New York Philharmonic Performs "Swaddling Silk and Gossamer Rain" and "Cinderella"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 04 June 2026 13:40
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Photo by Brandon Patoc
At Lincoln Center’s wonderful David Geffen Hall, on the night of Thursday, May 28th, I had the privilege to attend an excellent concert presented by the New York Philharmonic, under the distinguished direction of Elim Chan.
The event started very promisingly with the brilliant realization of one of the New York premiere performances of Noriko Koide’s unusual but remarkable Swaddling Silk and Gossamer Rain, from 2022. In a Gramophone podcast interview she stated that:
Western music is not my mother tongue, right? I'm a Japanese composer. So, it's like I have two different OS installed inside me — Javanese music and Western music, and sometimes pop music.
There, according to annotator Kathryn Bacasmot, who is described as “an independent writer about music,” the composer “explained that after reading” Mariko Asabuki’s novel Timeless, “she wanted to express its unique atmosphere.” About her musical influences, she told her publisher that “Western music language and gamelan music language often have the exact opposite direction.” Bacasmot adds that “Koide describes her compositional style as comprising ‘delicate timbre and subtle resonance.’”
Philharmonic principal Carter Brey then entered the stage as soloist for a very accomplished rendition of Camille Saint-Saëns’s memorable Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 33, from 1872. The initial Allegro non troppo begins forcefully, indeed dramatically, with a sense of urgency generally sustained throughout the movement, but at times the music has a more affirmative character as well as a lyricism that eventually comes to the fore. The ensuing Allegretto con moto is more intense and turbulent but also has song-like passages, while the concluding movement, marked Tempo primo, builds to a rousing climax, closing triumphantly. Enthusiastic applause elicited a welcome encore from the cellist (who is retiring from the ensemble at the end of this season): his own arrangement of the classic song, “Strange Fruit,” which was made famous by Billie Holiday, and served here as a memorial to George Floyd.
The second half of the evening was even stronger, consisting in an admirable account of selections from Sergei Prokofiev’s marvelous score for the ballet, Cinderella, which was composed from 1940 to 1944. According to James M. Keller, “former New York Philharmonic Program Annotator and the author of Chamber Music: A Listener's Guide”:
In 1946 the composer assembled music from the ballet into three separate orchestral suites. The music performed in this concert contains three selections from the Cinderella Suite No. 1, the most popular of the three, with the rest from the original complete ballet score.
“In an extended preface to the score,”Prokofiev wrote:
What I wished to express above all in the music of Cinderella was the poetic love of Cinderella and the Prince, the birth and flowering of that love, the obstacles in its path, and finally the dream fulfilled.
The fairy story offered a number of fascinating problems for the composer — the atmosphere of magic surrounding the fairy godmother, [etc.]. … The producers of the ballet, however, wanted the fairy tale to serve merely as a setting for the portrayal of flesh-and-blood human beings with human passions and failings. …
Apart from the dramatic structure I was anxious to make the ballet as “danceable” as possible, with a variety of dances that would weave themselves into the pattern of the story, and give the dancers ample opportunity to display their art. I wrote Cinderella in the traditions of the old classical ballet: it has pas de deux, adagios, gavottes, several waltzes, a pavane, passepied, bourrée, mazurka, and galop. Each character has his or her variation.
The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.