It’s not every day that a conductor steps on to the podium and is told to wait by a musician calling out from the back of the orchestra. But that’s what happened on Friday night at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium, when music director Xian Zhang was just about to raise her baton to prompt the New Jersey Symphony to weave its narrative spell in Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade.”
In the moment’s silence between applause and music, one of the trombonists cried out and, with all eyes turned upon him, held up a clearly-snapped pair of glasses. So musicians and audience had no alternative but to sit patiently, as he made his way off stage, with murmuring and chuckling, as the delay stretched awkwardly and Zhang turned to exchange banter with the attendees. At a point, she remarked, “I hope he brought a spare.”
Bring a spare he did, and when he returned to take his chair with the new specs, he was greeted with disproportionate applause. At last concertmaster Eric Wyrick was cued to commence his musical once-upon-a-time. His violin solos channel the famed storyteller of “One Thousand and One Nights,” an enchanting and alluring “open sesame” that serves as both prologue and narrator to one of the most brilliantly orchestrated showpieces of the Romantic repertoire.
I know I’ve been a little hard on the New Jersey Symphony recently, last season as a frustrated subscriber who had half my concerts dropped, necessitating a lot of time-consuming online and telephone exchanges. But I wouldn’t fault Sinbad for doing anything he could to keep his ship from foundering, so why should I be angry with the NJS?
The organization has had to swallow more than its share of bitter pills, which marketing has done its best to sugarcoat. Xian Zhang recently accepted the directorship of the Seattle Symphony, which I expect means she will be out the door in 2028. Then Joshua Bell was named the orchestra’s principal guest conductor, beginning as soon as next season, a move that seems to have received a positive reception from local music lovers, though I confess it doesn’t get me too excited. I admit, there is something to be said for name recognition. But is he being groomed to become the next music director? We’ll see.
The previous season, the NJS slashed its administrative staff by about 15 percent and siphoned off two thirds of a $9 million endowment. The orchestra’s then-president and CEO, Gabriel van Aalst, also tendered his resignation.
More recently, it was announced that the NJS will move from its current home in Newark to a newly-constructed, $40 million performing arts facility, Symphony Center, which, through an arrangement with Jersey City, it will occupy for 30 years. Sounds great, but the details set off a few alarms. The hall is projected to seat only 550, for one. (Princeton’s Richardson Auditorium seats 900.) I hope this isn’t a harbinger of the group eventually being reduced to a chamber orchestra. For now, there has been no public announcement that that is in the cards, and the plan is to continue to tour the state with the larger works.
Also, the orchestra says it will need to raise an additional $12 million in order to furnish the new space and tweak the acoustics. Raising $12 million seems a little steep for an organization that, if I understand correctly, is now operating with a $3 million endowment.
I hasten to add, this is a Facebook post, NOT a carefully-researched news article. I am simply voicing my concerns, and it is quite possible that the New Jersey Symphony has a sound plan in place.
All that aside, in common with just about any orchestra these days, the NJS has to call in its share of “substitutes” to play something like “Scheherazade.” It’s simply not feasible anymore for most orchestras to maintain a staff of 100 musicians.
Despite any of my personal misgivings and all the behind-the-scenes drama, the orchestra played very well on Friday, and I sincerely doubt anyone who attended left the venue disappointed.
The first half of the program included Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17, for which the orchestra was scaled back to about half its size – perhaps 40 players – as a nod to authenticity. The soloist was Inon Barnatan, a familiar face in Princeton, as a fairly frequent guest of both the NJS and the Princeton Symphony Orchestra.
This is the concerto whose last movement is based on a melody sung by Mozart’s starling. I’m not sure the bird itself possessed the melodic invention to make it as a world-class composer – but the tune is insistently memorably, maddening even – and Mozart works his usual wonders through a series of transformative variations. The NJS winds were standouts in this and also on the second half, in “Scheherazade.” The musicians blended well, playing their parts with refinement and a chamber-like sensitivity.
Barnatan served up his solos with impeccable taste and technique; but for me where he really shone was when he was called back for an encore and he launched into what I believe was a Scarlatti sonata in G major that held audience and orchestra in his thrall for several magical minutes. More of this, please!
The program opened with a recent work by Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz, born in 1964. “Kauyumari” (“Blue Deer,” in the language of Mexico’s Huichol people) was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2021. Conceived as the world was just beginning to emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, the work aims for a kind of parallel in being ushered into a new consciousness, in an altered state, under the protection of a spiritual guide.
Musically, the piece seems like a descendant of Carlos Chávez’s “Sinfonia India,” not only because of its battery of exotic percussion instruments, but also its inspiration in indigenous sources. Copland’s “El Salón México” is perhaps a distant cousin. (By coincidence, the orchestra will perform both the Chávez and Copland works on this weekend’s NJS concerts, this afternoon through Sunday.)
At seven minutes never wearing out its welcome, with a trance-like repetition of its principal theme (apt, given the nature of the peyote-fueled ritual from which it takes its inspiration), “Kauyumari” certainly makes an effective curtain-raiser. It may have served as something of an appetizer on Friday, in its position at the start of the concert, but its ambitious orchestration also made it an effective bookend to balance “Scheherazade.”
As for Rimsky-Korsakov’s masterwork, although there wasn’t much feminine allure in Eric Wyrick’s characterization of the title character, undeniably he played his violin solos very well. Again, it was the winds that most consistently embodied the work’s sense of fantasy and even delicacy. That’s not to say the strings were not transporting in romantic passages like those in “The Young Prince and the Young Princess.”
Zhang’s conducting is always amusing to watch. Her podium presence makes Leonard Bernstein look positively Puritanical by comparison. In fact, one has to think back to Walt Disney’s old “Silly Symphony” shorts from the 1930s to find a conductor of comparable animation. Clearly, Zhang is always living the moment and loving what she’s doing. More power to her.
For me, the best concerts are those that generate a genuine tingle, and this one did just that, in the orchestra’s expansive statement of the big tune as Sinbad’s ship is dashed to pieces. Such grandeur! There really is nothing like a symphony orchestra giving its all. Bravo, New Jersey Symphony!
For more information about this weekend’s concerts and what’s in store for the rest of the season, look here:
https://www.njsymphony.org/concerts-and-events/concert-listing
