Every year, when I arrive in New York in early September, I always forget that it’s going to be another month or so before I can regularly start attending the concerts I love. Carnegie Hall, the New York Philharmonic, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, it turns out, only really get going in October—and now, at last, I have been to one event from each.
First up on my calendar was one of the two opening concerts at Carnegie Hall, both of which featured Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony. I chose the second night—Thursday, October 5—in part because it included a New York premiere by Philip Glass, whose music I almost always enjoy in a low-key, calming sort of way. The Triumph of the Octagon, his single-movement piece written specifically for Muti (in honor of a photo of the 13th-century Castel del Monte that Glass saw hanging on Muti’s office wall), was no exception, though I felt it ended rather abruptly.
The Glass piece set the note for the Italian theme that pervaded the evening. Next up was Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony, which the orchestra (clearly delighted to be re-united with their recently retired conductor) performed beautifully, and which was wholly enjoyable if not terribly earthshaking. Then, after the intermission, came Richard Strauss’s “Aus Italien,” a series of tone-poems or lyrical interludes on such subjects as “Amid the Ruins of Rome” and “Neapolitan Folk Life.” I couldn’t for the life of me detect anything Italian about the piece or its segments—it all seemed a very Germanic take on Italy, to me—but again, the orchestra performed wonderfully. It wasn’t until the encore, however—the overture to Verdi’s rarely performed opera Joan of Arc—that the true melding of conductor and musicians came forth at full strength. Now here was something Italian to listen to, for a change, and something marvelous besides. If I hadn’t just heard Verdi’s Requiem performed at the Metropolitan Opera (spectacularly done by everyone involved), I might have been tempted to classify this little overture as my favorite piece of Verdi music, ever. That’s how good it sounded.
On the very next night, Friday the 6th, I was at Geffen Hall listening to the New York Philharmonic perform another premiere by another New York composer. This was Steve Reich’s Jacob’s Ladder, a world premiere of a piece for vocal ensemble and chamber group which was having only its second outing, after its first on the night before. Reich has always been a more complicated composer than Glass, and you never quite know what you’re going to get with him, but in this case I found the work completely compelling. The soprano and tenor voices were otherworldly, or unearthly, or whatever you want to call singing that does not sound like normal people carrying a tune but that nonetheless works its way into your emotions. And the instruments—which included clarinets, oboes, flutes, vibraphones, strings, and piano—carried on a continuous and occasionally emphatic humming throughout, so much so that when a single violinist left off his rhythmic bowing, another had to pick up the beat seamlessly. In a Reich work, time always disappears as rhythm comes to the fore: you have no idea how long you have been sitting there, but you know exactly what beat your body is thrilling to. Here the captivating rhythms built toward the end, not by speeding up but by portentously slowing down. It was fun to see Reich himself there in the audience, wearing his standard baseball cap; that made it feel like an important New York musical event, as did his warm bow with the musicians at the end of his piece.
The rest of the program was divided between the outstanding (Lief Ove Andsnes as the soloist in Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto) and the ho-hum (Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, which I am convinced he left unfinished for a reason). But though the quality of the music ran the gamut, the audience seemed equally thrilled at every piece. In fact, they seemed thrilled just to be present in Geffen Hall, which was packed to the rafters. I agree that Geffen is a huge improvement, acoustically, over the Avery Fisher Hall that preceded it, though I think it lacks the amazing warmth of Carnegie or the perfect balance of the Berlin Philharmonie. But hey, who’s complaining? The music is good enough—and when Gustavo Dudamel shows up next year to replace the competent but lackluster Jaap van Zweden, the quality of the concerts and the response to them should go through the roof.
Third up in my series was the season opener of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, in the ultra-comfortable, perfectly sized, warmly glowing Alice Tully Hall. I admit I am a sucker for chamber music in general and for this group’s performances in particular. But even I could not have predicted the pleasure I would derive from the October 17th concert, which was titled, with complete accuracy, “String Sonorities.” That’s exactly what we got in each of the five pieces on the program: the sound of violins, violas, cellos, and a double bass blending together in various harmonious ways. No single piece on the program would have drawn me by itself (though Benjamin Britten’s Simple Symphony for Strings, which closed the concert, was so terrific that I will take my first chance to hear it again). But as we moved from Elgar to Bartok to Grieg to George Walker, I had a chance to savor musicianship at its most skillful and comradely level. The lead violinist changed in each piece, and players who had stood in the back row before came forward to strut their stuff. Even David Finckel, the grand old cellist who helps run CMS, went from prominence in the Elgar to nearly hidden in the Britten, as if he were just another working musician. The featured players were mostly young, and many of them were recent additions to the CMS family, but they blended with the oldsters as if they were all, so to speak, on the same page. I’m glad to think that with such a good collection of talented and collaborative members, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center has a long and healthy future ahead of it.