The Gilbert Report
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!