Slatkin returns to Philharmonic with American music and Shostakovich
This week’s New York Philharmonic subscription program is led by guest conductor Leonard Slatkin. The veteran American musician is not just on the podium, but the music itself has his stamp on it. The feeling in David Geffen Hall Wednesday night was that he brought along some of his favorite scores from his accumulated experiences to present to New York audiences.
That meant a set of bookend pieces, one contemporary and one a masterpiece of the repertoire. The first was the concert’s opening work, which was dedicated to Slatkin during his time as music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Cindy McTee’s Double Play, in its first Philharmonic performance. The finale was Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5, firmly in the conductor’s expertise. In between was the New York premiere of John Corigliano’s Triathalon, a saxophone concerto that featured soloist Timothy McAllister.
McTee’s piece is in two sections, and the title of the first says almost everything about the music: “The Unquestioned Answer”, coupled with “Tempus Fugit.” Rising out of a mist of sound, a theme appears—first in the vibraphone—that’s like an anagram of the flute theme from Ives’ The Unanswered Question, a little retrograde and inverted from the original. This floats through a bed of orchestral sound, until an oblique rhythm marks a bridge to the driving, Bernstein-esque second section.
Though neither conceptual nor mystical, the piece is still pensive, but in an eyes-open, wide-awake manner. This evening, the mists turned into a flowing orchestral sound, with substantial weight and muscle. The opening section was evocative and in the second Slatkin held firm control on the pace, so even as the rhythms grew intense there was still calm inside the music. This was a fine performance of an elegant, compelling piece, and McTee, the conductor’s spouse, was on hand to enjoy the audience’s applause.
Corigliano was also in the hall for Triathalon, which garnered an enthusiastic response from most. There was an obvious attraction in the performance, with McAllister switching from soprano to alto to baritone saxophones—one for each movement—before the piece wrapped up with the original theme on the soprano. There were a lot of notes to excite the listener.
The piece was mostly just that though, a lot of notes. The standard fast (“Leaps”), slow (“Lines”), fast (“Licks”) form was very much a display of virtuosity as agility. McAllister is that kind of virtuoso saxophonist (he plays soprano in the great PRISM Quartet), and his ease with the fleet fingering and especially some very difficult, fast articulation was impressive. So was his lovely, warm tone on the alto in the second movement. But other than speed, the writing doesn’t place interesting demands on the soloist, with only one moment of extended technique, nor does it make use of some of the best tonal and timbral qualities of the soprano and baritone instruments.
Worse, it’s just glib technique with hardly any feeling. “Lines” had a pleasant flow, but not much to say, and the outer movements weren’t about anything more than how fast McAllister could get around the horn. Once the novelty of each new horn wore off, the results were mostly dull.
After intermission, Symphony No. 5 was anything but. Part of this is the nature of this piece in history and in the context of changing times. Shostakovich essentially saved his life with it, or at least preserved his own relative freedom. It has a narrative that can be accepted as heroic, or as cuttingly ironic and deeply subversive of political rule, depending on how one listens to it. From the box seat of a self-absorbed ruler, for example, the music may sound glorifying and triumphant. But with secret police abducting people who have said unpopular things, it can sound like a warning and an anthem of determined resistance.
The latter was one’s experience Wednesday, because of the skillful, forceful performance from the Philharmonic. That was not a certain thing at first; it took a while for the opening Moderato movement to gel. There were some small, but noticeable imprecisions in the playing, and also the musicians didn’t seem in full agreement over what the music was about—not conflict so much as working toward the same language at the same time.
The way this piece works, there was no surprise that the three-note piano ostinato that marks a change in mood and tempo in the middle of the movement nudged everything into a complete consensus. From this point, everything changed, one didn’t observe the performance, one was enveloped by it.
Control and emotional modulation are the most important things in playing Shostakovich, and even when the focus was coming together, this was a properly taut performance. Slatkin shaped expert rises and falls and his tempos were ideal: the pace in the first movement had an inexorable feel, the Largo moved deliberately. There was a coyness about the sardonic feeling in the Allegretto that was perfect, and then came the final movement. This had lighter energy than one is used to, but great force. Rather than Shostakovich acting out triumph to hide his own despair, it seemed more like a fanfare announcing a fight to come. On this occasion, that felt just right.
The program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Saturday. nyphil.org
Leave a Comment
