New York Classical Review

This year being the 250th anniversary of the country’s beginning, concerts of American music are an easy call. That’s what makes Carnegie Hall’s United in Sound: America at 250 so enticing. Rather than the most obvious, token gestures toward American classical music, the series is a chance to hear the unprecedented range of what American musicians have created these past centuries, free of the linear, national traditions of countries like Germany and France.

Although one single concert can barely hint at a fraction of this, Wednesday night’s program from the Met Orchestra and conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin was a substantial look into some of the ways the American tradition was assembled. With mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard the vocal soloist, the orchestra played William Dawson’s Negro Folk Song Symphony, Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, and after intermission two from Leonard Bernstein: “Somewhere” from West Side Story and the Fancy Free ballet music.

This is all classic Americana, representing black and white, rural and urban culture. And one of the considerable charms of Dawson’s symphony is the influence of Dvořák. This wasn’t just musical but philosophical, the Czech composer’s encouragement to look toward Native and African-American music as the roots of an American style.

The Folk Song Symphony is very Dvořákian in this respect, spun out of folk tunes, but also has beautiful gestures that model him, like the soulful horn fanfare that opens the first movement, “The Bond of Africa,” the gorgeous English horn solo in the middle moment, and a small cadential phrase from the “New World” Symphony that Dawson uses in the finale, “O, Le’ Me Shine, Shine Like a Morning Star!”

Nézet-Séguin has done invaluable work recording symphonies by William Grant Still, Florence Price, and this one. So it was a surprise that it didn’t feel like he had a grasp on the episodic structure of the first movement. It felt choppy, and with some sloppy string articulation in some fast, repeated figures.

The middle movement, “Hope in the Night,” is the core of the symphony. It is a tremendous orchestral ballad that grows more beautiful and more emotionally complex as it goes along, moving from sweet lyricism through a kind of maturing, innocence increasingly marked by experience, to a conclusion that is a wrenching mix of anguish and determination. This was exceptionally well shaped and played, and had great expressive force. With more pep and focus in the final movement, this was in the end a memorable performance.

Barber’s orchestral setting of a poem by James Agee is one of the greatest art songs in the repertoire. The text is a complex mix of nostalgic reminiscence and loss. It is always a great pleasure to hear, no more so than with Leonard’s artful and subtly spectacular performance Wednesday.

With the conductor laying out an excellent, slightly fast tempo, Leonard sang with a full, warm tone, her rich vibrato balanced with a hint of dryness. Her volume easily expanded above the ensemble. Her manner was straightforward and graceful, with a focus on articulating the words. This is such a masterpiece that it really needs nothing more, just the care and purpose of a great voice, the focussed, shining violin intonation, the colorful winds.

There were magical moments, like the transition on, “Now is the night one blue dew,” and the moment toward the end when voice and strings rise and fall in unison. Nézet-Séguin’s shaping was elegant, perfect balance between the opening statement and the return of that same material for the final section, an extraordinarily beautiful and sad lullaby. One of the great vocal moments in this city of the past many years.

That spell unfortunately didn’t last for “Somewhere,” which was stolid when it needs to be light. It seemed held back by the conductor’s plodding pulse and a string section that played with far too much weight. Leonard seemed constrained inside the accompaniment.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin is fully capable with some American vernacular music, but not all. This was glaring at the start of Fancy Free, a ballet of three young sailors on leave in New York during World War II. The “Enter Three Sailors” music was again far too heavy, especially in the strings and piano. Nézet-Séguin marked the rhythms but no one could dance to the soft accents from the orchestra.

Everything picked up, though. As Bernstein runs through plenty of well-chosen Stravinskyian and Latin touches, starting with “Scene at the Bar,” all the musicians got into what the music actually was. Nézet-Séguin did some podium mugging for his fans, and there was more spring, more dialogue, more dancing, more fun. While not completely wiping away the poor start to this half, everything came home just right.

The Dover Quartet plays Dvořák’s “American” Quartet, Mendelssohn, and premieres from Pura Fé and Jerod Impichcha̲achaaha’ Tate, 7:30 p.m., February 10. carnegiehall.org