Noisy and pastoral love vie in mixed Philharmonic program
Whatever else one says about Kevin Puts’s The Brightness of Light, which received its New York premiere Friday night at the New York Philharmonic, the work’s creators are an impressive bunch.
Start with Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, celebrated American artists whose love affair was memorialized in thousands of letters, and whose words and art inspired Puts’s piece. Add Puts himself, composer of The Hours, acclaimed and encored at the Metropolitan Opera, and the distinguished soprano Renée Fleming, who also starred in that work.
For visuals, entrust O’Keeffe’s and Stieglitz’s images to Wendall K. Harrington, who is famous among stage designers as a pioneer in the now-ubiquitous art of creating visual environments with projections. And include two artists of proven merit making their Philharmonic debuts, baritone Rod Gilfry (subscription debut) and conductor Brett Mitchell, substituting for Juanjo Mena.
And yet for all that, listening and watching as the well-traveled piece unfolded, one found oneself wondering, does the world really need one more go-round with O’Keeffe and Stieglitz? Her paintings and his photographs are already burned on our retinas. And thanks to his evocative images of her, their love story is familiar stuff too.
It is also sadly familiar in its general outlines: the initial adulterous passion, the cooling-off after marriage, the eventual going separate ways. This is not dramatic tension, but its opposite.
Nevertheless, having had operatic success with Fleming, Puts appeared to want to return to the same vein. As Fleming and Gilfry sang passages from the artists’ letters, the slightest avowal of love or disagreement provoked paroxysms in the orchestra, crescendos boosted with piccolo and percussion to the point of pain.
Debutant conductor Mitchell did not curb this tendency toward excess, but it’s not clear if the piece would have been much improved if he had. A real improvement would have been for the composer to address the art itself in the music at least as much as the artists’ love affair.
For their part, Fleming and Gilfry proved well matched, his warm baritone complementing her golden, Straussian delivery. Without apparent effort, Gilfry projected Stieglitz’s words clearly throughout the hall. Both singers’ sensitive phrasing gave these icons of American art a human dimension.
Harrington’s art-history slide show, mildly enhanced with pan-and-scan and crossfades, was hardly representative of her achievements in scene design, but at least helped listeners connect these artists’ work to their emotional lives.
Friday’s performance of Ravel’s complete ballet Daphnis et Chloé had its share of paroxysms too, but the French master knew how to blow the audience away with a fortissimo without making their ears bleed.
Complete scores of ballets can flag in concert without dancers to sustain interest, but the hour-long performance of Daphnis et Chloé had no such problem Friday night. One could try to picture in one’s mind the ballet’s wacky scenario involving religious rites, shepherdesses and pirates, or one could just sit back and appreciate Ravel’s mastery of orchestral color and atmosphere. Ravel extracted two suites from this score, the second of which has become a familiar concert item, but it turns out the material in between the excerpts is almost as interesting.
Conductor Mitchell smoothly managed Ravel’s constant tempo changes, ushering in stately processions, infectious dances, languid wooing, sudden battles, and ecstatic revelry by rapid turns. (The list of tempo markings alone occupied an entire page of the Philharmonic program.)
The wordless singing of the New York Philharmonic Chorus, directed by Malcolm J. Merriweather, put a human presence in the scene, whether cooing over the lovers or shouting for joy in the work’s closing revels.
Wind soloists and concertmaster Frank Huang had their eloquent say in the score’s quieter moments. Ripping arpeggios and tinkling nature sounds were contributed by harpist Nancy Allen, who was recognized before the performance for her 25 years as the Philharmonic’s principal harp.
The program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. nyphil.org
