Domingo Hindoyan Makes Debut Performance With New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center

• 

Details

Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 24 April 2026 14:10

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

At Lincoln Center’s excellent David Geffen Hall, on the night of Saturday, April 18th, I had the privilege to attend a wonderful concert presented by the New York Philharmonic, under the admirable direction of Domingo Hindoyan, in his debut performances with this ensemble.

The event started splendidly with a sterling realization of the New York premiere of Allison Loggins-Hull’s compelling Can You See? from 2023. The composer has provided this comment on the work:

Can You See? was originally a small chamber ensemble piece commissioned by the New Jersey Symphony. For that commission, the ask was to create an arrangement of The Star-Spangled Banner with a mournful or somber approach that honors lives lost, while also pointing to what the role and responsibility of the living is. 

For this larger iteration, arranged for full symphony orchestra, the material is given a curious, yet hopeful treatment. Voices from the original version are orchestrated to achieve a designed delay effect, creating a dreamy soundscape while posing questions relating to the meaning of The Star-Spangled Banner and the complicated history of the United States. 

Melodic material from The Star-Spangled Banner is used throughout the work, often stretched out and surrounded by tension and revolving colors. The strings create a soundworld that is cloudy, uncertain, and bleary, questioning if the core meaning of the anthem is in focus. Rhythmic elements evoke a forward-moving motion, while textures and harmonic language nod to the scope and diversity of American music and people.

The glamorous Loggins-Hull was present to receive the audience’s acclaim.

A skilled soloist, Karen Gomyo, then enter the stage to laudably play Jean Sibelius’s extraordinary Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor, Op. 47, which underwent a final revision in 1905. The eminent critic, Donald Francis Tovey, in an interesting program note on the piece, said this:

In the easier and looser concerto forms invented by Mendelssohn and Schumann I have not met with a more original, a more masterly, and a more exhilarating work than the Sibelius Violin Concerto. As with all Sibelius's more important works, its outlines are huge and simple; and if a timely glance at an atlas had not reminded me that Finland is mostly flat and water-logged with lakes, I should doubtless have said that “his forms are hewn out of the rocks of his native and Nordic mountains.” The composer to whose style the word “lapidary” (lapidarisch) was first applied by the orthodoxy of the 'nineties is Bruckner; and if the best work of Sibelius suggests anything else in music, it suggests a Bruckner gifted with an easy mastery and the spirit of a Polar explorer. 

The complex, initial Allegro moderato begins rather lugubriously but builds to a more passionate, Romantic statement but then becomes more turbulent and dramatic, especially in its imposing, central cadenza; as the movement develops, the symphonic scoring familiar from many of the composer’s other orchestral works becomes dominant—after an energetic episode, it ends forcefully. The ensuing Adagio di molto is more lyrical in inspiration and this movement too acquires an increasing emotional intensity, attaining a powerful climax before concluding quietly. The finale, marked Allegro, ma non tanto, is livelier and more dance-like—this movement is the most ebullient of the three and it closes affirmatively. Enthusiastic applause elicited a welcome encore from the violinist: Astor Piazzolla's Tango Etude No. 3. 

The second half of the evening proved even stronger with a superb account of Antonín Dvořák’s magnificent Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70, which was completed in 1885. Tovey intriguingly wrote this about the composition:

I have no hesitation in setting Dvořák's Symphony, along with the C-major Symphony of Schubert and the four symphonies of Brahms, as among the greatest and purest examples in this art-form since Beethoven. There should be no difficulty at this time of day in recognizing its greatness. It has none of the weaknesses of form which so often spoil Dvořák's best work, except for a certain stiffness of movement in the finale, a stiffness which is not beyond concealing by means of such freedom of tempo as the composer would certainly approve. There were three obstacles to the appreciation of this symphony when it was published in 1885. First, it is powerfully tragic. Secondly, the orthodox critics and the average musician were, as always with new works, very anxious to prove that they were right and the composer was wrong, whenever the composer produced a long sentence which could not be easily phrased at sight. … The third obstacle to the understanding of this symphony is intellectually trivial, but practically the most serious of all. The general effect of its climaxes is somewhat shrill. … His scores are almost as full of difficult problems of balance as Beethoven's. … These great works of the middle of Dvořák's career demand and repay the study one expects to give to the most difficult classical masterpieces; but the composer has acquired the reputation of being masterly only in a few popular works of a somewhat lower order. It is time that this injustice should be rectified. 

The Allegro maestoso, first movement opens suspensefully and solemnly but a sunnier strain emerges and the music subsequently projects a more confident posture although it ultimately finishes seriously, if softly. The Poco adagio that follows is more song-like and purely melodious but with moments of contrast and it eventually achieves a more noble and patently optimistic expression; the movement ends gently and serenely. The next, Vivace movement—it functions as a scherzo—is joyful and enchanting, even exuberant and it concludes rapidly and dynamically, but the middle, Trio section—marked Poco meno mosso—has an almost pastoral quality. The Allegro finale has a more tempestuous character—although there are more subdued, even tentative, passages—and it has a stunning close.

The artists were justly rewarded with a standing ovation.