Masur, Philharmonic serve up a full menu with Hindemith and Ellington the highlights
With two seasons before Gustavo Dudamel takes up his post as music director, the New York Philharmonic is going to present a parade of guest conductors. For this week’s subscription series in David Geffen Hall, that was Ken-David Masur, currently music director of both the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony’s Civic Orchestra, making his subscription debut with the Phil.
What guest conductors put on display is their musicianship and also their taste and values, by way of the concert program. Masur slated six pieces: the world premiere of August Read Thomas’ Bebop Kaleidoscope—Homage to Duke Ellington, Mahler orchestrations of Bach, Ellington’s own Harlem (orchestrated by Luther Henderson); then after intermission Mahler’s Blumine, the Prelude to Act II of Strauss’ early opera Guntram, and finally Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes of Carl Maria von Weber.
That’s a lot of music, and all of it was extremely well played and led by a talented conductor. But the concert had one thinking as much about why so much was being played, and why these works, as to how the listening experience was.
Even on paper, the first half was a puzzle—shouldn’t Thomas’s homage to Ellington lead into the man himself? Musically that would have made even more sense. Thomas’s piece had the feeling of a long prelude, a loping series of short, rhythmically tricky, sharply accented phrases, digging downward before the next one bounced backed up. It was a skillful, imaginative atomizing of bebop phraseology, structured in a way that the music seemed to be in the constant process of becoming something else, but never quite getting there. That was at times frustrating but also fascinating, and the bright, metallic colors of the orchestration were stimulating, the energy propulsive.
Those sensations disappeared with Mahler’s dense, lugubrious retooling of music from Bach’s Orchestral Suites. (The Philharmonic has a display case for this piece set up in the hall.) This is thick Bach, which may have some sonic prettiness but loses much of the rhythmic quality; the famous Air emerged syrupy like music for a weepy commercial.
Ellington restored the spirit. His piece is better known as A Tone Parallel to Harlem, and it’s a dazzling, vibrant tone-poem. Ellington wrote to the personalities of his own players, like Johnny Hodges and Ray Nance, and the challenge for the Philharmonic was to bring enough musical personality to the piece to make it feel real and human, not a classical orchestra awkwardly playing jazz. Though no one would ever confuse the percussion section with Sonny Greer, this was a superb performance, big and loud and full of spirit and joy.
Masur was also impressive in those two pieces, in command of all the details but unfussy, on top of all the rhythms and dynamics but staying out of the way as the musicians shaped the phrases.
In Mahler’s lovely Blumine—originally meant as the second movement of his Symphony No. 1, the Philharmonic’s playing was luminous and gentle, with Masur in full command.
With six pieces there was also excessive stage changes, and Masur came and went so many times it was near comical. With Strauss’s four-minute Guntram Prelude, a wan sample of an opera no one is ever going to see, some deflation set in.
The Hindemith finale proved fantastic, however, and what a pleasure to hear this great orchestra play this terrific music. Hindemith’s piece is full of style, energy, smarts and superb orchestration. The playing was dashing, swaggering, the brass with a tremendous blend and surface of sound. It came off as a dazzling concerto for orchestra and the colors and personality would have made for an extraordinary flow from Read to Ellington to Hindemith (maybe some Ravel in between?)
This program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Saturday. nyphil.org
One Response to “Masur, Philharmonic serve up a full menu with Hindemith and Ellington the highlights”
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Posted Sep 22, 2024 at 11:46 am by LP
The program and the conductor were chosen by the musicians of the Philharmonic not by Masur