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At orchestral concerts, it is unusual for conductors to appear on stage before the actors have had a chance to tune their instruments. But at Carnegie Hall on Thursday, Leon Botstein took a moment to thank the audience.
“Practically nobody knows about these pieces,” he said — referring to the rare works program that took place that evening in the 1930s. Orchestra Nowconservatory all-stars ensemble – “and it’s a miracle for someone to go out on a beautiful May day.”
A miracle, yes, but something modest.
That night, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra was in a “limited edition” for its highly standard paid concert, such as Mozart’s “Turkish” violin concerto, Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony. And across the street from Carnegie’s stage door, it’s the row of a star-studded exhausted run. “Into the Forest” It curved hundreds of feet from the entrance to Downtown New York.
Still, there was quite a bit of red in the cream-gold auditorium at Carnegie: patches and rows of empty seats. Botstein has made a career of uncovering the overlooked treasures of classical music. noble, necessary effort. But Thursday’s concert was a frustrating reminder of how hard it really is; Programming only takes you so far in a culture where Mozart and Beethoven continue to excel in any weather.
Of course, not everything Botstein chooses may be the same as the familiar classics. Some are more intriguing than masterpieces, but regardless, he and The Orchestra Now give them top-notch readings—an argument for them as good as you can imagine. And on Thursday, he presented four pieces that are unlikely to become repertoire staples any time soon, but are nonetheless worthy of performance.
All in the second half of the 1930s, at a time that gave us music as diverse as Berg’s Violin Concerto and “Lulu”, Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Varèse’s “Density 21.5” and Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” was written. Botstein’s programming was similarly extensive; The first half had American composers – William Grant Still and Carlos Chavez – and the second half shifted to Europe with Witold Lutoslawski and Karl Amadeus Hartmann.
He was still prolific, though he remains best known for his 1931 “African-American Symphony.” Here, Verna Arvey’s (wife and collaborator, including opera “Highway 1, USA”). The portrait of the escape from slavery to freedom is atmospheric yet tense; in the beginning, it is both static and dramatic.
Frank Corliss was deftly cautious as a soloist and at one point evoked the tension of the scene with quiet, forced sentences amid an eerie mist of harmonic on the surrounding strings. The anachronistic blues passages—wind solos and muted wind instruments—felt like a glimpse into a future within reach of the end, a lush climax that finds beauty in an otherwise bleak landscape, and a kind of joyful promise.
The reveal of the night might be Chávez’s Piano Concerto, a three-part piece that functions more like one of two parts: a long first movement of mercurial sections, and another that grows from almost zero to the end of a chirpy, enormous voice. Thrillingly unpredictable – in its development, but also in its rhythms and sounds – it provided unsettling work for lead singer Gilles Vonsattel, who was stoic from start to finish, including as a sensitive partner during a long duet with harpist Taylor Ann Fleshman. second move.
After the break came Lutoslawski’s early “Symphonic Variations,” which set off with a short, simple theme expressed by a flute over pizzicato verses. Between the dizzying runs in the wind and the intrusive dark textures in the cello and bass, it can be difficult to tell where one variation ends and another begins – so difficult that there’s no consensus on how many. Easier to watch and more enjoyable to understand, this short work is a journey from Neo-Classical austerity to rebellious splendor.
However, his joy did not last long. To close the program, Botstein presented Hartmann’s First Symphony, “Versuch eines Requiems” (translated in the program as “Essay for a Requiem”), although the stronger one might be something like “Requiem Attempt at a Requiem”). A collection of five-part Walt Whitman props – performed between scenes by mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel. “Lucia di Lammermoor” At the Metropolitan Opera — a painful denunciation of war, whose premiere in 1948 was long delayed due to Hartmann’s status as a corrupt artist in Nazi Germany.
The basis of the symphony, which begins with fighting percussion and dissonance, is fear. Working with a low tessitura, Nansteel was generally a rich-bodied but chilling being, not very melodic, and, according to the finale, presented Whitman’s “Contemplative Ten Every Dead Gaze” with exaggerated, ghostly speech. This move ends with a crescendo that evokes a gunshot, but stops abruptly, leaving behind a hanging chord like tinnitus.
It was conceived on the verge of an oppressive regime invading its neighbor and is now a a similar act of war unfoldsHartmann’s symphony is a cry against conflict, a warning from the past—but one that might reach the few who were there on Thursday to hear it.
Orchestra Now
It was held Thursday at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan.
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