musicians and their orchestras is a long way off. Let’s give them—and ourselves—the necessary time, ladies and gentlemen.

My question to the NYPhil is this: At what point does such a p.r. blitz sound like desperation—and, moreover, disbelief in one’s “product”? I hope the Phil will henceforth allow Maestro Gilbert’s talents to reveal themselves naturally.

Looking forward
My week’s scheduled concerts:

6/6 Town Hall. Free for All. Stephanie Blythe, mezzo-soprano; Warren Jones, piano. Works by Poulenc, Duparc, John Drake, and James Legg.

by Sedgwick Clark

It seems self-evident to me that Gustavo Dudamel has what it takes. He walks onstage—diminutive, with a mile-wide smile, a colossal mop of brown, curly hair—and audiences go wild. He has charisma to beat the band and conducts to the manner born. But his critics?! He was on a 12-city, cross-country tour the past two weeks with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and you’d think most of them were defending the art form from The Thing from Another World.

To read the tastemakers in San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York (chief Times critic Anthony Tommasini on Thursday), it’s a less than felicitous match. I don’t recall ever seeing so many “buts” in reviews. On the positive side were the Washington Post‘s Anne Midgette and, reviewing on Saturday, the New York Times‘s Allan Kozinn. Maybe the naysayers’ reactions were due to music-director envy or to their realization that whatever they said didn’t matter. (See the selection of quotes below.)

Dudamel’s first program featured Bernstein’s The Age of Anxiety (his second symphony, but actually a piano concerto, played impressively by Jean-Yves Thibaudet) and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 (“Pathétique”). The second coupled the New York premiere of John Adams’s City Noir and Mahler’s Symphony No. 1.

Interpretive gaucheries—and they were plentiful in the Mahler First—didn’t matter at all to the rapt Saturday night audience. Granted, the conclusion of the work is as foolproof a crowd-pleaser as any ever composed, but I haven’t seen an audience leap to its feet with such a sustained roar since Solti/Chicago’s 1970 Mahler Fifth at Carnegie, the beginning of that team’s extended reign in New York.

The orchestra is in fine fettle, with former Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen’s cool clarity replaced by a heat wave—less refined but more overtly  communicative. String sound is notably warmer, with excellent solo principals—especially violist Carrie Dennis, whose rich tone projects with dynamite temperament. Winds, brass, and percussion were on risers but never overwhelmed the strings, a frequent problem in this hall. Most impressive, no matter how loud Dudamel urged his players on—and Tchaikovsky’s triple fortes were quite bracing, thank you—there was not a single strident moment in either concert.

In The Age of Anxiety on Thursday night, Dudamel and Thibaudet proved themselves worthy successors to the Bernstein-Foss recordings on Sony Classical (1950) and Deutsche Grammophon (1977), which remain the interpretive touchstones still. Dudamel invested Bernstein’s catchy tunes with impetuous swing and character, while Thibaudet rose to Foss’s mastery in all but the jazzy Masque.

Whatever questionable moments cropped up in Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique,” they were overwhelmed by the impassioned commitment from all concerned. But as the end of the quiet fourth movement died out, Dudamel’s attempt to hold the applause boomeranged. The audience had already exploded at the end of the third-movement march, as usual, and it could barely wait for the end of the ten-minute finale to do so again. After a few seconds of—gasp!—silence, several audience members began to applaud nervously and were shushed by other listeners. The conductor held his pose for another 20 seconds and then let his hands drop slowly, but the spell had dissipated. The applause was anticlimactic.

Saturday night’s concert replicated Dudamel’s opening-night concert last fall as LA’s music director, which was broadcast on PBS and released on DVD by Deutsche Grammophon. John Adams had composed his City Noir for the occasion, commissioned by the orchestra. He envisioned, writes Adams in the program note, “an orchestral work that, while not necessarily referring to the soundtracks of those films, might nevertheless evoke a similar mood and feeling tone of that era.” There’s certainly a lot of hustle and bustle in this half-hour score, and I didn’t catch any musical references to classics of the era’s film scores by the likes of Rózsa, Herrmann, Raksin, or Webb. It’s a fun piece, I enjoyed it thoroughly, and two minutes later I could only recall a fleeting moment that sounded like Bernstein.

I took loads of notes on the Mahler Symphony No. 1, but who cares? Los Angeles Times critic Mark Swed tells me that Dudamel’s performances are different every night. He did a great Mahler Fifth with the New York Philharmonic back in January 2009, and he’ll do a great Mahler First someday without my detailing every grotesquerie in the second movement or inaudible ppp viola pizzicati eight bars before the end of the third.

The fact is, I walked out of Avery Fisher Hall with a smile on my face, having heard an exciting young conductor and his orchestra stop time for two hours. Who can ask for anything more?

The Critics
“There were readings marked by phenomenal power and inventiveness, and others dragged down into a morass of ostentatious mannerism. At times Dudamel and the orchestra seemed utterly in sync, only to turn the page and come to grief on a simple question of ensemble or instrumental balance. The orchestra itself struggled in parts (the brass was particularly unpredictable) while excelling elsewhere (especially the strings).”—Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle, May 13, 2010

“There’s no question he is inordinately talented, a brilliant and inspiring podium dervish who can get an orchestra to do anything he wishes while lifting an audience out of its seats. Even so, there sometimes appears to be a disconnect between the musical ends and the means he employs to achieve them. Half-formed interpretative ideas betray a lack of musical depth. The problem is not so much one of faulty instincts as where and how he channels those instincts.”—John von Rhein, Chicago Tribune, May 16, 2010

“[O]ne could find plenty to carp at if one was so inclined: balance issues, shaky entrances, lackluster moments from the brass. Frankly, though, that didn’t matter, because Dudamel and the orchestra also offered one of the most involving and compelling performances of Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” symphony I’ve ever heard. This was music played by someone who loves music, someone who had an idea where he was going with the piece. And the orchestra opened its collective heart and went right along with him. Perfect? No. Gorgeous? Yes.”—Anne Midgette, Washington Post, May 19, 2010

“[N]o single aspect was spectacularly missing from this performance [of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6]. But lots of small and moderate deficits added up to a lot. Phrases passed from one instrumental section to another did so without deft handover skills. The loudest sections had more edge than power. From the sound of things, Dudamel isn’t big on tuning chords or balancing sections. As for interpretive insight, there was little in the way of a personal stamp that, if you weren’t exclusively charting the currents of the dark curls, would have made you realize that this was the artist said to be the fiery savior of an endangered art form.—Peter Dobrin, Philadelphia Inquirer, May 21, 2010

“Mr. Dudamel is a phenomenally gifted musician with the potential to change the public perception of what an American orchestra should be…. But Mr. Dudamel has to tend to the technical maintenance of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and may need to spend more time, as the Tchaikovsky performance suggested, immersing himself in the repertory.”—Anthony Tommasini, New York Times, May 22, 2010

“But Mr. Dudamel conducted with an assurance that made even the oddest twists seem a convincing alternative vision, and the Los Angeles players responded to his kinetic podium technique with a beautifully burnished, perfectly balanced performance. Though it was hard to judge the state of the orchestra in the sometimes chaotic Adams work, the Mahler—and an account of the Intermezzo from Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, offered as an encore—left no doubt that it was in superb shape.”—Allan Kozinn, New York Times, May 24, 2010

The Trouble with Volkswagon
Heard on a Volkswagon TV commercial bed: Bernard Herrmann’s music for Alfred Hitchcock’s black comedy, and Shirley MacLaine’s first film, The Trouble with Harry.

Looking Ahead
My week’s scheduled concerts:
2/27 Avery Fisher Hall. New York Philharmonic/Alan Gilbert. Ligeti: Le Grand Macabre.

by Sedgwick Clark

No surprise that Pierre Boulez’s first encounter with the MET Orchestra struck sparks last Sunday afternoon (5/16) at Carnegie Hall. The orchestral playing was in the same league as the astonishing Minnesota/Vänskä performance of Sibelius’s Kullervo Symphony on March 1, also at Carnegie. Boulez conducted the complete ballet music to The Wooden Prince and Schoenberg’s Erwartung, sung by Deborah Polaski. The Wooden Prince, which he considers “one of Bartók’s greatest scores,” has always brought out the best in his conducting. He led the New York Philharmonic in its local premiere and a recording on Sony Classical in 1975, a recording with the Chicago Symphony on Deutsche Grammophon in the late 1990s, and the London Symphony in its Carnegie Hall premiere in 2000. This MET performance may have been the most emotionally expressive of all, and the Schoenberg was extraordinarily clear, his own benchmark for success.

Polaski’s portrayal of the troubled, and possibly homicidal, protagonist worked toward the music’s climax subtly—quite unlike Jessye Norman’s characterization at the Met several years ago, which began at a fevered pitch of Freudian hysteria, with darting eyes and jerky body movements, so that she had nowhere to go.

A sign of Boulez’s connection with this great orchestra was not only its superb playing, but that he shook hands with all the principal strings and waved to the double basses after each work—not something I recall before from this reserved maestro. It’s too bad he never conducted a Met production, but let’s hope that James Levine invites him back immediately for another Met Orchestra concert.

The Louisville Orchestra Story
Imagine this impossible dream. A small semi-professional Midwestern orchestra struggles to make ends meet in a stressful economic climate similar to ours right now. The town mayor is a booster of the arts and suggests that the orchestra needs a unique approach: Instead of challenging the big-city star ensembles in the warhorses and paying big fees to star soloists, this 50-member band will make its renown by commissioning new works and then recording them.

The orchestra was the Louisville Orchestra, its conductor was its founder, Robert Whitney, and the prescient mayor was Charles Farnsley. In 1953, with the help of a Rockefeller Foundation grant—its first to an arts organization—the orchestra was able to commission 46 compositions a year for three years. A further Rockefeller grant, in 1956, enabled the orchestra to commission more works for premiere performances and to begin recording them for its own First Edition label, selling the records by subscription. Among the composers were Hindemith, Honegger, Milhaud, Villa-Lobos, Copland, Thomson, Schuman, Harris, Piston, Cowell, Foss, Shapero, Schuller, Rorem, Bolcom, and Carter.

The records were sold throughout the world and broadcast by Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, disseminating the works of American composers far more than ever before. In 1959, a delegation of Soviet composers, including Shostakovich, Kabalevsky, and Khrennikov, insisted on visiting Louisville to see what this community had accomplished in the name of music.

Louisville’s inspiring story is told in an equally inspiring documentary film entitled Music Makes a City: A Louisville Orchestra Story, which has its premiere in Louisville tomorrow, May 20. It was screened in New York last Thursday with the directors Owsley Brown III and Jerome Hiler present to talk about the six years it took to make the film. A DVD release is projected, but first the filmmakers hope to enter the documentary in film festivals. It also would seem a natural for PBS. Anyone interested in classical music should see this uplifting story of American ingenuity at its best.

Generational Shift at Juilliard Bookstore
Juilliard’s Bookstore Trailer had its three-year interim stint and has now been replaced by a spanking new high-ceiling room with plenty of space to stock . . . books?

Well, yes . . . and no. It’s now called The Juilliard Store, and the first thing one sees upon entering are Juilliard tee-shirts, sweatshirts, and musical tchotchkes. Sure, there are books and music and CDs, which the old, pre-trailer store always had, but there was no question about the emphasis before.

There’s another change too: the personnel. They are now eager-to-please student types, smiling like in McDonald’s commercials. I glanced through the CDs on sale and then walked over to a guy behind the register and asked for Michael. Pause. Then, “Uh, he’s no longer here. He was retired.”

Michael Sherwin is one of those quirky New York music types who know everything—and I mean EVERYTHING—about recorded music and musicians, and he’s the reason the old Juilliard Bookstore had the best stock of historical CDs in town. All the great names were there: Toscanini, Furtwängler, Horowitz, Melchior, Heifetz, Lipatti, Rubinstein, Milstein, Budapest Quartet, Horenstein, Cantelli, Szigeti, Richter et al., as well as the near great.

And the reason I’m writing this is to tell anyone interested in recordings by dead musicians to get over to the Store right away and buy what’s left of the sale items because I’m pretty sure we’ll never see such a treasure trove again. On the new shelves you will find recordings by Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Renée Fleming, Lang Lang, James Levine, Plácido Domingo, and even a fair amount of the dead ones. But there are scant surprises or discoveries here—just the same recordings available across the street at Barnes & Noble.

To be fair, they’ve just started to restock. But it’s not an encouraging sign.

Looking forward
My week’s scheduled concerts:

5/20 Avery Fisher Hall. Los Angeles Philharmonic/Gustavo Dudamel. Bernstein: Age of Anxiety (Jean-Yves Thibaudet); Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6.

5/22 Avery Fisher Hall. Los Angeles Philharmonic/Gustavo Dudamel. Adams: City Noir; Mahler: Symphony No. 1.

2/27 Avery Fisher Hall. New York Philharmonic/Alan Gilbert. Ligeti: Le Grand Macabre.

by Sedgwick Clark

The New York Philharmonic’s three-week “Russian Stravinsky” festival ended on Saturday, and I miss it already. To be treated to this life-affirming music live in concert week after week by this superb orchestra was a rare opportunity. If there were a fire in my home, I’ll bet I would save my Stravinsky Conducts Stravinsky CD set on Sony Classical before any of my over 10,000 CDs.

My own Stravinsky mania—which, I never tire of pointing out, was also the beginning of my classical-music mania—began in college with his Columbia stereo recording of Le Sacre du printemps. I immediately began to collect all of his recordings and now have three incarnations of the stereo ones and all the mono ones. Mind you, I had heard none of this music before, so the composer’s performances became my touchstone for the way to hear it played. Other conductors’ views paled in comparison, especially in terms of rhythm, articulation, and textural clarity.

I had the good fortune to attend two Stravinsky concerts the year before he retired from the podium. In spring 1966 Stravinsky and his amanuensis (strange word) Robert Craft led the Louisville Orchestra in concert: Fireworks and the Firebird Suite conducted by the composer and Le Sacre conducted by Craft. My school mates complained that I was tapping my feet too loudly. During winter break that year I again heard Stravinsky and Craft conduct, this time in Chicago for what was billed his “final appearance.” The 84-year-old composer led a pickup group (not the Chicago Symphony, although some of its players were moonlighting) in Fireworks, the fourth tableau from Petrushka, and the Firebird suite. I remember that at a certain point in the boisterous “Dance of the Coachmen” he stopped conducting and didn’t lift his right arm again until it was time to cue the scurrying “Mummers.” Craft accompanied a young Israeli violinist with dark, curly hair and an engaging smile who walked onstage on crutches and wowed the audience when a string broke in the composer’s Violin Concerto and he had to finish the piece with the concertmaster’s instrument. I also remember fondly that after the second curtain call the little composer shuffled out in his overcoat, smiled broadly, and waved to the wildly applauding audience, drawing his coat around his neck as if to say, “I’m cold, and I’m going now.” It was one of those Windy City winter nights. I had ignored my mother’s advice and brought only a raincoat when I drove from Muncie to Chicago. I have never been so cold since.

Valery Gergiev, who conducted the New York Philharmonic concerts, has quite a different style of performance than the composer. He arranged the participation of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater Chorus and several singers from the Mariinsky Opera, of which he is music director, to heighten the “Russian” style he believes right for Stravinsky. Whatever the case, and despite the fact that in my estimation Gergiev’s performances had their ups and downs, I haven’t had such a stimulating time at the Philharmonic since the Boulez era.

Let’s look at how the composer felt his music should be performed before we look at Gergiev’s concerts one by one. In Conversations with Igor Stravinsky by the composer and Robert Craft (University of California Press, 1980, paper), the first of five books co-authored by the two, originally published in 1958, Craft asks him: “What do you regard as the principal performance problems of your music?” Stravinsky replies:

“Tempo is the principal item. A piece of mine can survive almost anything but wrong or uncertain tempo. (To anticipate your next question, yes, a tempo can be metronomically wrong but right in spirit, though obviously the metronomic margin cannot be very great.) And not only my music, of course. What does it matter if the trills, the ornamentation, and the instruments themselves are all correct in the performance of a Bach concerto if the tempo is absurd? I have often said that my music is to be ‘read’, to be ‘executed’, but not to be ‘interpreted’. I will say it still because I see in it nothing that requires interpretation (I am trying to sound immodest, not modest). But you will protest, stylistic questions in my music are not conclusively indicated by the notation; my style requires interpretation. This is true and it is also why I regard my recordings as indispensable supplements to the printed music. But that isn’t the kind of ‘interpretation’ my critics mean. What they would like to know is whether the bass clarinet repeated notes at the end of the first movement of my Symphony in Three Movements might be interpreted as ‘laughter’. Let us suppose I agree that it is meant to be ‘laughter’; what difference could this make to the performer? Notes are still intangible. They are not symbols but signs.

“The stylistic performance problem in my music is one of articulation and rhythmic diction. Nuance depends on these. Articulation is mainly separation, and I can give no better example of what I mean by it than to refer the reader to W. B. Yeats’s recording of three of his poems. Yeats pauses at the end of each line, he dwells a precise time on and in between each word—one could as easily notate his verses in musical rhythm as scan them in poetic metres.

“For fifty years I have endeavored to teach musicians to play    instead of 

in certain cases, depending on the style. I have also labored to teach them to accent syncopated notes and to phrase before them in order to do so. (German orchestras are as unable to do this, so far, as the Japanese are unable to pronounce ‘L’.)

“In the performance of my music, simple questions like this consume half of my rehearsals: when will musicians learn to abandon the tied-into note, to lift from it, and not to rush the semiquavers afterwards? These are elementary things, but solfeggio is still at an elementary level. And why should solfeggio be taught, when it is taught, as a thing apart from style? Isn’t this why Mozart concertos are still played as though they were Tchaikovsky concertos?”

PROGRAM 1 (April 22): Les Noces (1914-23); Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920, rev. 1945-47); The Firebird (1909-10).

Gergiev stressed in interviews that the Mariinsky Chorus would make a big difference in our understanding of such a “Russian” work as Les Noces, but he tore through the piece in 22 minutes, over three minutes faster than the composer’s comfortably paced and far more expressively shaped stereo recording. Gergiev’s single-minded approach was exciting, to be sure, but it negated any advantage the chorus or his Russian soloists might offer. And try as he might to subdue the Russian pianists and Philharmonic percussion players, the vocalists were covered much of the time. For nine years and three different-sized performing groups, Stravinsky struggled to find a workable answer to Les Noces. Bernstein’s answer with the Philharmonic in 1970 was to amplify the vocalists and allow the instrumentalists to lam away full throttle—not, need it be said, successful either. Slow down, Valery, and choose a smaller venue next time.

Symphonies of Wind Instruments was played superbly by the Philharmonic winds—one of the highlights of the festival.

A broadly paced complete Firebird glimmered with subtle tone painting in Gergiev’s hands, with an uncommonly expressive “Khorovod” being the highlight of the performance. Imprecise playing dotted the violent “Dance of Kashchei,” however, and the finale could have unfolded with less fuss. Page turning by a few extra violinists in the back desks of the firsts and seconds was loud and distracting in fast passages.

PROGRAM 2 (April 23): Les Noces (1914-23); Symphony of Psalms (1930; rev. 1948);The Firebird (1909-10).

Gergiev hadn’t relaxed his relentless grip on Les Noces a day later. Symphony of Psalms had all its accustomed power in the first two movements, but the slow tempos of the final movement were inexplicably rushed—a great disappointment. I departed at intermission but regretted it when a friend reported improved ensemble in The Firebird.

PROGRAM 3 (April 29): Zvezdolikiy (1911-12); Violin Concerto in D (1931); Oedipus Rex (1926-27; rev. 1948).

What a strange little work Zvezdolikiy is, lasting only 5:40 in this performance. It’s also known by its French title, Le Roi des étoiles, or the American translation, The King of the Stars—or, in the program, The Star-Faced One. Unfortunately, on this occasion it was neither clearly played nor sung, and not helped by the lack of texts and translations; projected English titles just don’t suffice for such an unknown entity.

Another festival highlight was the Violin Concerto, with Gergiev and soloist Leonidas Kavakos setting brisk tempos and keeping Stravinsky’s dancelike rhythms chugging buoyantly along. The finale flew like a flash, with Kavakos digging in lustily and the Philharmonic’s principal French horn, Philip Myers, whooping away joyously toward the end. Talk about taking chances! The players clearly loved playing the concerto and applauded Kavakos warmly, as did the audience, so he played an encore.

So much of Gergiev’s way with Oedipus Rex was exciting that his impatience in some of Stravinsky’s most eloquent music was dispiriting. Take the opening, for instance, which has tremendous weight and gravity under Stravinsky but jogtrots casually in Gergiev’s hands. Or Jocasta’s aria which, despite Waltraud Meier’s fine singing, loses its stately grandeur at Gergiev’s pace. The duet between Oedipus and Jocasta was exciting in its violent propulsion, but textural clarity suffered and rhythms were inaudible; likewise for the chorus’s telling of Jocasta’s death. On the other hand, the final chorus was thrillingly intense. Dumbfounding, however, was the inconsistent pronunciation of Oedipus’s and Jocasta’s names by the otherwise impeccable Narrator, Jeremy Irons, for lord’s sake, and Anthony Dean Griffey’s Oedipus, who couldn’t keep his wife’s name straight!

PROGRAM 4 (May 30): Orpheus (1946-47); Oedipus Rex (1926-27; rev. 1948).

Orpheus is one of Stravinsky’s subtlest scores. In its quiet, Monteverdian way, it is no less powerful than Le Sacre, rising above mezzo-forte only once, when the Bacchantes attack Orpheus and tear him to pieces. It takes great artistry to sustain the music’s half-hour duration, and I am told it received only two hours of rehearsal the morning of this concert. It was the festival’s nadir—the worst performance I’ve heard from the Philharmonic in 20 years, although hardly the fault of the musicians. Only Nancy Allen’s harp playing escaped the overall dismal showing.

I had my score of Oedipus and noted, among other things, that Gergiev set a perfectly good tempo for the beginning of Jocasta’s aria and sped up at number 96, making it more difficult for Meier to articulate. The next day at a Morgan Library symposium, he told Joseph Horowitz that “For years I couldn’t find the key to Oedipus Rex.” He should keep looking.

PROGRAM 5 (May 2): Renard (1915-16); L’Histoire du soldat (1918).

As with Les Noces, Gergiev’s Renard was too fast for optimum clarity, phrasing, and character; the playing was excellent, but the composer’s recording is far more fun. As always in these concerts, his regard for the singers was slight, and his Russian basses were all but inaudible.

The Philharmonic players were at the top of their game in L’Histoire. Principal Associate Concertmaster Sheryl Staples has always shone herself to be one of the jewels of the orchestra, and she outdid herself here in some of the wittiest writing for violin in the literature. Joseph Alessi’s flatulent trombone squawks always hit the mark, as did the contributions of clarinetist Mark Nuccio, bassoonist Judith LeClair, trumpet player Philip Smith, percussionist Christopher S. Lamb, and double bass player Satoshi Okamoto. Alec Baldwin was a disappointing Narrator, delivering his lines in a flat, uninflected tone. Matt Cavenaugh was a vapid Soldier. Daniel Davis was delightful, a properly ironic and devilish Devil.

PROGRAM 6 (May 6): Symphony in C (1938-40); Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra (1928-29; rev. 1949); Petrushka (1911).

One wonders why the symphony is not played more often, but as one could sense here it’s damned difficult. Gergiev’s was a meaty performance and will do for the time being, although I hope to hear a truly spiffy reading someday.

The Capriccio was one of the composer’s favorite works—so much so, the late Philharmonic pianist Paul Jacobs told me many years ago, that when Columbia signed Philippe Entremont to record the Piano Concerto and Capriccio, and Stravinsky was not happy with the previous day’s recording of the former, he locked himself in his bathroom the morning of the Capriccio session and Robert Craft had to conduct the recording. I think Stravinsky would have found Denis Matsuev’s heavy, fingers-of-iron style totally lacking the puckish caprice of the work, especially in the second movement. It was assured and accurate but with no bounce or balletic twinkle. The accompaniment could have used a couple more rehearsals, as I’m sure it always does; it’s a rhythmic nightmare, and I can’t imagine it made a good showing for Stravinsky in the 1930s. The audience loved it, though, and Matsuev played an encore: Shchedrin’s Humoresque.

The Petrushka was okay, but nothing special. 

PROGRAM 7 (May 7): Symphony in Three Movements (1942-45); Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (1923-24; rev. 1950); Le Sacre du printemps (1911-13).

Stravinsky’s mid-’40s “Victory” symphony received the best performance of the full-orchestra works in the festival, with the tightest ensemble and solo detail, and the extensive concertante parts incisively played by Philharmonic principals Nancy Allen (harp) and Jonathan Feldman (piano). Interestingly, Gergiev appeared more overtly concerned with ongoing rhythm and specific cues than in previous nights, and the results showed.

No performance I’ve heard (including recordings) of Stravinsky’s dour, neoclassical Piano Concerto has felt truly secure. The solo and ensemble writing never seems to interlock rhythmically, and it was no surprise to read in the program notes that Stravinsky had memory lapses while composing and performing the piece. (Perhaps he was wondering what double basses were doing in a work purportedly for piano and winds.) The festival’s underrehearsed reading was not helped by an unassertive soloist, Alexei Volodin. (Three days later, and only hours after typing these words, a reprise of the concerto occurred at Zankel Hall by the Ensemble AJCW under John Adams, with Jeremy Denk as soloist. The student wind players could not be mistaken for their Philharmonic counterparts, but they played accurately and enthusiastically, while Denk’s playing had all the rhythmic bounce and jazzy accents that Volodin lacked. Moreover, Adams’s conducting and Denk’s pianism dovetailed admirably.)

The festival had to conclude with Le Sacre du printemps—how else? It was first performed by the Philharmonic in 1926 under Wilhelm Furtwängler, of all people. Stravinsky recorded it with the New Yorkers in 1940. Boulez’s unforgettable first Sacre with the Philharmonic in 1969 won him the music directorship. I wish I could say that Gergiev’s performance was one for the ages. Tempos ranged wide, attacks were spongy, instrumental texture was mush. The fast music was exciting on a superficial level, but the lack of detail soon became wearing. Judith LeClair’s evocative bassoon solo in the Introduction to Part I and the superb ppp muted trumpets in the intro to Part II are the only moments that stand out positively in retrospect. The distended pause before, and treatment of, the final two chords was laughable. The orchestra and conductor were roundly applauded at the end, so what do I know?

Looking forward
My week’s scheduled concerts:

5/13 Avery Fisher Hall. New York Philharmonic/Kurt Masur. Beethoven: Symphony No. 1; Bruckner: Symphony No. 7.

5/16 Carnegie Hall. The MET Orchestra/Pierre Boulez. Bartók: The Wooden Prince (complete); Schoenberg: Erwartung.

5/17 Walter Reade Theater. Young Concert Artists Gala.