Stravinsky wrote a ballet about a firebird. Katherine Balch has written a piece about fireflies. It is a piece for orchestra, which she calls musica pyralis. What we know as the common “firefly” is called, technically, Photinus pyralis. Ms. Balch is an American, born in 1991, who teaches at Yale. She has explained,
Most of my music tries to filter the sights and sounds of my surrounding environment through the instruments I’m writing for, kind of like a musical sieve. In musica pyralis, the orchestra sings the summer soundscape of my new home in rural Connecticut.
It sings, in particular, the soundscape of the night—when fireflies shine, or blink.
Ms. Balch says that she wrote a “concert opener”—specifically. I find this interesting. For years, I have used the term “oomp,” which stands for “obligatory opening modern piece.” Many an orchestral program has an oomp. In recent years, lots of composers have written pieces specifically as openers. But maybe they aspire to write closers as well?
In any event, a concert of the New York Philharmonic opened with musica pyralis. Right from the beginning, you hear fireflies. But wait a minute: do you hear them because you have been prepared by what you have read to hear them? Maybe. Lots of contemporary pieces include “tinklies,” as I call them. And if you can’t have tinklies in a piece about fireflies, you can’t have tinklies ever. Ms. Balch’s piece bears other contemporary hallmarks as well: spooky sounds; little sirens; shakes and rattles (if not rolls). The music is sometimes dense, sometimes more transparent, or sheen-like. As I recall, I heard interesting blurts from a muted tuba, and a lovely repeated solo from the viola. The piece has a surprising ending—fast. A good and effective ending.
When I was a kid, a teacher told me, about performances, “Audiences tend to remember the beginning and the end.” Maybe that is true of compositions as well? Balch’s musica pyralis has a good beginning and a good ending. It is, altogether, a skillful piece.
It was followed on this Sunday afternoon by Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. The soloist was Beatrice Rana, the young Italian, and the conductor was Manfred Honeck, the veteran Austrian. I will make one remark about this commendable performance. At the end of the first movement, Rana and Honeck did a little ritard. I like the ending strict. In tempo. At the end of the third movement—the end of the concerto—they again did a little ritard. I again like it strict. But at least they were consistent (as I am).
After intermission, Honeck led the Philharmonic in a very popular symphony: Tchaikovsky’s No. 5. I recall the words of Lorin Maazel—with whom I talked when he was leaving the music directorship of the Philharmonic in 2009. About Tchaik 5, he said, “It’s as glorious and thrilling as the day it was written.” And “if you become jaded because of overexposure, the problem is yours, not the composer’s.” You know who’s not jaded? Manfred Honeck.
He was guest-conducting on this afternoon. He is the music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. The pso has had great conductors in the past—including Maazel. It has one now. Does Honeck deserve a “bigger” podium? Yes. But sometimes it is the conductor who makes a podium big.
A few days after the Philharmonic concert, the Danish String Quartet arrived at Zankel Hall. Three-quarters of this group are Danish. Their cellist is Finnish. And a second cellist, needed for this concert, was also Finnish. So, a nicely integrated group. They began their concert with an immortal work: Schubert’s String Quintet in C, sometimes called the “Cello Quintet” (because of the second cello). After intermission, there would be a new piece, “reacting” to Schubert’s quintet, and, finally, an arrangement of a Schubert song.
When the players took the stage, one of them took a microphone and began to talk—which is par for the course. Many, many concerts are concert-lectures, whether you want them to be or not. In a jovial way, the player repeated some of the information in our program notes. He said what a great and sublime work the Cello Quintet was. And he concluded his remarks with “Enjoy the show,” which I thought was charming. (Sometimes the ushers at Carnegie Hall, when taking your ticket, say, “Enjoy the show.”)
I wonder: Before a performance of Hamlet, does anyone ever come out and say what a great play Hamlet is? Or do the performers simply—you know: start the play?
At any rate, the Cello Quintet is indeed a great and sublime work. When I was quite young, I read something by Artur Rubinstein saying that, on his deathbed, he wanted to hear the quintet (in particular, its second movement, the Adagio). I thought this was a little creepy. Yet it left an impression on me. (I’m not sure what the great pianist heard, if anything, when the end came.)
The Danes, plus the two Finns, did well by Schubert’s quintet. They did not try to gild the lily of the Adagio. They played it without fuss—which was to the music’s advantage.
After intermission, and before the second half began, another player (as I recall) gave another talk. One effect of such talking is that an evening gets longer. Often, this does the evening no good. Regardless, we were about to hear a new work by Thomas Adès, the British composer: Wreath for Franz Schubert. I will quote from the note by Mr. Adès printed in our program:
The central string trio of violin, viola, and cello play arco throughout, a gradually unfolding “lifespan” of entwined “blooms.” The outer violin and cello outline them in pizzicato. The players are loosely coordinated, but within specific boundaries, so that within certain limits no two performances are the same, and the duration is flexible: between 15 and 30 minutes, depending on the players, or maybe the weather.
Personally, I vote for fifteen minutes, or less.
I mean no disrespect to Mr. Adès, though I have written disrespectfully. He is one of the most formidable musicians before the public today: a very good composer, a very good pianist, and a very good conductor. We have not had such a triple threat, probably, since André Previn. I have admired many of his compositions. But I don’t understand, frankly, how Wreath for Franz Schubert can be presented to the public. It sounded to me like a compositional exercise, of interest to its composer, and perhaps to those who play it—but what about the hearer? I thought it was an imposition on the hearer’s time.
Last on the program was a song from Winterreise, “Die Nebensonnen” (beautifully played). And the group was not quite done with songs—for, as an encore, they played something from the homeland, something Danish, by Carl Nielsen. A little patriotism or national pride is not a bad thing, even with a Finn or two on the stage.
The title of Katherine Balch’s new piece—musica pyralis—required some explanation. So does the title of a recent one by Olga Neuwirth: Keyframes for a Hippogriff—Musical Calligrams in memoriam Hester Diamond. The term “keyframe” comes from animation and filmmaking: “a drawing or shot that defines the starting and ending points of a smooth transition.” (I have quoted Wikipedia, the Source of All Knowledge.) A hippogriff is “a legendary animal having the foreparts of a griffin and the body of a horse” (Merriam-Webster). A calligram is “a design in which the letters of a word (such as a name) are rearranged so as to form a decorative pattern or figure” (also Merriam-Webster).
And Hester Diamond? She was a Bronx-born art collector, dealer, and interior designer who was a great benefactress of the arts—especially of Modernism. She passed away in 2020, at ninety-one. I knew her a little, and am glad I did.
Olga Neuwirth is an Austrian composer, born in 1968. Her Keyframes piece is for countertenor, children’s chorus, and orchestra. It employs texts from a variety of sources—including Aristo, Blake, Dickinson, Melville, and Nietzsche. And graffiti. You know those works in which children are the heroes against a mad adult world? This is one of them. Neuwirth says that her children’s chorus is a “voice of resistance against a ruinous public order that is being damaged by the self-interest of government and industry.” She adds, “May Keyframes be a contribution to ‘humanistic composing’ in a time of political and social instability and the destruction of our planet.”
Keyframes is an eclectic work, using everything but the kitchen sink. Its instrumentation includes two synthesizers, an electric guitar, auto-brake drums, and Thai nipple gongs.
The work was performed by the New York Philharmonic, under the baton of Thomas Søndergård, a Dane. (It was a pretty good period for them in New York.) The countertenor was Andrew Watts, a Brit. (It is hard not to read that name as “André Watts,” one of the most familiar names in music over the last fifty years.) Completing the forces was the Brooklyn Youth Chorus.
Keyframes has lunacy, wooziness, surrealism. There is an urgency about the score. At one point, the countertenor sings, “The children meek?” and the chorus retorts, “We are not meek!” If you will forgive a philosophical or spiritual excursion—meekness is often confused with weakness. Obviously, the New Testament emphasizes meekness. But so does the Old. The Beatitude that begins “Blessed are the meek” comes from Psalm 37, which says, “the meek shall inherit the earth.” According to Numbers, “Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.”
But back to music. Olga Neuwirth’s piece is a festival of sounds, rhythms, words, and syllables. It is interesting. That sounds like a putdown: “interesting.” It is not. Interesting is good, and uninteresting is bad.
A story, if you will: When I first met Hester Diamond, we were seated next to each other at a gala. Someone tried to start something between us: “Jay’s a big conservative, you know! He doesn’t like a lot of modern opera productions.” Hester said, “The truth is, there are good traditional productions and bad traditional productions. Good modern productions and bad modern productions.” I could have kissed her for that. And, when we parted, I believe I did.
In my chronicle last month, I wrote of a Philharmonic concert in which Sol Gabetta had played the cello concerto of Bohuslav Martinů (written in 1930). Here was a work off the beaten track. “When it comes to cello concertos,” I said, “man cannot live by Dvořák, Haydn, Elgar, and a few others alone.” When it comes to violin concertos, man cannot live by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, and the rest alone. Well, maybe he can—but he should not have to.
A more recent Philharmonic concert had Hilary Hahn playing the violin concerto of Alberto Ginastera, the Argentinian (1916–83). Ginastera wrote this concerto in 1963. In fact, it was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic. The orchestra premiered it in October 1963. It had not been programmed by the orchestra since. Ms. Hahn has been championing the piece, and she has also recorded it: with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony under Andrés Orozco-Estrada.
Ginastera was a gifted, cerebral man, and his violin concerto is typical of him. It is almost an anti-concerto, in its departure from the norm. The work begins with a cadenza, plus “studies,” for the solo instrument alone. The orchestra is not heard until about five minutes in.
With the Philharmonic, Hahn played the piece with utter mastery. She exuded the authority we expect from her. With all technical questions previously settled—previously worked out in hours and hours of practice—she could concentrate on the music, solely. And concentrate she did. She played with the intensity of a watercolorist, making sure the paint doesn’t drip. From her violin came a range of voicings and shadings. Honestly, you couldn’t take your ears off this woman.
Monty Python used to say, “And now for something completely different.” After intermission, Hahn played Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy (not to be confused with the Carmen Fantasy of Franz Waxman). She played the piece enjoyably, as how could she not? Yet others may be better at letting their hair down. And schmaltz is not a Hahn specialty.
But you know what is: Bach. For an encore, she played the D-minor Sarabande. To call it immaculate would be to insult it. It was a lot more than that. Time stood still. It was a moment, or a few minutes, of transcendence. We have been listening to Hilary Hahn play Bach since she was seventeen. She is now in her mid-forties. She wears glasses. I myself am not immune to a little schmaltz—and I wish to say that her Bach is one of the soundtracks of our lives.
Readers of my Salzburg chronicles are familiar with the name of Asmik Grigorian. She is a Lithuanian soprano, and she is a star of the Salzburg Festival. Grigorian is a superb singer and a superb singing actress—the complete package. She debuted at the festival in 2017 as Marie (in Berg’s Wozzeck). She has since been Salome and Chrysothemis (two Strauss roles). Last season, she was Lady Macbeth (Verdi, not Shostakovich), and she also sang a recital of Rachmaninoff songs. A versatile artist, she is.
She has now made her Metropolitan Opera debut: as Puccini’s Butterfly.
Another singer in Macbeth last season at the Salzburg Festival was Jonathan Tetelman, an American tenor (born in Chile). He made a splash in his role (Macduff). He, too, has made his Met debut recently: in La rondine (Puccini), as Ruggero. In subsequent weeks, he partnered Grigorian as Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly.
He is a handsome guy with a handsome voice—which companies and audiences like in a tenor. The voice is streamlined, focused, with a pow at the top. When he is in good form, he is resplendent and effortless. Other times, he may be strained and a bit shouty. Of course, one could say this about practically any tenor. Tetelman is an operatic asset.
In Butterfly’s Act I, Grigorian and Tetelman both sounded undersized. Also, I wondered whether Grigorian was a bit too severe, vocally, for Butterfly. A Butterfly needs severity, in “Che tua madre”: the ability to scald. But she also needs much tenderness and beauty.
Forget Act I. In the next two acts, magic came out of that soprano. I have never heard “Un bel dì” more affectingly sung. I have certainly never seen it better acted. Now, I don’t care whether you act it: you can “stand and sing,” as far as I’m concerned. But Grigorian is not like that.
She was overwhelming in the big moments, by which I mean the arias, chiefly. But she was equally impressive in the small moments, even the offhand ones. The dénouement of Butterfly is hard to bear, whatever the quality of the performance. Given the singing and acting of Asmik Grigorian, it was excruciating.
Earlier in the season, Matthew Polenzani had taken the role of Pinkerton. When he came out for his bow, the audience had booed—because Pinkerton is a heel (though a remorseful one). This was immature on the part of the audience. I wondered what people would do when Jonathan Tetelman came out. They behaved.