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Musical Landscapes New York
David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center
07/23/2024 - & July 24, 2024
Huang Ruo: City of Floating Islands (Parts 1 and 2) (North American premiere)
Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 6 in F Major “Pastoral”, Opus 68
The Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, Jonathon Heyward (Conductor, Music Director)
J. Heyward (© Laura Thiesbrummel)
“Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises,/Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.”
William Shakespeare’s Caliban from The Tempest, III, ii
The premiere concert of the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center last night began a couple of miles from Lincoln Center. And while this was certainly an inceptive idea, the peripatetic Part One of Huang Ruo’s City of Floating Islands was, to say the least, a disappointment.
Briefly, those planning to watch the Festival Orchestra (né Mostly Mozart Orchestra) were to download meeting‑place around Lincoln Center up to a mile away, and choose where they would gather with their Iphones or Androids. There, they would listen to Huang Ruo’s music as they traipsed–like tour groups let by people with flags–to Lincoln Center itself.
I chose the 59th Street entrance to Central Park. My app was ready, my legs were ready, the music started in my Android.
Five minutes later, I turned the metal machine off, I stuck the machine in my pocket and tried to forget the whole trick. Charles Ives did the whole thing (including Central Park) totally with orchestra.
Perhaps hikes from other starting points (11th Avenue, 72nd Street), music and conversation and street‑scenes might have coalesced. Not though in Central Park, which, as always, seduced me. The plethora of greenery, the massive rock formations, the tunnels, the families and kids, the gorgeous dogs, the ball players, the lakes, the sun starting to set over the welkin were quite sufficient without tin‑horn noises coming from a toy machine.
Or, to paraphase Walt Whitman, “After hearing those remote noises from a primitive listening device, I closed the metal gimmick, and gazed with wonder at Nature itself.”
H. Ruo (© CTV Santa Cruz County)
Part Two of Huang Ruo’ tribute to his Manhattan home was conducted by the young Jonathon Heyward and his Festival Orchestra. The composer’s idea was a simple structural one, augmented by different lighting designs. And it worked.
The music could be imagined as a slow morphing of three paintings. First the simple emptiness or single line of, say, Josef Albers. This turning into a Frans Hals painting with gaggles of people. And these figures moving into a Balinese painting, where every inch, every millimeter of the canvas is filled with faces, bodies, animals, plants.
In effect, Huang Ruo started with a solitary note held for perhaps a minute or two. A few quarter‑tone diversion, nothing more. It resembled the opening of Mahler’s First or Ravel’s Daphnis without the bird‑calls.
From here, a few horn calls, more woodwinds–still with that long extended note, on cellos or violins. And now the instruments gradually, very gradually, came out of the woodwork. Not as a long fugue but as dynamic abstractions. Tootles branching into melodic figments, near‑hidden phrases branching out to near‑improvisations.
Over 42 minutes, that long long note was overpowered, actually overwhelmed by the entire Festival Orchestra. It was, spatially like one of those cluttered Balinese paintings, But the Indonesian figures were static. Here, everything (except that now barely‑heard original note) moved, scattered, clattered, smashed with others.
Once one realized how Huang Ruo brought–or collided–the orchestra, one got the idea. Yet it was still a magical one. Like walking on a solitary lane then turning into couple of gangs and then into the masses of the world. And while the last note was no surprise it was still an entrancing idea done by a master of orchestral colors.
Conductor Heyward had his work cut out for him, but the following Beethoven Sixth Symphony was obviously more challenging. As well as being another tribute to visions of nature. The first urban, the second pastoral.
The Festival Orchestra about half Beethoven’s ensemble. I counted 41 players, just right for the zesty, rolling rhythms for the first three movements. As to the storm, up came white‑haired timpanist David Punto with some roaring thunder a storm und drang.
The Sixth had one added gift. Never have I heard this French-horn-heavy symphony without at least one fluff, one blatt, one off‑note. The two horn‑players were error‑free! Can they repeat that for the second performance? Possibly. But their notes are far more difficult than... well, than a walk in the park.
Harry Rolnick
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