Music Review | The New York Philharmonic

New Sounds From a Smaller Stage

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

Published: December 18, 2009

New York Times

The New York Philharmonic must be gratified that a sizable and enthusiastic audience showed up at Symphony Space on Thursday night for the inaugural concert of Contact!, a contemporary-music series. This venture is the brainchild of Alan Gilbert, the orchestra’s new music director. Some risk was involved, and not just the obvious worry of whether people would come to a series of contemporary-music concerts.

WQXR's Arts File: CONTACT!

Friday, December 18, 2009

By Abbie Fentress Swanson

The New York Philharmonic is headed into new musical terrain this week with CONTACT!, a music series that features seven international contemporary composers who created works for the Philharmonic.

CONTACT!, which was created by music director Alan Gilbert, had its first performance last night, December 17, at Symphony Space.

Justin Davidson, who writes on classical music for New York Magazine, went to the performance. In this week's Arts File on WQXR, he talks to WNYC's Kerry Nolan about the works he heard by Marc-André Dalbavie, Arthur Kampela, Arlene Sierra and Lei Liang. The New York Philharmonic performed the pieces. Click here to listen.

The next performance of CONTACT! takes place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on December 19. In April, there will be another set of concerts featuring the works of conductors Nico Muhly, Matthias Pintscher and Sean Shepherd.

Learn more about the CONTACT! series from Q2 Music by clicking here. Or click below to listen to Janaya Williams of WNYC interview the series conductor, Alan Gilbert, about the series.

[click here]

If you still want to learn more, Arlene Sierra, one of the composers of the CONTACT! series discusses her composition below.

[click here]

From Playbill

CONTACT!- Present at the Creation

From New York Times

Philharmonic Offers Digital Pass on iTunes

Serious Music? He Loves It. No, Seriously

New York Philharmonic Announces Details of National Weekly Radio Broadcasts for January 2010

Friday, November 20, 2009 by BWW News Desk

From BroadwayWorld.com

Today 100 years ago:  New York Times Article from 1909

Gustaf Mahler Unveils a New Philharmonic

http://www.americanorchestras.org/symphony_magazine/symphony_online_vietnam.html

Exclusives: New York Philharmonic in Vietnam

SymphonyOnline: Symphony magazine’s exclusive coverage of the New York Philharmonic’s visit to Hanoi, Vietnam

Symphony Managing Editor Jennifer Melick, reporting from Vietnam, scouts out the scene in Hanoi in advance of the Philharmonic’s October 14 arrival as part of the orchestra’s Asian Horizons tour, led by Music Director Alan Gilbert. The October 14-18 residency will include two concerts at Hanoi Opera House—the first ever by the Philharmonic in Vietnam—with free outdoor simulcast on adjoining plaza open to the public, and master classes for local students at the Vietnam National Academy of Music. Asian Horizons is the orchestra’s first international tour under Gilbert.

Hanoi Opera House, Oct 13 2009

Tuesday, October 13
 
This morning, my first morning in Hanoi, I was awakened at about 7:30 a.m. by the sounds of Vietnamese songs, played over loudspeakers and aired directly to the street. If what I am told is true, this is how every day begins in Hanoi, with that music followed by the daily state broadcast, which today lasted about 30 minutes. I’ve arrived here a little in advance of the musicians of the New York Philharmonic, already embarked on their wide-ranging ..Asia.. tour with Music Director Alan Gilbert. They are set to arrive on Wednesday for their historic concerts at the Hanoi Opera House on Friday and Saturday.

Street scenes in Hanoi

Several things are immediately apparently upon landing in Hanoi. First is the thick and smoky atmosphere, which you can smell the instant you hit the tarmac. Second, if you arrive at night, you may be shocked at how little electricity is used; it can be a bit unnerving not to have any street lights whatsoever on certain blocks, and only minimal light on others. Because it’s so hot and muggy and there’s little evidence of air-conditioners in use, vast numbers of people sit on sidewalks, day and night, on tiny plastic stools (the type you might see in a preschool). Some are talking, some are eating, some are drinking, some are smoking tobacco from two-foot-long wooden bongs. On the taxi ride from the airport last night, a man sitting on the sidewalk was burning or cooking something right on the sidewalk, with flames about two feet high. Third—and I had been warned about this ahead of time but it is hard to convey it fully in words—the streets are indeed wild and chaotic, with motorbikes and cyclos (pedicabs) and pedestrians and buses and garbage trucks all fighting for the same street space, and sometimes sidewalks too. Horns honk constantly. All this happens for the most part with no traffic lights (and those few lights that exist are sometimes ignored anyway). When it’s time to cross the street, you slither/run across in between the various vehicles and hope for the best. 
 
The third immediately apparent quality of Hanoi life is the front-and-center role of the government, which can be seen in things like the daily street broadcasts and red national flags and signs everywhere commemorating various anniversaries of the country’s independence. Right now flags are flying over by Hoan Kiem Lake (one of several lakes in the city), celebrating 55 years since the Vietnamese independence from French colonial rule. There are also flags counting down the days (362 days, as of this afternoon) until Hanoi (also known as Thang Long) turns 1,000 years old, which is expected to be a big event on October 10, 2010 (10/10/10). In fact, the country plans not only to celebrate its 1000th on next October 10, but to make the celebrations last for ten years, beginning on October 10, which I guess would make it 10/10/10/10. Interestingly, red flags are also still flying in the street from last year’s celebration of the city’s 999th anniversary.
 
I decided first thing after breakfast to walk down from the my place in the old quarter to check out the Hanoi Opera House, in the so-called French Quarter, about a half-mile away. That is when I discovered how freewheeling the whole walking-in-the-city experience is here, which is heightened by the fact that so many people are unemployed or underemployed that you are constantly being accosted by someone trying to sell you a motorbike ride or cyclo ride or a package tour to someplace like Halong Bay. Meanwhile, the pale yellow Opera House sits majestically in the Parisian manner at the head of a circular plaza with a bunch of neighboring streets feeding into it. In general, the French Quarter is more broadly laid out and spacious than the old quarter, and it does evoke Paris (the Opera House is directly modeled on the Palais Garnier), but for an American used to more orderly street behavior it is not exactly an oasis of calm. Upon arriving at the box office I discover there is an extravaganza on offer this evening, called Peach Blossom Ballet (Chien Thang Mua Hoa Dao), with singers, dancers, musicians, and what look from the posters to be sword fighters or some kind of stage combat. On a whim, I decide to go; why not? Later in the week, I’ll try to get over to see the famous water puppet theater, on Hoan Kiem Lake. There are puppet shows every day of the week, and they are popular enough that you need to buy tickets ahead.    

Hoa Lo Prison, which American soldiers referred to as the Hanoi Hilton

So, with tickets in hand for the evening, and an afternoon to explore the city, I take my cue from the independence banners flying in the street, and stroll over to the Hoa Lo Prison—the one where the French incarcerated Vietnamese political prisoners during their long colonial rule, and, later, where the Vietnamese imprisoned Americans during the Vietnam War. (John McCain was detained there.) It’s the one American soldiers sardonically referred to as the Hanoi Hilton (not to be confused with the Hanoi Opera Hilton). The prison, now a museum, is housed in yet another of the yellow buildings you’ll find throughout Hanoi, and inside its exhibits include everything from a guillotine to men’s and women’s cells, including a dungeon area, plus a list of diseases listed as cause of death: everything from cholera and fever to typhoid.
 
Surprisingly, I did in fact have an appetite after visiting Hoa Lo, so I sampled some local pho (soup with noodles), a dish said to have been invented in Hanoi. No, I did not eat my beef pho (Pho Bo) on the street on a little stool, but in a pho restaurant overlooking Hoan Kiem Lake, followed by a local version of “ice cream” which turned out to be sort of a milk shake with yogurt, good for cooling down after the pho.
 
Most retail establishments of the non-fancy sort do not take credit cards, so upon arriving here you have to learn the currency conversion pretty quickly: 15,000 or 16,000 Vietnamese dong to the dollar. So, 22,000VD for a bag of citrus fruit, another 5,000 or 10,000VD for some bottled water, and 220,000VD for lunch. To ride on a motorbike, I paid what is considered here to be the exorbitant rate of 150,000, but it was so much fun—hair flying, the wind cooling off the sweat, and a cacophony of car horns blaring everywhere—that I decided to hire another motorbike to take me down to the Opera House for the Peach Blossom ballet later. After an exhausting day of crossing the street, I’m beginning to learn that this is the right way to get around here. 

Posters outside the Hanoi Opera House promote the New York Philharmonic’s concerts there

Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be heading over to the New York Philharmonic’s press conference at the Opera House, with Music Director Alan Gilbert; Philharmonic President and Executive Director Zarin Mehta; Michael W. Michalak, the U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam; officials from Credit Suisse, the orchestra’s global tour sponsor; Vietnam’s Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism; and the Vietnam Contemporary Music, Dance, and Theater. Then, on Thursday and Friday, the Philharmonic will participate in master classes at the Vietnam National Conservatory of Music and rehearse at the Opera House for their two concerts here. By the way, the latest report from the New York Philharmonic is that the concerts are sold out.
 
Next up: The New York Philharmonic in the Opera House, and the new-music scene in Hanoi, which this week is hosting (with Ho Chi Minh City) a festival called New Music Meeting 2009, said to be the first event of its type for either Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi.

A Velvet Revolution

Alan Gilbert starts reforming the New York Philharmonic. Quietly.

....

.. ..

After a few weeks as music director of the New York Philharmonic, Alan Gilbert answered the question of what his tenure would bring—with Charles Ives’s The Unanswered Question. It was a sly and lovely way of hinting that the relationship between an orchestra and its resident maestro coalesces over years, but that in the meantime, uncertainty has a beauty of its own. In Ives’s seven-minute piece, a distant trumpet gropes for a tune as a klatch of wind instruments chatters in confusion. Gelid, impassive strings fan out across a vast G-major chord that extends from a double-bass rumble to a soft whistle in the violins. At the end, Gilbert snuffed out that quiet tundralike expanse of sound. Immediately, without giving the audience a chance to breathe, much less applaud, the pianist Emanuel Ax struck G major again, only now it was the opening flourish of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. After the cosmic conundrum of the Ives, the chord sounded shockingly warm and dense and intimate. 

The Philharmonic itself is experiencing a moment of metamorphosis and continuity. It retains its vaunted flexibility and its polished-copper tone. The horns can still produce a sonic halo. When the score demands rawness and rage, the musicians all seem able to draw on deep reservoirs of both. And yet in the first month of the Gilbert era, the orchestra has shyly, tentatively, begun to try on a new identity. Already, it has become a little less of a drafty temple and more of a campus coffee house, inviting its audiences to hear and think about music in an atmosphere of animated informality.

When the potentially frightening name of Arnold Schoenberg appeared on a program, Gilbert grabbed a microphone and spoke for about ten minutes, using the orchestra as a deluxe audio-visual aid. Talking conductors often wind up delivering shticks or sermons; he led a light, quick tour through the dense melodic foliage and nitrogen-rich harmonies in Schoenberg’s early tone poem Pelleas und Melisande. I have no idea whether it helped listeners grasp the score, but I suspect it won many over to Gilbert. It helped that he programmed the piece for the best of reasons—because he loves it, and it is rarely performed—and conducted it with panoramic ardor.

Rewind to opening night, when the new era began with a shot: the crack of a woodblock, courtesy of the orchestra’s new composer-in-residence, Magnus Lindberg. Eager to signal that the music of today will have a haven in his Philharmonic, Gilbert introduced himself with the world premiere of a work he had commissioned, Lindberg’s ten-minute EXPO. This mechanical frenzy of beating pistons and whirling gears seems to have four settings: loud, soft, very fast, and superslow. High-speed string sections go slamming into thick wind adagios, as if to highlight the contrast between the Philharmonic then and the Philharmonic now. But too much contrast has a way of undermining its own drama, and EXPO hurtled towards tiresomeness.

The rest of the televised concert was a success, if a muted one. The dependable gala headliner Renée Fleming sang Olivier Messiaen’s Poèmes pour Mi, a set of love songs garlanded with orchestral filigree. Fleming’s voice had just the right pearlescent luster for the piece’s conversational recitatives and sinuous loop-de-loops. But this is ecstatic music, full of saturated hues and great gonging chords, and it suffered from a politely restrained performance and Avery Fisher Hall’s unmerciful acoustics.

If the first half established Gilbert’s modernist inclinations, the second was meant to reassure skittish subscribers. It’s ironic that Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, a work of hallucinatory Dionysian genius, should have become such a reliable tonic. Cacophonous fanfares accompany the hero to the scaffold in a narcotic dream. Magical forest creatures slink and scuttle out of their lairs at night. Gilbert traversed this psycho-landscape as if it were the product of a rational mind, which of course it is. He let the weirdness speak for itself, without cranking it up into horror-movie territory. The result was 45 minutes of startlingly lucid drama.

It’s said, usually in scorn, that orchestras are like museums. Indeed they are, and the Philharmonic should aspire to be like the Met: exhaustive, dynamic, and scholarly, but not above a little judicious populism. In his opening weeks, Gilbert has amply demonstrated his curatorial skills. In his first subscription concerts, he conducted Mahler’s Third Symphony and Ives’s Second, each of which could be the blowout event of a less ambitious season. There was something slightly defensive about opening with such an Alpine lineup. Gilbert seemed to be challenging anyone who’d call him a lightweight. But lack of seriousness is hardly his problem; in his eagerness to thrust the Philharmonic back into the middle of .New York’s cultural life, he may forget that people also go to concerts to have fun.

Many good conductors let the self-regard that fuels their profession get in the way, turning every conversation into a soliloquy. I don’t doubt that Gilbert has a well-furnished ego, but he has mastered it, rather than the other way around. He listens, considers, and collaborates. When, in the second movement of Brahms’s Violin Concerto, the oboe emerged out of a ravishing haze of winds, the moment felt like an offering to the friend by his side, the violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann.

For now, Gilbert is being defined by what he is not: elderly, European, white, old-fashioned, radical, boring, or bizarrely young. He isn’t a rock star, a high priest, or a specialist. Adrenaline is not the principal ingredient in his interpretations. But as he, the orchestra, and the audience get to know one another, I think he’ll emerge as a genuine intellectual, a musician of impeccable technique, profound intuitions, and a fortifying mix of curiosity and conviction. Now, if he can just balance those qualities with the demands of institutional politics and highbrow showbiz, then all he has left to do is gather the 100 personalities onstage into a supple, polymorphous whole.