For a few days, it was raining Martinů—Bohuslav Martinů, the Czech composer who lived from 1890 to 1959. I am exaggerating. But we did have two Martinů pieces in close succession, which is rare. The New York Philharmonic programmed the composer’s Cello Concerto No. 1, penned in 1930. It had been heard only twice before from the Philharmonic. The first time was in 1952, with Pierre Fournier as soloist. The second was in 1976, with Fournier again. Is it first-tier, the Martinů concerto? Maybe not, but there is a place, and a need, for other tiers. When it comes to cello concertos, man cannot live by Dvořák, Haydn, Elgar, and a few others alone.
The recent soloist with the Philharmonic was Sol Gabetta, who has been championing the Martinů concerto. She is a cellist from Argentina, born in 1981. Within her are several ancestral strains. She has long lived and worked in Europe. She speaks a slew of languages, giving interviews gaily and confidently in all of them. A woman of the world, she is.
As the orchestra began the Martinů, she moved and grooved to the music—smartly. When she played, she demonstrated poise, as usual. She was both correct and commanding. She showed a keen sense of rhythm, and a keen sense of song. In the second movement (Andante moderato), she was warm and friendly. I thought of an old saying in music: “You play who you are.” The finale (Allegro) is highly virtuosic, and Gabetta was up to the challenges.
She played an encore, which was unfamiliar to me. For cello alone—that is, without orchestral or other accompaniment—it was modern, shivery, and intricate. At some point, the cellist began to sing. She sang purely and beautifully. Just the way you would expect Sol Gabetta to sing, frankly. The piece turned out to be by Pēteris Vasks, a Latvian born in 1946. It is a movement from a solo-cello work called, simply, The Book.
The Philharmonic’s concert had begun with a piece composed in 2013—composed for string quartet. More recently, the composer has arranged it for string orchestra. A man with a long middle name, he is Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate. He is “a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation,” our program notes informed us. Mr. Tate was born in Norman, Oklahoma, in 1968. He was educated at Northwestern University and the Cleveland Institute of Music. He is of mixed parentage: his father, Chickasaw, his mother, Manx (i.e., from the Isle of Man). All-American, I would say.
His piece is called Pisachi, which in Chickasaw means “reveal.” “The piece is deeply influenced by Pueblo and Hopi folk music,” he has said. As I heard it, it is in several sections, beginning with something spare and stark, moving on to a kind of scherzo, and so on. At every turn, the piece held my interest (which is higher praise than it might seem). “Sounds like the American West,” I thought. Is that because I had read the program notes? Possibly—but I don’t think so.
Mr. Tate, who was in the hall, received a healthy ovation. He is a cool-looking dude, with a ponytail as long as his middle name. I look forward to hearing more from his pen.
Three nights later, members of the Metropolitan Opera orchestra gathered in Weill Recital Hall for an evening of chamber music. They began with Martinů: a fantasia for an unusual group of seven instruments. Four of those instruments are accounted for by a string quartet (two violins, a viola, and a cello). Then there is a piano. So far, so normal. Then there is an oboe—a little out of left field, but fine. The leading instrument in the fantasia is the theremin.
Let us recall what a theremin is, courtesy of Merriam-Webster: “a purely melodic electronic musical instrument typically played by moving the hands in the electromagnetic fields surrounding two projecting antennae.” The instrument was invented by Leon Theremin, a Russian, in the 1920s. Martinů was commissioned to write his fantasia by a well-off enthusiast of the instrument. The work was composed in 1945.
It is an interesting and engaging piece. The craftsmanship is not to be denied. The problem, as I see it, or hear it, is the leading instrument. I am going to be very rude. Some people find the theremin ghostly, haunting, otherworldly. It may be those things. Personally, I find it sickly, and hard to bear. This is not the fault of the thereminist (if that’s the right word). I seem to have an aversion to the instrument, is all. Listening to the Martinů, I found myself looking forward to the parts where the theremin is silent.
Again, I have been rude. Was I glad that this rarity, this novelty, by Bohuslav Martinů had been programmed? Certainly. Was I happy for others to hear the theremin, if they wanted? Of course. Music ought to be a buffet, served on a long, groaning table.
The Met players laid out a nice little buffet on this evening alone. The program included Gesualdo, Villa-Lobos, and Stravinsky. One Villa-Lobos piece was the famous cantilena from his Bachianas brasileiras No. 5. Many of us wore the grooves off Victoria de los Ángeles’s recording (1958). Or we wore the grooves off Anna Moffo’s (1964). Many of us owned both. The soprano on hand with the Met players was Nadine Sierra (stunning in a gold, plunging, shimmering dress). She sang along with eight cellos—and only cellos—which was close to the orchestra’s entire section. She sang beautifully and subtly. And she did some of the highest-class humming you will ever hear.
Later that week, Ms. Sierra sang the title role in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette—or one of those roles. The other was sung by Benjamin Bernheim, the French tenor. (This was at the Met.) Going by Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet are sixteen and thirteen. You can’t expect anything like that on the operatic stage; I imagine you can’t expect it on the theatrical stage. But Sierra and Bernheim managed to project youthful passion. They did this in their persons and in their singing.
As important as the title roles are, the most important “role” in this opera is the conductor’s. I am going to be rude again: Roméo et Juliette—wonderful as it is—can suffer from longueurs. It can be perfumed, overly sentimental, la-di-da. It can be boring, frankly. The Met’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, never let it be. He conducted with his usual tender loving care. He caressed the music, or let it caress the audience. But the music was never silly under his baton. It moved, it breathed, it proceeded as it should. And it was very, very French.
Bernheim owns one of the most beautiful instruments in the world. He is almost a French Wunderlich. From his mouth, French arias—such as Roméo’s “Ah! lève-toi, soleil!”—sound almost like mélodies (i.e., French art songs). At the same time, he can summon a bit of the heroic. He did this in his love duet with Sierra, which was enrapturing. I noticed something peculiar about Bernheim: he does not flip his Rs, as singers do in French, and in German, and in other languages. He sang his Rs as he would speak them. But who would want to argue with him?
The cast in this opera is extensive, but maybe I could mention two mezzo-sopranos. Samantha Hankey, from Massachusetts, sang Stéphano. Last season, she sang a recital in Weill Recital Hall, which was outstanding. She was impressive here, too. Another American mezzo, from Pennsylvania, was Gertrude, Juliet’s nurse. That was Eve Gigliotti. She seems to make a specialty of nurses, or nannies. For several seasons, she has been practically the Met’s house nurse, or nanny. In any case, she makes the most of these roles: ever reliable, vocally, musically, and theatrically.
I hope it is not too rude to say: this was a surprisingly satisfying night with Roméo et Juliette.
The following night, the Orchestre de Paris came to Carnegie Hall, for a program of Stravinsky: two ballet scores, The Firebird and The Rite of Spring. Leading the orchestra was its music director, Klaus Mäkelä, a young Finn: aged twenty-eight. Maestro Mäkelä has had a pattern in his life (brief as it has been): he guest-conducts an orchestra, and that orchestra asks him to be its music director. In 2027, he will take over the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. He will also take over the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. At the same time.
Those are two of the most important podiums in the world. Is it reasonable for one man to occupy both? Particularly a man so young? I must say, I understand them—understand the hirers.
He has extraordinary gifts, this Mäkelä. His body fuses with music. He finds the “gestural equivalent” of the music at hand, as Lorin Maazel would say. He “got rhythm,” as Ira Gershwin would say. He can cast spells with his hands. He guides an orchestra without overcontrolling it. He is subtle (in dynamics, for example). Crucially, he has the intangible quality of leadership.
I could say a lot more, but (a) much has been said about this young phenom already, and (b) there will be many, many more years to say more.
In 2009, I interviewed Maazel, as he was winding up his tenure at the New York Philharmonic. One of the things we discussed was age and conductors. Maazel had been a hotshot young conductor; now he was an old conductor. Indeed, he had been a boy conductor. At eleven, he conducted the nbc Symphony Orchestra on the radio. Byron Janis, the pianist, died a few weeks ago, at the age of ninety-five. His obituary in The New York Times noted that, when he was fifteen, he played Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2 with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. “Lorin Maazel, who was then fourteen, conducted.”
Advancing years don’t necessarily help a conductor, Maazel told me. It depends on whether a conductor is capable of growing. There are conductors who are dull when they are young, he said, and they stay dull as they age. Other conductors are vital and savvy when they are young, and perhaps more so when they are older. It all depends, said Maazel.
Right now, Klaus Mäkelä is not merely promising. He is a real conductor, and he made those Stravinsky scores dance and thrill.
There was a phrase, years ago: “Don’t believe the hype.” Another phrase spun off from that: “Believe the hype.” There is a lot of hype, a lot of fuss, surrounding Mäkelä. Believe it. Chances are, he will be a fixture on concert stages into—what, the 2080s?
In recent months, I have reviewed a lot of young pianists—very good ones. Bruce Liu, the Canadian, aged twenty-six. Seong-jin Cho, the South Korean, aged twenty-nine. Conrad Tao, the American, also twenty-nine. Yunchan Lim, another South Korean, only twenty. Daniil Trifonov, the Russian, who is thirty-three—practically a grand old man . . .
Another Russian, Alexander Malofeev, came to Zankel Hall to play a recital. He is twenty-two. I reviewed him once before—in the 2020–21 season, when he was nineteen. I was reviewing livestreams then, when the pandemic was on. Malofeev had played Saint-Saëns’ G-minor concerto with an orchestra in Madrid. He was amazingly mature. He could play all the notes, of course, but so can many a teenager. This one stood out for his musical maturity.
In Zankel Hall, he played a mainly Russian program, a program from a different era. A program that would have been considered old-fashioned in, say, 1965. Young Malofeev is a throwback. He started with some Bach arranged by Feinberg—Samuil Feinberg, who was a genius arranger of Bach, and a genius player of Bach, on the piano. Arcadi Volodos is another pianist of today who prizes Feinberg. Then Malofeev played a variety of pieces by Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, and Medtner. Vladimir Horowitz once asked, plaintively: “Why nobody plays Medtner?” He would be pleased to know that this twenty-two-year-old, in 2024, does.
Honestly, Malofeev could have come out of Goldenweiser’s studio. (Alexander Goldenweiser was a famed teacher, who lived from 1875 to 1961. He taught a who’s who of Russian pianists, including Feinberg.) For a hundred years, a parade of pianists have been called “The Last Romantic.” There will never be a last Romantic. They keep coming, shaped by affinity.
Talking about composers, I often say, “They should write the music that is in them”—whether it is cerebral and atonal, freewheeling and “neo-Romantic,” or what have you. Something similar might be said of performers. Ursula Oppens has spent her career playing contemporary American composers. (She has a wider repertory as well.) That’s great. If someone wants to concentrate on Russian Romantics—also great, in my book.
On the second half of his program, Malofeev played Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp minor. Maybe he doesn’t know that some consider it cartoonish and ridiculous. Maybe he knows and doesn’t care. (It is a marvelous piece.) He later played Rachmaninoff’s arrangement of his song “Lilacs.” (Rachmaninoff himself recorded this arrangement, twice.)
Among Malofeev’s encores was another famous arrangement: the one that Mikhail Pletnev made of the “Pas de deux” from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. This seems to be a go-to encore for Malofeev. He played it after that Saint-Saëns concerto in Madrid, too. In Zankel Hall, he played the piece with a combination of virtuosity and heart that was almost overwhelming.
He ended the evening with more Medtner: the “Canzona serenata” from Forgotten Melodies. Not so forgotten after all.
A concert of the New York Philharmonic began with a new work, titled To See the Sky: an exegesis for orchestra. What is an “exegesis for orchestra”? Whatever a composer wants it to be, I think. In this case, the exegesis is like a little symphony, with a slow movement and all. Its composer is Joel Thompson, born in 1988. Our program notes told us interesting things, not least about “middlebrow culture”:
Thompson was born in the Bahamas to Jamaican parents. His father was a physics professor, his mother a school principal and teacher. The music with which Thompson was familiar as a boy included local Bahamian junkanoo, popular music from his parents’ Jamaican home, and their Nat King Cole records, plus gospel, which was largely an American import. But it was Time Life’s collection 100 Masterpieces of Classical Music that Thompson “wore out.”
There are people who snicker at such “middlebrow” products as that Time Life collection. But these products, these efforts, have done a world of good, for untold millions.
Mr. Thompson’s To See the Sky is neatly constructed. It shows a lively musical mind and a beating heart. This is an emotional piece, not a cool exercise (“exegesis” though it may be labeled). It is neo-Romantic, jazzy, cinematic. Are those bad words? Not from my pen, not now. All of a sudden, members of the percussion section start clapping.
Next on the Philharmonic’s program was a trombone concerto, written in 2021. Its composer is Tan Dun, who exemplifies East–West fusion, or, as I like to say, “the twain, meeting.” This concerto has a subtitle: Three Muses in Video Game. There is a backstory, which a listener can know or not know. (It makes little difference, in my opinion.) Tan Dun was intrigued by ancient cave paintings, showing now-defunct instruments. He was also intrigued by technological innovations such as video games, so important to the young. Hence, a fusion (if you will). In any event, this is a trombone concerto, in three movements.
The Philharmonic’s soloist was Joseph Alessi, who has been the orchestra’s principal trombone since 1985. He is an excellent player, in all respects. What does a trombone do, distinctively? Slide. Tan Dun makes sure his soloist slides. I thought of an ancient expression: “Smoke ’em if you got ’em.”