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Film and the Arts
Juilliard Orchestra Play Storybook Ravel
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 23 April 2025 13:59
- Written by Jack Angstreich
At Lincoln Center’s wonderful Alice Tully Hall, on the night of Thursday, February 20th, I had the exceptional pleasure to attend a superb concert—of music by Maurice Ravel—presented by the fine musicians—here continuing a strong season—of the Juilliard Orchestra, under the outstanding direction of Louis Langrée.
The event started beautifully with a terrific account of the extraordinary Mother Goose from 1911. In the useful program notes, it says about the writer, “Violist Noémie Chemali, who earned her master's from Juilliard in 2022, leads a freelance career in New York City as a performer, teacher, music journalist, grant writer, and arts administrator”; she records:
Ma Mère l'Oye was originally conceived in 1910 as a piano duet, and each movement draws from well-known children's stories. The title nods to Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye (Tales of Mother Goose), Charles Perrault's iconic 1697 collection of fairy tales.
She adds:
In 1912, the composer orchestrated the piano duo for a ballet, which was staged at the Theatre des Arts in Rouen. This iteration of the work, which will be performed tonight, includes an added Prelude [ . . . . ]
The Prelude is quietly enchanting while the ensuing movement, titled Dance of the Spinning Wheel, is more playful and even dramatic. The Good Fairy, which follows, is exquisite and replete with hushed atmospherics at first, but is then more overtly programmatic. Next, Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty, is graceful and waltz-like at the outset, then uncanny; a rapid climax leads to a luminous dénouement. The section Tom Thumb is lovely and gentle and the succeeding Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas is exotic and otherworldly with ludic passages and East Asian influences. Finally, The Fairy Garden is lush, bewitching and concludes triumphantly.
The amazing second half of the evening was at least equally impressive: a magnificent realization of the glorious L’enfant et les sortilèges from 1925, with terrific singers from Juilliard's Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts, especially the marvelous Theo Hayes in the lead role of The Child. Chemali edifyingly provides much of the relevant background to the work:
In 1914, Jacques Rouché, head of the
Paris Opéra, approached the celebrated French novelist Colette for a new ballet scenario. The result, Divertissements pour ma fille (Entertainment for My Daughter), was inspired by Colette's observations of her own child, Bel-Gazou, and her frequent tantrums. Colette's script captured the pure imagination and emotional turbulence of childhood, blending her signature humor, wit, and psychological insight. Rouché, impressed by the work, reached out to Ravel to compose the music to accompany the ballet scenario.
At the time, however, Ravel was serving as an ambulance driver during the First World War. Initially indifferent to the project, he dismissed the subject as uninspiring and expressed uncertainty about composing for the ballet genre. Yet he soon persuaded Colette to reimagine her scenario as a libretto for an opera, and some years later, after reading through the new text, found the spark he was hoping for.
The opera tells the tale of a temperamental child who, after being chastised by his mother for not doing his homework, mistreats his surroundings—tearing his books, breaking his toys, and lashing out at the world. In doing so, he unwittingly awakens magical forces. His bed, furniture, and even forest creatures spring to life, taking revenge for his misdeeds. As the inanimate objects and animals around him come to life and confront the child with the consequences of his actions, he embarks on a journey of transformation, learning the virtue of empathy. In the end, his sincere apology earns their forgiveness, the magic subsides, and he reconciles with his mother.
Ravel said this about the music:
I am for melody. Yes, melody, bel canto, vocalises, vocal virtuosity—this is for me a point of departure. This lyric fantasy calls for melody, nothing but melody. The score of L'enfant et les sortilèges is a very smooth blending of all styles from all epochs, from Bach up to … Ravel [!]
The annotator comments: “Indeed, Ravel combines Baroque dance, classical forms, and elements of jazz and folk idioms to illuminate the unique personality of the characters or objects brought to life in the opera.” The comical concert staging directed by Jeanne Slater featured rather broad acting but also some very charming dancing. The artists, deservedly, were enthusiastically applauded.
Philadelphia Orchestra Performs Mahler at Carnegie Hall
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 21 April 2025 13:21
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Photo by Chris Lee.
At the outstanding Stern Auditorium, on the night of Tuesday, April 15th, I had the tremendous pleasure of attending a superb performance of Gustav Mahler’s glorious Symphony No. 6 in A Minor—in its final, 1906 revision—played by the extraordinary Philadelphia Orchestra under the stellar direction of the inestimable Yannick Nézet-Séguin. (The concert, which continues a strong season of orchestral music at the venue, was presented by Carnegie Hall.)
In a valuable note on the program, Christopher H. Gibbs records that:
Mahler performed his Sixth just three times. The printed program for the last performance in Vienna carried the title “Tragic.” (It was not so named in the manuscript, at the premiere, or in the published editions released during his lifetime.)
The eminent conductor Bruno Walter, a close associate of the composer, had this to say about the work:
It reeks of the bitter cup of human life. In contrast with the Fifth, the Sixth says “No,” above all in its last movement, where something resembling the inexorable strife of “all against all” is translated into music. “Existence is a burden; death is desirable and life hateful” might be its motto.
And, in a letter to the critic Richard Specht, Mahler wrote: “My Sixth will pose puzzles which can only be broached by a generation which has imbibed and digested my first five.”
The turbulent initial movement—marked Allegro energico, ma non troppo—begins urgently, propulsively, forcefully and suspensefully with a recurring, dramatic, funeral march; a more subdued passage ushers in a surge of contrasting, Romantic lyricism that too returns as the movement unfolds. The movement, which is not without engaging eccentricities and which builds to a stunning apotheosis, contains more tentative, reflective and interior interludes—the first with pastoral elements (bells) that reappear in the third and fourth movements. Gibbs comments on these, quoting the composer:
He indicates that they “must be treated very discreetly—in realistic imitation of the higher and lower bells of a grazing herd, sounding from afar, sometimes combined, sometimes singly,” and then tellingly adds: “It must be expressly stated that this technical remark allows no programmatic interpretation.”
The ensuing Scherzo is a thrilling, almost menacing, march-like Ländler; its marvelous Trio is more playful, even ingenuous. The movement has many surprising, even extravagant, developments; it closes quietly, if quirkily.
The annotator reports that “Arnold Schoenberg praised the ‘curious structure’ of the beautiful melody that opens the Andante moderato.” It opens hauntingly with an exquisite flow of unusual, thematic inspirations—a gentle joyousness shines throughout it and it is arguably the loveliest of the symphony’s four movements. The music intensifies but the movement concludes very softly and serenely.
Walter’s view of the unwieldy, inordinately anfractuous, Allegro moderato Finale was as:
...the mounting tensions and climaxes [that] resemble, in their grim power, the mountainous waves of a sea that will overwhelm and destroy the ship ... The work ends in hopelessness and the dark night of the soul. Non placet is his verdict on this world; the “other world” is not glimpsed for a moment.
The movement starts portentously, if somewhat inchoately, with diverse musical ideas that evolve in unexpected ways, sometimes tumultuously, sometimes evoking a bucolic reverie. (The famous hammer blows in the movement were specified by the composer to be ”short, mighty, but dull in resonance, with a non-metallic character, like the stroke of an ax.") The symphony’s brilliant ending is simultaneously and paradoxically hushed and emphatic.
The artists, deservedly, were enthusiastically applauded.
April '25 Digital Week II
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 17 April 2025 16:57
- Written by Kevin Filipski
New York Philharmonic Present "CHEMILUMINESCENCE" & More
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 14 April 2025 13:48
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Photo by Chris Lee
At Lincoln Center’s wonderful David Geffen Hall, on the night of Wednesday, April 9th, I had the great pleasure to attend a marvelous concert—it continued a successful season for the ensemble—featuring the New York Philharmonic, brilliantly led by Jakub Hrůša who, according to the program notes, “is chief conductor of the Bamberg Symphony, music director designate of The Royal Opera, Covent Garden (music director from 2025), and principal guest conductor of the Czech Philharmonic.”
The event started auspiciously with a world premiere: a sterling account of Jessie Montgomery’s striking and memorable CHEMILUMINESCENCE, which was co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic—as part of its Project 19–along with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Bravo! Vail Music Festival, and The Sphinx Organization. (The two earlier, orchestral works by the composer that I’ve heard—Hymn for Everyone and Soul Force—were both impressive.) Montgomery, who was present to receive the audience’s acclaim, provided the following remarks on the piece:
“Chemiluminescence” is the scientific term to describe any chemical reaction that produces light from a non-light source, such as a firefly rubbing its wings to produce a glow, or bioluminescence along an ocean's edge, or the light produced from a cracked glow stick. The light produced can present varied qualities as infrared, visible, or ultraviolet.
As a composer, interpreting light sources and their resulting reflections and hues is an endless field of potential sound exploration. I used my impressions on this idea to create harmonies, colors, and blends I feel are unique to the string orchestra, with its ability to bend and shift timbres in an instant.
The piece is in three distinct sections, each of which interprets light, agitation, reaction, and frenetic interplay in its orchestration. This piece represents my continued interest in finding corollary between music and the natural world.
At moments, the work is reminiscent of the film scores of Bernard Herrmann and it concludes gently and unexpectedly.
An extraordinary soloist—Patricia Kopatchinskaja, in her debut with this ensemble—then entered the stage for a dazzling rendition of Igor Stravinsky’s superb Violin Concerto in D, from 1931–it is the basis for a classic ballet by George Balanchine. The composer recalled in his Autobiography that, when offered the commission:
I hesitated because I am not a violinist, and I was afraid that my slight knowledge of that instrument would not be sufficient to enable me to solve the many problems which would necessarily arise in the course of a major work especially composed for it.
The violinist for whom the work was written, Samuel Dushkin, interestingly reported on his collaboration with the composer:
Whenever he accepted one of my suggestions, even a simple change such as extending the range of the violin by stretching the phrase to the octave below and the octave above, Stravinsky would insist on altering the very foundations correspondingly. He behaved like an architect who if asked to change a room on the third floor had to go down to the foundations to keep the proportions of his whole structure.
The piece is from Stravinsky’s Neoclassical phase and is often evocative of the Baroque style. The initial movement, Toccata, is sprightly—indeed playful—and rhythmic, with many eccentricities; it finishes emphatically. The ensuing Aria I is oddly somber with moments of surprising lyricism—slow at first, it soon acquires a dynamic pace before resuming the tempo at its outset, before ending suddenly and softly. The succeeding Aria II, although it begins with a recurring, urgent statement, has a melancholy cast and is on the whole more subdued; it too closes quietly. The finale, Capriccio, is virtuosic, vivacious, sparkling, propulsive and quirky and maybe the wittiest of the movements—it concludes forcefully. An enthusiastic response by the concertgoers elicited two enjoyable encores from the soloist: first, Jorge Sánchez-Chiong’s Crin for solo violin, during which she curiously voiced nonsense syllables; and second, her own arrangement of material from the Stravinsky Concerto, calling it Cadenza for Stravinsky Violin Concerto—for this, she was also accompanied on the violin by the concertmaster, Frank Huang.
The second half of the evening was at least equally fine: an exceptionally satisfying realization of the awesome Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68, of Johannes Brahms, completed in 1877. Annotator James M. Keller informatively records:
“My symphony is long and not particularly lovable,” wrote Brahms to his fellow composer Carl Reinecke when this piece was unveiled.
He adds that, “He drafted the first movement of this symphony in 1862 and shared it with his friend Clara Schumann. She copied out the opening and sent it along to their friend Joseph Joachim (the violinist).” She appended this comment:
That is rather strong, for sure, but I have grown used to it. The movement is full of wonderful beauties, and the themes are treated with a mastery that is becoming more and more characteristic of him. It is all interwoven in such an interesting way, and yet it moves forward with such momentum that it might have been poured forth in its entirety in the first flush of inspiration.
That movement begins gravely and portentously with an Un poco sostenuto introduction, rapidly and strongly recalling the music of Ludwig van Beethoven before the onset of its dramatic, even turbulent, Allegro main body—in this latter, some passages have an almost pastoral quality and it finishes quietly, and drew applause, as did the next movement, marked Andante sostenuto. This is often solemn but with many pretty, felicitous measures; it builds in emotional power, closing celestially. The enchanting third movement—its tempo is Un poco allegretto e grazioso—has a certain buoyancy; its conclusion is not without abruptness. The finale, is more serious and suspenseful, even ominous, in its Adagio opening; a nobler vista soon emerges, ushering in the movement’s mostly stirring, sometimes triumphant, even exuberant, main body, marked Allegro non troppo ma con brio—it attains a triumphant, exultant climax.
The artists were deservedly rewarded with a standing ovation.
