If you needed a reminder of just how good an orchestra the Princeton Symphony Orchestra is, you needed look no further than this past weekend’s concerts, in which the ensemble played two new works with such commitment that you would have sworn that they are standard repertoire.
“Extra(ordinarily) Fancy,” composed in 2019-20 by Princeton alumnus and Curtis graduate Viet Cuong is so much fun, it would not have been out of place among the riotous offerings on a Hoffnung Music Festival concert. Except, unlike the works on those overtly comedic outings, the piece never descends into parody. What we have are two oboe soloists, positioned before a chamber orchestra, complete with harpsichord continuo, embarking on what seems like a piece of ersatz Baroque music, but soon engaging in a battle of wills as one of the oboists decides to spice things up with multiphonics (an extended technique in which the player produces multiple tones at once).
The contagion creeps across the entire orchestra, augmented by xylophones, Leroy Anderson “Sleigh-Ride” style slapsticks, and bass drum. It also ramps up the dance inflections inherent in the ordinarily somewhat lugubrious Baroque passacaglia (itself with roots in courtly dances of 17th century Spain). The soloists, PSO principal oboist Lillian Copeland and Erin Gustafson struck just the right tone, metaphorically speaking, with first rate musicianship and some playful reactions to the discords, employing just enough restraint to get the humorous point across without distracting from the music with too much mugging. Furthermore, at ten minutes, the piece does not outstay its welcome. It’s a great curtain-raiser and deserves wider popularity.
That was followed by the world premiere of a new harpsichord concerto by Princeton resident Julian Grant. The title, “Vaudeville in Teal,” is meant to tip us off not to expect a three-movement concerto in the classical mold, but rather a kind of sequence of varying moods and character that Grant sees as musically analogous to the vaudevilles that were popular around the turn of last century.
As he described it to me when we discussed it last week, “It’s rather like a show with lots of disparate acts. You know, like the old-fashioned vaudevilles used to be. You’d have someone come on and do bird impressions, there’d be a flea circus from Russia, Anna Pavlova would do ‘The Dying Swan,’ you know. Some singer would come on and sing ‘O sole mio.’ I just imagined that the piece would be kind of slightly random sections.”
The movements are given one-word titles, some of them rather whimsical especially in relation to the content: “Curtain,” “Tarantella,” “Threesome,” “Fairies,” “Spiel,” and “Follies.” These flow into one another without break.
Despite the droll concept, you’d have to listen hard to detect anything arch or campy in the music itself. For all Grant’s playfulness, there’s no question it’s a serious piece. Moreover, it is a much more cohesive work than the “vaudeville” conceit would suggest. At the core of Grant’s musical output are 20 operas. So attuned is he to a sense of line that I think it must have carried over to his episodic concerto.
The work is ingeniously scored for harpsichord, string orchestra, obbligato bass clarinet, and bassoon, as the handling of these self-imposed “restrictions” proved masterful. Who knew there could be so many colors to be drawn from such a limited palette? (Speaking of color, the use of “Teal” in the title is much less mysterious than it might at first be assumed: it’s the color of Grant’s harpsichord!) Furthermore, the composer deploys his forces in such a way that he repeatedly sidesteps a major pitfall in writing for such a conversational instrument, as it could easily be drowned out by a modern orchestra. It was fascinating to observe all the ways he managed to address this potential limitation. Even so, the harpsichord was unobtrusively amplified.
Principal clarinetist Pascal Archer (on the bass clarinet) and principal bassoonist Brad Balliett played, alone and in tandem, with gorgeous, often ruminative expressiveness throughout. In fact, everyone was given ample opportunities to shine. The work begins and ends with a figure on double bass, played on the weekend concerts by PSO principal John Grillo. Grillo also had a significant part in “Threesome,” as one third of a trio with bassoon and harpsichord. Concertmaster Basia Danilow was required to step up, figuratively speaking, for glinting solos in “Tarantella” and “Follies.” Periodically the atmospheric strings would snap into focus for satisfying passages that seem to share a spiritual kinship with Béla Bartók and Benjamin Britten. “Spiel” was a spotlit moment for harpsichord alone.
The bass contribution was not the only recurring signpost. There was also a unifying three-note motif to help orient the listener and a kind of recitative played on the harpsichord, notably at the beginning of “Threesome” and again toward the end of the piece.
The eminent harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani was seated in profile to the audience. (Often in Baroque music, the instrument is at the center of the orchestra, with the player facing forward, the keyboard hidden, as was the case in Cuong’s piece.) Esfahani did not play the fabled teal harpsichord, but rather another instrument from the same company, black on the outside, but the raised lid revealing a painted maritime scene.
This was not your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents’ harpsichord concerto. Esfahani played with the commitment and intensity of a piano soloist, several times rising in the bench as if it were a saddle on a galloping horse because of the expressive demands of the piece. Virtuosic fingerwork on two manuals produced subtle shifts in timbre, especially in moments when he played croisée (depressing notes on the two keyboards at the same time) or repositioned stop levers, kind of like an organist, making the instrument sound more like a lute or a harp. In addition, he frequently adjusted the upper keyboard to engage the instrument’s coupler mechanism (that couples the manuals together).
I should mention, the concerto was actually commissioned by the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra and its music director Anne Manson, who will perform the work with Esfahani this Wednesday (tomorrow) in Winnipeg. That Princeton was granted the premiere was due to a combination of logistics, Esfahani’s flexibility, and Manson’s generosity, as well as her long relationship with the composer.
It says something about how stimulating the music and performances were on the concert’s first half that Igor Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella” – presented after intermission in its rarely-heard complete form – came across, to this listener anyway, as somewhat anticlimactic. Don’t get me wrong: I love “Pulcinella.” As I’ve commented before, this is Stravinsky for people who don’t like Stravinsky, a ballet based on what the composer thought were tunes of Baroque master Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (since found to be misattributed). It’s endlessly melodic, frequently buoyant, and ultimately uplifting music. Stravinsky brings the 18th century source material up to date through the playful use of 20th century rhythms, cadences, and harmonies. It is indeed a felicitous, time-hopping marriage.
Even so, the composer took all the best music and put it into a more frequently-performed concert suite (which the PSO has done in the past), and I can’t say the vocal parts really add all that much to it. That’s not to cast shade on the concert’s soloists, soprano Aubry Ballarò, tenor Nicholas Nestorak, and bass-baritone Hunter Enoch, who did well with what they had to do. Ballarò has a lovely voice, which she employs beautifully, but the words were somewhat lost, even in the intimate setting of Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium, in a pastoral solo about a pining shepherdess. (The text is in Italian anyway, and there were supertitles throughout.) However, she blossomed in duets or trios with the men’s more powerful instruments.
Ballarò and Nestorak are veterans of the Princeton Festival. She sang Fiordiligi in “Cosi fan tutte” in 2024, and he appeared as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in Derek Wang’s “Scalia/Ginsberg” in 2022 and as Spoletta in “Tosca” last year. Next month, Ballarò will sing Violetta in “La traviata” at Opera Columbus, with the PSO’s Rossen Milanov in the pit. Earlier this season, she performed Strauss’ “Four Last Songs” under Milanov’s baton with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra. Ballarò and Nestorak will reunite with Milanov and the Columbus Symphony in May to perform Carl Orff’s “Trionfo di Afrodite” (“Triumph of Aphrodite).
Nestorak has been on the roster of the Metropolitan Opera since 2021. Enoch, with his pleasingly resonant voice, recently sang in Fabio Luisi’s “Ring” Cycle with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, even stepping in for Mark Delavan to cover Wotan! The “Ring” performances are being prepared for commercial release.
Back in Princeton: It was a joy to have Copeland and Gustafson, the oboe soloists in Viet Cuong’s piece, back in the woodwind section for “Pulcinella.” They engaged in a few duets there, as well, and Copeland brought an extra degree of elegance to her solos. All of the winds and brass had their moments, but the trombonist, Connor Rowe, really stole the show, thanks in no small part to Stravinsky’s writing, but he definitely brought something extra to it.
Milanov conducted with his usual fluency, at his best possibly in Grant’s piece, which, as a world premiere, had to be deciphered and put together very quickly. It required an opera conductor’s sense of spontaneity and flow to really allow the solos and the interplay with the various instruments to really breathe. It was expertly managed. “Pulcinella” was well-played and, again, a very good performance, but I have heard others with more snap. This is not a technical criticism, merely an interpretive observation. The piece was presented with clarity and grace, wholly befitting its Baroque antecedent, but with less emphasis on Stravinsky’s obsessive rhythmic precision and bite.
All quibbling aside, this might just have been the most stimulating of the PSO’s concerts this season. To paraphrase “Henry V,” those who missed it (still a-bed on account of the time change, perhaps?) should think themselves accursed and hold their manhoods cheap.
The PSO will conclude its season at Richardson on May 9 & 10, with Aaron Copland’s “Letter from Home,” Camille Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1 (with soloist Maja Bogdanović), and Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5.
For more information and a look at the orchestra’s 2026-27 offerings, visit princetonsymphony.org. (See the dropdown menu under “Tickets and Events.”)
