New York Philharmonic Perform Under Direction of Leonard Slatkin

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 03 April 2025 19:15

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

At Lincoln Center’s superior David Geffen Hall, on the night of Saturday, March 29th, I had the exceptional pleasure to attend a terrific concert featuring the New York Philharmonic, under the outstanding direction of Leonard Slatkin, one of the finest living conductors, who is notable for his close association with American composers. He provided the following commentary on the program: 

Everyone thought that there should be signature Slatkin connections on this program. 

Since Cindy McTee is one of this country's leading composers, and is also my wife, that was almost a given. 

John Corigliano and I go back a long way. I have performed several of his works with the Philharmonic, including the New York Premiere of his First Symphony. He has been associated with the ensemble almost from childhood, with his father being the long-serving Concertmaster of the Orchestra, and his serving as Assistant to the Producer and Assistant to the Director on the Orchestra's televised Young People's Concerts [1961–72]. This [saxophone] concerto is a true virtuoso workout for everyone. 

To balance the first half, we wanted something that was a bit more familiar for both musicians and audience, and with the Russian heritage in my family, as well as the Philharmonic's history with Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, that seemed like a perfect choice. 

Taken together, the pieces should work well together and will be a wonderful way to continue my 80th birthday celebration.

The event started memorably with an excellent account of McTee’s remarkable Double Play for Orchestra, from 2010, for which the composer was present. She has said illuminatingly:

I find satisfaction in putting an analog watch up to my ear … or listening to the distinctive sound of a Harley-Davidson. 

The repetitive, interlocking whirs, ticks, and pops have found their way into my music, mostly in the form of ostinato, pulse-based rhythms, and hocket. Perhaps I'm drawn to these sounds and textures because they represent order, precision, integration, and predictability. However, their music application is most meaningful, I think, in a context that also includes disorder, flexibility, independence, and surprise.

About Double Play, she has written:

I have always been particularly attracted to the idea that disparate musical elements — tonal and atonal, placid and frenetic — can not only coexist but also illuminate and complement one another. I can think of no composer more capable of achieving these kinds of meaningful juxtapositions than Charles Ives. As in Ives's The Unanswered Question, my Unquestioned Answer presents planes of highly contrasting materials: sustained, consonant sonorities in the strings intersect to create dissonances; melodies for the principal players soar atop; and discordant passages in the brass and winds become ever more disruptive. The five-note theme from Ives's piece is heard in both its backward and forward versions throughout the work. 

Tempus Fugit, Latin for “time flees” but more commonly translated as “time flies,” is frequently used as an inscription on clocks. My Tempus Fugit begins with the sounds of several pendulum clocks ticking at different speeds and takes flight about two minutes later using a rhythm borrowed from Leonard Slatkin's Fin for orchestra. Jazz rhythms and harmonies, quickly-moving repetitive melodic ideas, and fragmented form echo the multifaceted and hurried aspects of 21st-century American society.

The initial movement is solemn, enigmatic and portentous while the dynamic, rhythmically exciting second is more playful and somewhat less mandarin, as well as evocative of Leonard Bernstein’s popular scores.

An impressive soloist, Timothy McAllister, then entered the stage for an accomplished rendition of Corigliano’s rewarding Triathlon, from 2020, which was commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony and here received its New York premiere just as the saxophonist debuted with this ensemble with these performances. The composer, who was also in the hall to receive the audience’s acclaim, described the work in an interview as “a concerto for saxophonist and orchestra, not saxophone and orchestra,” continuing:

And the saxophonist plays three different instruments, one for each movement, … starting with the soprano sax and then going to the alto sax, and then the baritone sax. … I've always had a love [for] the baritone sax. The alto is the most beautiful in its melodic contour. And the soprano sax, like the clarinet, has this wild virtuosity in this astronomical range. So I felt I had what I wanted, and then I said, what would happen if I take three different aspects of music-making, and each movement is dedicated to one of them?

He also stated:

The virtuosic possibilities of the soprano sax … inspired a first movement, entitled Leaps, that is buoyant, acrobatic, and optimistic. An orchestral introduction of jumping woodwinds and a long-lined melody lead to the entrance of the soloist, who, after a few virtuosic turns, sings the melody introduced by the orchestra. This melody utilizes the entire lyrical range of the soprano saxophone, and leads to a slower section that extends and develops the melody. But the joyous opening returns and the movement ends as it began — with a leap. 

The second movement features the alto saxophone, and is entitled Lines. Lines, in music, describe the horizontal motion of notes, or, as we know it, melody. And, indeed, this entire movement is totally melodic and serene. … 

I have always loved the sassy, gravelly sound of the baritone sax, so it had to lead the last movement of my concerto. Licks is a jazz term, and means small improvisational moments in a piece. While this is not a jazz movement, the idea of small ornamental turns appealed to me, and provided me with the inspiration for the solo writing. The movement starts with an unaccompanied cadenza. In it, the soloist explores many of the remarkably unusual sounds that the saxophone family can produce. At the beginning, we hear soft key clicks, which are done without breathing into the instrument. This soon develops into a technique called “slap tonguing,” in which the performer literally slaps his tongue against the reed. It is a totally delightful and rude sound, and both these devices alternate in the body of the cadenza.

The first movement is sprightly—if not without urgency—often propulsive, even breathless in tempo, but the lyrical second is more inward and mostly serious with a livelier middle section—it concludes gently. The last movement is more turbulent and closes abruptly and emphatically. 

The highlight of the evening, however, was its second half: a sterling realization of Dmitri Shostakovich’s magnificent symphony. Program annotator James M. Keller explains that “Shostakovich composed his Symphony No. 5 over a three-month period in 1937, a moment when he was effecting a rebound from official disgrace.” In “an article published just before the work's premiere,” the composer recorded that: 

The birth of the Fifth Symphony was preceded by a prolonged period of internal preparation. Perhaps because of this, the actual writing of the symphony took a comparatively short time (the third movement, for example, was written in three days). … The theme of my symphony is the development of the individual. I saw man with all his sufferings as the central idea of the work, which is lyrical in mood from start to finish; the finale resolves the tragedy and tension of the earlier movements on a joyous, optimistic note. 

Keller adds, “In a commentary published on January 12, 1938, in Literaturnaya Gazeta, Shostakovich spoke of his newly premiered Fifth Symphony:”

My latest work may be called a lyrical-heroic symphony. Its basic ideas are the sufferings of Man, and optimism. I wanted to convey optimism asserting itself as a world outlook through a series of tragic conflicts in a great inner, mental struggle. During a discussion at the Leningrad section of the Composers' Union, some of my colleagues called my Fifth Symphony an autobiographical work. On the whole, I consider this a fair appraisal. In my opinion, there are biographical elements in any work of art. Every work should bear the stamp of a living person, its author, and it is poor and tedious work whose creator is invisible. 

Keller says further that, “On the same day, Sovetskoye iskusstvo published a different article,” in which the composer asserted:

There is nothing more honorable for a composer than to create works for and with the people. The composer who forgets about this high obligation loses the right to this high calling. … The attention to music on the part of our government and all the Soviet people instills in me the confidence that I will be able to give everything that is in my power.

The beginning, Moderato movement is grave, even forbidding, at the outset but, after an extended, introductory sequence, a more Romantic ethos emerges, even as the starkness of the opening returns, if more energetically—especially so in a remarkable, march-like but quieter episode. Another, partly song-like episode ushers in a nearly ethereal, almost mystical finish. The occasionally eccentric scherzo—marked Allegretto—that ensues is characteristically more ludic, if at times enchanting and rousing with numerous tuneful passages—it closes hurriedly if definitively. The hushed Largo that succeeds this is reflective, even meditative; the music intensifies but then becomes very subdued before building to a highly charged climax—the movement then ends softly. The stirring, Allegro non troppo finale is on the whole triumphant in character but with a much more sober, even austere, central section that precedes the stunning, forceful and joyous conclusion.

Deservedly, the artists were very enthusiastically applauded.