It was announced yesterday that Gustavo Dudamel will be leaving the Los Angeles Philharmonic to take up the post of “music and artistic director” of the New York Philharmonic, beginning in 2026. The double-barrel title is bestowed in the same week as the announcement that Yannick Nézet-Séguin will now be “music and artistic director” of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Nézet-Séguin, who has been music director in Philly since 2012, renewed his contract through 2030.
Granted, both these gentlemen do a lot of heavy-lifting, more than justifying the compound-if-cumbersome descriptors. Dudamel, 42, has been a transformative force in L.A. He is, with the possible exception of Nézet-Séguin, our most visible and energetic young man of the podium. (Yannick, 47, is also music director of the Metropolitan Opera and his home orchestra, the Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal.) I don’t know if the East Coast can handle the combined kinetic energy of Yannick and The Dude.
Dudamel carved out time for a whirlwind residency in Princeton in 2018. Although I got to meet him, our interview had to be conducted via email. Knowing Dudamel, he probably dashed off his responses in a limo on the way to the airport. You can learn more about The Dude and read our exchange at the link.
After posting about Tchaikovsky’s “Little Russian” Symphony this morning, on the 150th anniversary of the work’s first performance, I recollected an anecdote once shared by the writer George Plimpton.
Plimpton, of course, was most famous for his forays into “participatory journalism” – getting his hands dirty, with the occasional gash or broken bone, in pursuit of a better understanding of the subject he happened to be writing about, whether it be what it would be like to box with Archie Moore, train to be a goalie with the Boston Bruins, or to play quarterback with the Detroit Lions.
The guy had guts, without the posturing of a Hemingway or a Mailer, and he wasn’t afraid to look foolish. Or if he was, he made pride subservient to the experience. It was an endearing quality in a man who spoke with a patrician accent, cofounded The Paris Review, and could trace his lineage to the Mayflower.
When Plimpton took an interest in what it would be like to be an orchestra musician, he was allowed to tag along with the New York Philharmonic as a percussionist on its Canadian tour. In this capacity, he played the sleigh bells in the opening movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 – very badly, it turned out, which infuriated the conductor, Leonard Bernstein.
But Plimpton redeemed himself when he was assigned the gong in Tchaikovsky’s “Little Russian” Symphony. He was so keyed-up in the work’s final movement, as his big moment approached, that when he received his cue from the podium, he struck with such force that he claimed he could see the shock wave travel across the rows of stunned musicians to Bernstein himself, whose eyes widened in surprise. The conductor had to wait for the sound to decay before he could launch into the symphony’s final bars. Bernstein was so pleased with the result that he invited Plimpton to be on the recording of the piece that he and the orchestra subsequently made.
But I’m only paraphrasing from the words of a very capable writer. Here’s the story from Plimpton’s own lips. Enjoy!
Favorite Tchaikovsky symphony? In my teens it was the “Pathétique,” easily. I was emotionally aligned with it, as I was with most Romantic music. I never much cared for the 5th, with its annoying recurring motto, except perhaps for the overheated slow movement. The 4th at the moment seems to be enjoying a bit of a vogue – as if it were ever out of style – as seemingly everyone has been programming it for the past season or two. Those are the three most popular.
But for several decades now my personal favorite must be the 2nd, the one that’s traditionally been identified as the “Little Russian.” The nickname stems from the fact that the work employs Ukrainian folksong. Certainly, the composer had a great deal of affection for Ukraine, though I’m guessing the combined implications in the subtitle of diminution and ownership might annoy present-day Ukrainians. Since the Russian invasion, I’ve seen it referred to several times as “Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2, ‘Ukrainian.’” Will the new name stick? Only time will tell.
It wasn’t Tchaikovsky who subtitled the work anyway, but rather a friend, the critic Nikolay Kashkin. There was a big nationalist push in Russian music at the time, so Tchaikovsky’s folksong approach was embraced by his peers of the Mighty Handful, or the Russian Five (consisting of Balakirev and his disciples, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Borodin, and Cui).
The symphony scored a resounding success when the finale was first played at the home of Rimsky-Korsakov on this date 150 years ago. Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother, Modest, that “the whole company almost tore me to pieces with rapture.”
The public loved it too. Conductors were eager to program it and critics were enthusiastic. It seems that only Cui, who later trashed Rachmaninoff’s 1st Symphony, disliked it.
Ultimately, Tchaikovsky would follow a different course and come to be viewed with suspicion by The Five, who looked upon his music as less Russo-centric and more cosmopolitan. But of course, Tchaikovsky would always be Russian to his core.
That said, the composer genuinely loved Ukraine. He wrote most of the symphony during a summer holiday with his sister’s family in Kamianka. He joked that he should dedicate the work to their elderly butler, who first sang him the folksong “The Crane” that would form the basis for the symphony’s finale.
Tchaikovsky nearly lost the manuscript on his return to Moscow, when he passed himself off as royalty in order to convince an uncooperative postmaster to hitch up his coach. It was only when he reached his next stop that he realized he had left his luggage behind. Full of nerves that the postmaster would have opened it and discovered his true identity, he sent back an intermediary to retrieve it, but the postmaster would not hand it over. He said he would only release it to the “prince” himself. So Tchaikovsky had to go back.
Much to his relief, the postmaster seemed to behave normally, so that the composer began to think he had not been caught in his lie. But as he was about to leave, he asked the postmaster’s name, and he replied, “Tchaikovsky!” It was only later that he learned that Tchaikovsky really was the postmaster’s name.
Despite its immediate success, somehow the composer was not entirely satisfied with the symphony and revised it extensively in 1879-80. Mostly, he rewrote the first movement and tightened up the last. His pupil, Sergei Taneyev, was not alone in the opinion that these changes weakened the work, rather than strengthened it. Even so, it is the revised version we usually hear today.
In whatever form, the work makes me happy, having heard memorable performances of it with Mstislav Rostropovich on the podium and at an outdoor concert from a makeshift stage in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square. You might say, I have always had great affection for this “Little” symphony.
A brisk performance of the revised version (1879-80)
The rarely-heard original version (1872)
Tchaikovsky’s house, yet another casualty of the war in Ukraine
This weekend: @[100057996013792:2048:Mimi Stillman] plays music by @[100056202085826:2048:Zhou Tian, composer] with the @[100063545561737:2048:Allentown Symphony Orchestra]! Also on the program: William Grant Still’s “Ennanga” for harp and strings and Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony. Show them some love, Lehigh Valley!
Really, I could care less about the Grammys. The broadcast has shown slight regard for classical music for decades.
However, for a classical music artist, to win a Grammy still has some cachet. The Grammy is basically the Oscar of the music biz, the most widely recognized of the mainstream music awards. So in that regard, it’s very nice for a musician to win one.
This year, in particular, my antennae are up, since so many of the winners are slated to appear in Princeton over the coming year.
The trio Time for Three, made up of violinists Nicholas Kendall and Charles Yang and double-bassist Ranaan Meyer, were honored last night for Best Classical Music Instrumental Solo, for their album “Letters from the Future,” a Deutsche Grammophon release of two triple concertos, one by Kevin Puts, composer and the other by Jennifer Higdon, with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Xian Zhang.
Time for Three will return, following last year’s memorable, freewheeling appearance, to open this summer’s The Princeton Festival on June 9. The ensemble will also “solo” in Puts’ concerto on a concert of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra next March. Puts’ concerto, titled “Contact,” was also recognized with this year’s Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.
And just think, I used to listen to these guys horse around in Rittenhouse Square when they were still students at the Curtis Institute.
Parenthetically, Higdon is a Philadelphia resident and Zhang is music director of the New Jersey Symphony.
The Attacca Quartet was honored with this year’s Grammy for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for their album “Evergreen,” made up of five works by Caroline Shaw. The Attacca Quartet too will appear at this summer’s Princeton Festival on June 17. Caroline Shaw’s “Entr’acte” will be heard next season on a concert of the PSO in November.
Of course, Puts and Shaw are already Pulitzer Prize winners – Puts for his opera “Silent Night” in 2012 and Shaw for her a cappella masterpiece “Partita for 8 Voices” in 2013. Shaw, who was in the graduate program here in Princeton, became the youngest composer ever to be recognized with a Pulitzer, at age 30. Her work “Narrow Sea” garnered a Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical Composition in 2022.
Baritone Will Liverman will present a recital at the Princeton Festival on June 19. Liverman is one of the principals on a recording of Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” winner of this year’s Grammy for Best Opera Recording. The work opened the 2021-22 Metropolitan Opera season. In the recording, Liverman sings opposite Angel Blue, who you’ll recall stepped up at the eleventh hour to substitute for an ailing Pretty Yende to deliver a miraculous concert with the PSO only last month. Blanchard is the recipient of five previous Grammys in the Awards’ jazz categories.
Offering further shout-outs to our neighbors in Philadelphia, Yannick Nézet-Séguin is the conductor on “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” His recording with Renée Fleming (in which he appears as pianist), “Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene,” was also honored last night in the Best Classical Solo Vocal Album category. Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, has just extended his contract as music and artistic director of the Philadelphia Orchestra through 2030.
Finally, Philadelphia-based choir The Crossing was recognized in the category of Best Choral Performance for their album “Born.” The ensemble’s conductor, Donald Nally, only recently returned to his alma mater, Westminster Choir College, for a six-week residency.
This year’s Princeton Festival will take place June 9-25, largely on the grounds of Morven Museum & Garden. Concerts of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra are held at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium. For more information about the festival and next season’s concerts, visit princetonsymphony.org.
Congratulations to all, with appreciation from Princeton!
