Panic and solace at the New York Philharmonic’s return
mainFrom Justin Davidson’s review:
Before the conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen gave the signal for the New York Philharmonic’s first live public sounds in over a year, he told the audience what he had come to understand: that music fully exists only in the comity and rituals of live performance. I agree. During all these silent months, faced with a cornucopia of livestreams and the constant availability of nearly all recordings ever made, I let my musical diet wither to almost nothing. I don’t know why I rejected what was available and pined for what was not, but I did. So when it finally came time to file into a concert hall and sit down before a few dozen tuning musicians, it was like rediscovering a strange, forgotten rite. Then the orchestra plunged into the first tremulous chords of Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte, and I felt an unfamiliar mixture of panic and solace….
Read on here.
And this is New York Classical Review.
A very well-written review. Justin Davidson is somebody to watch out for.
He’s been writing for at least a decade hasn’t he? Not a bad review but I’d say the NYCR one was a bit more informative.
Shaw’s piece, which was played on that programme, is a strong one, although there is not much continuity – I bet that is on purpose to avoid ‘tradition’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9LWmwx7JAU
The Strauss Metamorphosen inspired some striking florishes from the critic:
“This time, though, I heard glimmers of restless energy, perhaps because I sensed the orchestra’s joy at finally doing what it exists to do: play! It now seemed to me that Strauss had surveyed the rubble and gotten to work, fashioning a single, perfect brick for all who might one day need to rebuild. Here, the slow strings murmur: This is how you begin.”
The last line could also refer to new music as such.
The very first piece after returning to public performances was Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte?? No wonder this concert sounds so depressing and lame. That’s an awfully empty piece.
The piece appears to be about emptiness.
Not a single Black composer on the program, not a single Black player on stage, not a single Black person in the audience.
Bravo.
What a difference a year of Covid, BLM did not make.
Philip Ewell, is that you?
There is a story that 5 members of the audience had been asked to apply blackface and wear dresses to make the occasion more up-to-date but they refused. Which shows how conservative classical music audiences still are.
How do you know that no-one there self-identified as black?