It wasn’t until 6 p.m. Saturday that it occurred to me I might have a concert in New York City on Sunday. The thought popped into my head as I was adjusting some magnets on the refrigerator in order to lift the page on the calendar and have a glimpse at March.
Huh. No musical events listed until the weekend.
But I knew I had committed to see Emanuel Ax perform John Williams’ new piano concerto at the New York Philharmonic, and I thought it was sometime around the beginning of the month. So I went to the calendar I carry with me in my computer bag, and lo and behold, there it was, scrawled on March 1, at 2 p.m. Somehow I had missed it when copying over my appointments to the other calendar!
How could that possibly happen? If you’re wondering why it didn’t pop up on my Google calendar, then you really don’t know Classic Ross Amico. I still chisel all my commitments onto stone tablets.
Be that as it may, my mind immediately shifted into business mode. Should I drive or take the train? What time should I leave? What do I need to do in the morning? If I drive, where do I park? Where should I grab lunch? What should I eat, and when, in order to satisfy hunger without inducing drowsiness during the performance? How should I time my afternoon coffee? Shouldn’t I be thinking about getting to bed?
In the end, I decided to drive. Meters are free in New York on Sunday, and it turned out to be a lovely day, weather-wise, despite a chance of rain and snow in the morning forecast. So I zipped in, in about 70-75 minutes, Giuseppe Sinopoli conducting the “Enigma Variations” on my CD player, and parked on the street, a stone’s throw from Lincoln Center, at around 12:30. A grab-and-go lunch later, I had strolled as far north as Verdi Square, to have a glimpse at the monument in the March Sunday sunshine, despite a chill in the air, its warm glow promising the imminent arrival of spring. I visited the Strand Bookstore at its satellite at 2020 Broadway to grab a cup of coffee and run my eye over the sidewalk stalls, and then headed back down to Geffen Hall by 1:30.
There, I met my concert companion, H. Paul Moon, who was very kind to make all the ticket arrangements, and we made our way to our seats on the second tier, stage right (the left side of the auditorium). How narrow and perilous the path was, with a single row of seats angled for an easier view of the stage and a low rail beckoning me to just end it all already.
But I resisted.
The conductor of the program was the somewhat elfin Lithuanian Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, a Dudamel protégée in Los Angeles, who spread her wings as music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Youthful and expressive, at times capricious even, she manages to stay tethered to reality, with interpretive decisions that seem grounded in practicality. It’s afterward, as she acknowledges the musicians, that she extends an open palm to the various sections and players, as if to offer them fey honey cakes.
The concert opened with Ralph Vaughan Williams (yay!): his “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis,” with nine string players sequestered upstage, behind the larger body of musicians, the better to achieve the work’s antiphonal effects.
The work suggests the interplay of sacred voices in a cathedral, evocative of Renaissance church music, yet at the same time manages to convey kind of a transcendent radiance that lends it a certain timelessness. The music sways and swells in its Phrygian modality, alternating between austerity and a certain lushness that parallels the bygone English countryside so often celebrated and idealized by the pastoral school. Hearing it again only confirms its greatness. There’s a reason it’s Vaughan Williams’ most famous piece (alongside “The Lark Ascending”).
Gražinytė-Tyla’s interpretation was gorgeous without teetering into sentiment. Hers was a holistic approach. Unlike some, she didn’t attempt to whip the music into ecstasies. But as with all the great works, the piece stands up to different interpretive philosophies.
Stepping off the podium to acknowledge the musicians, the conductor was again full of smiles and asides to the first chair players. She seems to be a positive force, and though the Philharmonic has been known to be notoriously jaded, they responded well to her.
Here’s an excerpt of Gražinytė-Tyla conducting Vaughan Williams in Birmingham.
Next came John Williams – no relation to Vaughan Williams, though based on some of his film scores, the composer clearly admires English music.
It’s probably safe to say that few from the “Star Wars”/”Harry Potter” crowd that attend performances of Williams’ concert works are going to come out of them feeling wholly satisfied. Not that there aren’t touches in his concert music that could betray the voice of the composer to those exceptionally well-versed in his film scores. But there are no heroic marches or sweeping love themes. More often, the music is impressionistic, rather than cinematic.
In this new work, Williams also risks disappointing the jazz crowd, as each of the three movements is tied to an admired jazz pianist – Art Tatum, Bill Evans, and Oscar Peterson – all of whom Williams heard live. It might be perceived as another bait-and-switch, as there is very little “jazz” in it. Or when there is, it’s been internalized, processed, and given back as something else. Williams takes as his starting point his memories of the essence of each of these keyboard titans.
He certainly gives the soloist plenty to do, in a cadenza-heavy first movement and another virtuosic cadenza at the end. Of course, there’s more to classical piano than leaping technical hurdles and playing fast and loud, so there are also introspective passages and reflective interludes throughout. Emanuel Ax played the piece with the safety net of sheet music, but he did so with such confidence that it made you wonder why he thought it necessary.
When it comes to Williams’ concert music, which he has been writing since the 1960s, prior to his blockbuster successes as a film composer, one almost feels as if he protests too much, and for as much as I love just about every note this guy ever wrote (with a few exceptions), I sometimes wish he would indulge his natural melodic gift more in his concertos. I would recommend the Tuba Concerto as a good starting point for the uninitiated. His other works have lyrical passages – some more than others – but few will leave you humming.
For me, the work under consideration becomes more appealing as it progresses. In the second movement, the piano supports the principal viola (here Cynthia Phelps), who is given a substantial lyrical passage, before the movement gradually expands into the woodwinds and then the lower strings. Ax ruminates, until eventually the strings begin to swell. The woodwinds return, somewhat ethereally, and then the viola reappears to round off the movement.
I also like how Williams builds up to the end of the piece. For as large as the orchestra is – with no less than six percussionists, another piano within the orchestra, and a celesta – it’s remarkable just how restrained and precise the composer is in conjuring the different timbres. Say what you want about John Williams, he’s a master colorist and the guy really knows his way around the orchestra. More viscerally, he does give us a race to the finish and a satisfying “bang” to let us know when to applaud.
That Williams, who turned 94 on February 8, still has the intellectual rigor to pull off a work on this scale is astonishing. The concerto was introduced by Ax at Tanglewood last summer. Word is that a recording was made for commercial release. If you’re interested in checking it out, the premiere performance is posted on YouTube.
If you want to hear it live, Ax will be bringing it to the Philadelphia Orchestra next season.
The piano has always been Williams’ own instrument. He studied seriously with Juilliard’s Rosina Lhévinne, while also playing jazz piano and serving as a session pianist for innumerable singers. From well before he was a household name, you can hear him playing on the soundtracks to “Peter Gunn,” “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” “West Side Story” (the film), “The Big Country,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and so many others. This is a man who’s had nine creative lives.
One wonders what kind of concerto he would have written for the keyboard had he tackled it 40 years earlier. But what we’ve got is a good one, even if it will never enter the public consciousness the way his film scores have. At least it was written with dignity and craftsmanship, and it never teeters into kitsch.
Even so, I can’t help but wonder what one of his concertos would sound like if he had he been writing a hundred years ago, when a significant number of major composers were still creating vital music in a tonal idiom. I’m all for composing a work that reveals more and more on repeated listening, but the surest way to get repeat performances is to be sure to give listeners something the first go-round that they’ll want to hear again.
For an encore, Ax offered Schubert’s “Ständchen” (“Serenade”), which was beautifully played, an ideal palate-cleanser, even if some nearby idiot thought it necessary to hum along off-key.
The second half of the program was devoted to the Symphony No. 5 by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, yet another composer who walked a perilous line in Soviet Russia. Weinberg fled the Nazi invasion of Poland – his parents and sister were killed – and throughout his life, even in “safety,” there were periods during which he weathered harrowing encounters with anti-Semitism and Stalin’s dangerous whims. Weinberg’s father-in-law was murdered by the secret police and he himself was arrested. His friend and colleague, Dmitri Shostakovich, went above and beyond, putting himself at risk to defend Weinberg to Stalin himself. Who knows what would have happened to Weinberg had Stalin not died unexpectedly.
While clearly laboring under the same tense reality as Shostakovich and many of his peers, Weinberg’s creative voice is very much his own. It is notable in his symphony that he actually supplies some melodic material to the piccolo, as opposed to merely using the instrument expressively, to pierce the listener’s eardrums, as Shostakovich is prone to do. Furthermore, Weinberg doesn’t descend into grotesquerie. Even so, despite having been composed under Krushchev’s “thaw,” it is a gloomy work. Following the somber, unsettled adagio that forms the symphony’s second movement, I noted at least six people heading for the exits on the ground floor. It is certainly worthwhile music, however, and in its way, often quite beautiful.
I probably have more Weinberg recordings in my library than most, but before yesterday I confess I had not heard the Symphony No. 5. There are a number of recordings of it on YouTube.
Gražinytė-Tyla has been a steadfast Weinberg champion. Her first recording for Deutsche Grammophon was of Weinberg’s Symphonies Nos. 2 & 21. A subsequent release documents her performances of his Symphonies Nos. 3 & 7 and his Flute Concerto.
Yesterday’s was quite a significant program – the last of a four-concert series, at that. Hats off to the New York Philharmonic for investing in such serious fare. Gražinytė-Tyla will continue with the orchestra, conducting music by György Kurtág (who just turned 100 last week), his “Brefs messages,” Elgar’s Cello Concerto (with soloist Vilde Frang), and Schumann’s Symphony No. 1 (the “Spring” Symphony), March 5-7.
For those in search of unusual and neglected repertoire, with a welcome appetizer in the form of a delectable modern classic, this was one Sunday matinee that very much satisfied.
Bravi, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and Emanuel Ax, and thank you, New York Philharmonic!
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Photo of Emanuel Ax and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, courtesy of Paul Moon
