Alan Gilbert may not be the most charismatic conductor we have in this country, but he might be our most unusual programmer – at least among big-time orchestra directors. Case in point: the New York Phil's concert Thursday night, which featured a Beethoven Romance, a world premiere violin concerto; and a Bruckner symphony that hadn't been played by the Phil in nearly forty years.
The first half of the program featured the ageless wonder Anne-Sophie Mutter, a familiar presence in concert halls around the world for the past 35 years. She opened with Beethoven's Romance No. 1: a 6 minute amuse penned by Beethoven wen he was 28. A tender Adagio, Mutter filled the hall with a beautiful, piercing tone.
I'm not familiar with the music of NYC-based composer Sebastian Currier, who's spent most of the past 20 years teaching at Juilliard and Columbia. But Mutter – who's serving as the Phil's Artist-In-Residence this season – has known Currier's music since she premiered his Aftersong for violin and piano in 1994, and so decided to commission a new concerto from him. The work Currier produced – Time Machines - was completed in 2007; it wasn't immediately clear as to why it took so long to finally be performed.
Time Machines unfolds over seven movements, each of which explores a different ramification of time: "fragmented time," "delay time," "compressed time," etc. The music is largely affects-driven, with Varese-like carnival sounds, Ligeti-like microtonal clusters, Berg-like lyricism, even some Adamseque entropy. In the final section, "harmonic time," the music slowly died away as Mutter a long, song-like cantabile. A very strong effort, if not entirely emotionally satisfying.
Gilbert doesn't strike me as the most obvious candidate for a Bruckner conductor – I usually think of older, more Germanic types for the role – but in the program notes, he reveals himself to be something of a devotee:
"There are few composers whose music I could conduct every day for the rest of my life and be satisfied as a musician, and Bruckner is one of them…There is a kind of suspension of time in which all the elements you expect from a symphony are there, but they unfold at a pace that he controls very exquisitely, and very deliberately. Bruckner's music has no program: there is something utterly pure about it. It's just music, but still it somehow goes straight to the heart."
I've heard the Phil play most of Bruckner's major symphonies over the past decade, including a mind-blowing performance of the 4th at St John the Divine a decade ago. But, the last time they played the 2nd was in 1971, and I can't say it's been heard anywhere in NYC since then.
Bruckner's Second exhibits many of the same traits as his more familiar later symphonies: expansive sound, unusual length (it clocks in at a full hour), repetitive motifs – and endless revisions at the hands of meddling others. But, it's also clear that Bruckner was still struggling to find his voice in this symphony: there are awkward modulations, weird transitions, and too much stridency throughout. It's also somewhat derivative: besides the obvious debt to Wagner, elements of the Finale bear a striking resemblance to the final movement of Beethoven's 5th. As if to drive the point home, Bruckner tried to dedicate the symphony to Franz Liszt, and Liszt turned him down flat.
Gilbert seemed ill-at-ease during the opening Moderato, awkwardly moving his large frame about the podium. But, he made the Andante feel unusually lush and tender. He finally seemed to catch his stride through the dancey Scherzo, flowing immediately into the energetic – if too-strident – finale. The Philharmonic brass kept up their end of the bargain, and the strings seemed more-or-less together.
In the end, I won't say Gilbert made a compelling case for the 2nd to take its place alongside the immortal late Bruckner symphonies in the repertoire, but I'm certainly glad I got the chance to hear it. If you want to hear it, the program repeats tonight at Avery Fisher at 8pm; tickets available at the box office or online.
BTW, if you want to hear some of those late Bruckner symphonies, you won't want to miss the Cleveland Orchestra's visit to NYC next month as part of the Lincoln Center Festival, during which they'll be performing the 5th, 7th, 8th and 9th symphonies paired with John Adams' Guide to Strange Places, Violin Concerto, and Doctor Atomic Symphony. If you need an explanation as to why these two composers belong on the same program, you haven't been listening very well to either.
More pics on Flickr.