Le Grand P.R. Blitz
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.