When I arrived at David Geffen Hall for the New York Philharmonic’s concert on Friday evening, a friend who had heard this same program the night before said, “This is a wild one. And a good one.”
Yes.
The Philharmonic began its program with Charles Ives: his Orchestral Set No. 2. I was surprised to learn that the Philharmonic had never performed this work—for I think of the orchestra as an Ives orchestra. (Certainly Leonard Bernstein championed him in his years with the Philharmonic.)
Ives’s “set” comprises three movements, all very American, as you expect from this composer. You hear folk songs, ragtime, hymns. The music is all jumbled up in the composer’s head—and he doesn’t un-jumble it for public consumption. Listening to his music is like hearing him think.
The evening’s conductor showed a clear affinity for the composer. He himself is a composer, Thomas Adès, the Englishman. He is also a pianist. Thus, a triple threat.
At the end of the Ives, Adès held his baton in the air for a long time, to ward off applause. I believe this was unnecessary. He, and Ives, had the auditorium rapt and quiet anyway.
Next on the program was a work by Rautavaara—Einojuhani Rautavaara, the Finn (1928–2016). This has been a good season at the Philharmonic for Rautavaara. At the end of November, the orchestra performed his Cantus Arcticus.
Let me paste a couple of sentences from my review:
I thought of my friend Fred Kirshnit, the late music critic, who had a friend who pleaded ignorance when it came to modern music. Said this friend, “I don’t know a Rautavaara from a rutabaga.”
Rautavaara is certainly worth knowing. And the Philharmonic presented his Piano Concerto No. 1—a work the orchestra had never programmed before. Composed in 1969, it’s like a declaration of independence. Independence from what? From the strictures of mid-twentieth-century music, or, if you like, the strictures of modernism.
This is an old-fashioned, almost Lisztian, concerto, bursting with emotion and madly virtuosic.
On hand to play it was Yuja Wang, who came out almost nekkid, as usual. And it was well below freezing outside. Her opening passages in the concerto were as arresting—as attention-getting—as her outfit (or non-outfit).
Throughout the concerto, she was dazzling—but at the same time unshowy, if you will allow that. She served the music at every step. I could provide any number of details, but suffice it to say: this was a stupendous feat of pianism, coupled with musicianship.
She played an encore, and a well-chosen one—one that complemented the concerto: Philip Glass’s Étude No. 6. Pianists have been using this piece as an encore. Ms. Wang has, and so has her Icelandic colleague, Víkingur Ólafsson.
One quality required in this piece is evenness. Glass’s minimalism must be even. From these fingers, it was.
Before you knew it, she was sitting down for a second encore. I thought of a famous headline, from The New York Times. Appearing on December 14, 1957, it read, “Menuhin Fiddles, Orchestra Burns.”
As the article explained, Yehudi Menuhin was playing the Bloch Violin Concerto with the Phil. On a Thursday night, he played an encore—a movement from a Bach partita. Philharmonic management said, “Better not do that again.” He did—on Friday afternoon.
Surely, no one in or out of the orchestra objected to Yuja last Friday night. Her second encore was a transcription of Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8 by Boris Giltburg. She did not play the whole quartet, of course—she played the brief, charged, spiky second movement.
Like every other critic, I have been listening to and writing about Yuja Wang for twenty years. You know, I think she’s getting better? Growing as a pianist and musician? And she started out gangbusters . . .
As 1999 was turning into 2000, the Philharmonic commissioned pieces from five composers and grouped them under the heading “Messages from the Millennium.” After intermission on Friday night, we heard two of them: by Kaija Saariaho and our conductor, Thomas Adès.
At the beginning of my article today, I quoted a friend: this would be a “wild” concert and “a good one.” It was very good indeed. I’ll end by quoting, or citing, another friend: who, after hearing the program on Friday, said he would go back to hear it on Saturday night.
That’s success.
