MUSIC REVIEW--THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC--Saturday Matinee--January 29, 2011

THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC
Alan Gilbert, Conductor;
With Sheryl Staples, violin; Robert Rinehart, viola; Ru-Pei Yeh, cello; Satoshi Okamoto, bass; and Philip Myers & Howard Wall, French horns.

Matinee Concert, January 29, 2011

Reviewed by Bill Breakstone, January 30, 2011

For those of you unfamiliar with the Philharmonic’s Saturday Matinee concerts, these are musical treats of the highest order. They feature a major work from the regular subscription concerts of the particular week, preceded by a chamber music work performed by first chair musicians and their associates from the Orchestra. This week’s program featured relatively unfamiliar compositions by Mozart and the Danish composer Carl Nielsen.

Mozart composed close to 100 divertimenti, serenades, noturni and cassations, mostly lighter fare written for outdoor musicales or indoor celebrations. However, four of these stand out as major compositions and contain serious music and length exceeding any of his symphonies. These are the Haffner and Posthorn Serenades, the Serenade for 13 Wind Instruments (Gran Partita) and the Divertimento in D Major for Two Horns and Strings, K.334/320b, performed at this concert.

This seldom-performed Divertimento is in 6 movements, is bright and cheerful, and contains a devilishly, fiendishly difficult part for the first violin, here brilliantly played by assistant concertmaster Sheryl Staples. Herbert von Karajan recorded this work with his Berlin Philharmonic back in the 1970s, using somewhat reduced string section, and that recording won high praise from critics for its lightness and transparency. However, the Divertimento was not written for an ensemble of 45 string players, but rather as a chamber work for 6,to which was added a double bass to support the horns. This septet version allows the listeners to clearly hear each part. The fifth movement is a minuet with two trios, the first of which is as lovely a musical idea as Mozart ever had.

After the intermission, the full Philharmonic took stage with their music director, Alan Gilbert, on the podium, for a performance of Carl Nielson’s Second Symphony (“The Four Temperaments”). This work had been performed only once by the Philharmonic, back in 1973, with Leonard Bernstein conducting. Although New York Times music critic Zachary Woolfe (never heard of him before!) dismissed the work alternately as “dull, relentless, slackening, meandering, and empty,” these ears found this symphony to be thoroughly engaging. It was quite unlike any romantic work I have encountered. The only leanings of another composer I could discern was of Bruckner, though Nielsen’s writing is far less heavy and without the massed brass found in most of Bruckner’s symphonies.

Gustav Mahler served as Music Director of the Philharmonic for two seasons shortly before his death in 1911. Mahler, as a composer, had an aversion to providing programs of his symphonies to critics and audiences, with the exception of his two earliest symphonies, No 1 (“Titan”) and No. 2 (“Resurrection”). His reasoning was to let the listeners form their own judgments of the composer’s intent. In this Nielsen Symphony, the dangers of programming are all the more evident. The four temperaments are labeled “collerico” (impetuous), “flemmatico” (phlegmatic, lazy, indolent), “malincolico” (melancholic) and “sanguineo” (boisterous, happy). With these four suggestions, the listener is predisposed to think along the lines of those titles while listening to the music. Yet such thoughts can be very much misleading. The first movement could just as easily be defined as energetic; the second movement, a leisurely waltz, as a relaxed dance; the third movement as a lush but somberly beautiful adagio; and the fourth movement as a happy march or jog.

In any case, this is a very interesting Symphony, expertly written and scored. Gilbert became quite familiar with Nielson’s works while acting as Music Director of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic prior to his appointment here in New York. Thus his conception of this work bears a stamp of authority. And once again, the Philharmonic was sounding at its best in this orchestral showpiece. Thirty-seven years is too long an interval for the performance of this fascinating Symphony!