I have to admit, the question crossed my mind pretty much immediately when I heard that Peter Gelb was to be the next chief of the Metropolitan Opera. I'd actually pondered it as recently as this afternoon, for no particular reason. And apparently, I'm not the only one who's been wondering, because it was the first question posed by an audience member during the Q&A session that followed a unusual presentation by the New York Philharmonic tonight. More surprisingly, an answer was forthcoming.
The Ghosts of Versailles is returning to the Met.
Composer John Corigliano, to whom the question was addressed, was clearly overjoyed to spill the beans. He refused to reveal the season in which the revival would take place, but stated that "a fine Marie Antoinette" has already been engaged.
Tonight's occasion was the debut of "Hear & Now," the New York Philharmonic's latest attempt not just to engage new music, but to engage its audience in that music. The program opened with composer Steven Stucky interviewing Corigliano about his work in film music and the genesis of his recent violin concerto, "The Red Violin," which was the sole piece announced for tonight's presentation. More than once, Stucky gently commented on the incongruity of a west coast artist playing host to Corigliano at a presentation by the orchestra with which the latter artist had literally grown up -- initially as son of the longtime concertmaster, and later as a favored composer.
The Philharmonic had already offered the concerto on two regular bills, paired rather appropriately with Richard Strauss. Tonight's program, on the other hand, was intended to dig more deeply into a work new to local audiences. During the pre-concert discussion, Stucky prompted Corigliano to discuss his first experience with scoring a film, Ken Russell's Altered States. A pair of brief clips, shown without music, elicited laughter. The excellent guest conductor Jonathan Nott was brought out to lead the orchestra in music Russell had used in his working soundtrack: a suitably barbaric dance from Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin. Then Nott led a performance of the "Third Hallucination" from Corigliano's brilliantly phantasmagorical original score, as the same film sequences seen before played again on the screen overhead. The effect was electrifying... and an apt reminder that this is a score well worth airing out from time to time.
Setting up a discussion of Corigliano's work on The Red Violin, soloist Joshua Bell came out to play the simple chaconne around which the entire score for that film was constructed. Nott led the orchestra in a passage derived from that chaconne, then a scene from the film was played complete with the recorded soundtrack, illuminating the juxtaposition of melodies and images.
Stucky and Corigliano discussed the circumstances that had led to a popular concert piece, the Red Violin Chaconne, appearing prior to the film's opening, as well as Corigliano's subsequent decision to expand that 17-minute work into a full-blown concerto by adding three more movements, only one of which -- the finale -- develops further material derived from his film score. Much was made of the audacious special effects Corigliano demands of the soloist, including a haunting, flutelike timbre achieving by bowing at the base of the instrument's neck and an ugly, atonal croak that the composer dubbed a "crunch." ("I resisted it at first," Bell admitted. "But now, I'm Captain Crunch.")
In truth, the claim of originality with regard to that latter effect was a bit of a stretch; anyone conversant with John Zorn's music would have recognized what that composer memorably dubbed "napalm clusters." Still, there's no denying that Corigliano is an orchestrator virtually without peer -- a point driven home by the complete performance of his concerto that followed. The piece is an extravaganza ideally suited to Bell's technical brilliance. He tossed off the composer's most daunting challenges -- the second movement's combination of breakneck pace and hushed dynamics, the finale's clash of soloist and ensemble accelerating at different speeds -- seemingly effortlessly. Short on rhetoric but long on effect, the work was an unapologetic tour de force, and the performers did it proud. The audience greeted each movement with robust applause, and brought the house down at the conclusion.
The question-and-answer session that followed the performance was in some ways more revealing than the initial conversation had been -- and not just for the errant operatic tidbit. Most valuable was Corigliano's explanation of the way in which he conceives his scores: Melodies are plotted easily enough on piano, but for his more outre timbral textures, he explained, he covers his head with a pillow to block out external sound, so as to let his imagination run free, and sometimes graphs his desired results in colored pencils. Above all, Corigliano said, he maps the underlying architecture of a work before undertaking its details.
All told, it would be easy enough to paint tonight's "Hear & Now" launch as a children's concert for grown-ups. But in fact, the content provided both before and after the performance added rather a lot to comprehension and appreciation of Corigliano's concerto. Still, I was left with the desire to judge the work's effect in the context of a normal program... which, y'know, I'd had the option to do, so it's not like I can claim the Philharmonic was making excuses for playing new music.
Regarding the selection of a sure-fire crowd pleaser like Corigliano -- and I label him thus with the utmost respect -- to inaugurate a series like this provokes two different reponses: You can wag a finger at the orchestra for playing it safe, or you can suspect that the Philharmonic wants to establish trust early on. The two remaining subjects of the series for this season are John Harbison and Peter Lieberson, neither likely to provoke objection (and each with a fringe benefit in the form of, respectively, Dawn Upshaw and -- barring misfortune -- Lorraine Hunt Lieberson). Would Gathering Paradise, last season's toothy premiere by Augusta Read Thomas, have been so warmly greeted in such a setting? I'm not sure.
Still, for an orchestra tagged with a perception of reluctance to engage contemporary music (and a core audience that seemingly fosters that condition), this was certainly a start.
Playlist:
Nasum - Grind Finale (Relapse)
Steve Reich - You Are (Variations) - Los Angeles Master Chorus/Grant Gershon; Cello Counterpoint - Maya Beiser (Nonesuch)
Gutbucket - Sludge Test (Cantaloupe)
Igor Stravinsky - Petrouchka; Le Chant du rossignol; Quatre études - Orchestre symphonique du Montréal/Charles Dutoit (London)
George Russell - All About Rosie; Harold Shapero - On Green Mountain (Chaconne after Monteverdi); Jimmy Guiffre - Suspensions; Charles Mingus - Revelations (First Movement); Milton Babbitt - All Set; Gunther Schuller - Transformation - orchestra conducted by Gunther Schuller and George Russell (Columbia)
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