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Lachrymose, Lilting and Lively New York
David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center
07/30/2024 - & July 31*, 2024
Joseph Haydn: Symphony No. 49, “The Passion”
Peter Lieberson: Neruda Songs
Alberto Ginastera: Variaciones concertantes, Op. 23
J’Nai Bridges (Mezzo-Soprano)
Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, Carlos Miguel Prieto (Conductor)
C. M. Prieto (© Lorena Alcaraz & Bernardo Arcos)
“The morning is full of storm in the heart of summer. The clouds travel like white handkerchiefs of goodbye, the wind, travelling, waving them in its hands. The numberless heart of the wind beating above our loving silence. Orchestral and divine, resounding among the trees like a language full of wars and songs”.
Pablo Neruda
For the first time this week, the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center lived up to its initial word. The reason was the great Mexican conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto. Stickless, scoreless, graceful and meticulous, he led his ensemble through an inventive and perfectly balanced program. Beginning with the Ecclesiastic, continuing with the erotic-elegiac and finishing with an exuberant exercise in First Chair expertise.
Happily, Mr. Prieto made the variety less diverse than more unifying. For Haydn’s “Passion” Symphony, the entire orchestra was on call, not for a diverting Haydn but a composer going back to his Catholic beliefs. (Haydn’s brother Michael was the one with all the Masses, but Josef wasn’t bad with the liturgical stuff.) For Peter Lieberson’s setting of Neruda poems, Mr. Prieto, with special depth, allowed the Festival Orchestra to radiate equally with the mezzo soloist. And finally, Ginastera’s Variations were like the Britten Guide: Each of the First Chair players had time to shine.
The Haydn was a jolt for those expecting a jolly opening. Not a single one of the four movements was light or lighthearted. That “passion” cognomen was not for the navel but for the nave, like Bach’s Passions.
Mr. Prieto gave the opening an almost sinister energy, continuing with an equally intense Allegro. If one expected an animated Minuet, Mr. Prieto never obliged. While not exactly lachrymose, this minuet was heavy, searing, less a dance for the ballroom than for the convent.
Perhaps only in the Presto did Mr. Prieto disappoint. This is a tragic movement indeed. The conductor gave it color (those horns and oboes), but the terror was missing. This was Haydn’s idea of a solemn Libera Me, and Mr. Prieto transformed it into a Dies Irae for salvation.
A (not Catholic) confession. I had been warned–nay,commanded–not to hear the original recording of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson’s Neruda Songs. Not only was she the composer’s wife, but here her dedicatee. Suffering from cancer, she did give the first performance, a year before her death. Obviously she was not only the ideal singer but the avatar. And thus further soloists, by definition, would be inferior.
J. Bridges (© Todd Rosenberg)
I made a point of letting J’Nai Bridges do my initial honors and was so so happy. For Ms. Bridges is a towering mezzo, a woman of dramatic depth, a singer who essayed all the ranges of Peter Lieberson’s music, and–with the English surtitles–an actress who made her voice suit the words.
True, Neruda the “political” poet was nowhere to be found. These poems were pictorial (32 minutes of clouds, winds, waters, sands) and, while lovely, without his personal fervency. On the other hand, Mr. Lieberson brilliantly used a semi‑Spanish orchestration with an atonal setting to make Ms. Bridges’ words radiate.
Four of the songs were splendid. The third–“Do not leave me, even for a day”–was anguishing, tormenting, part chanted, part plaintive, the most lyrical, and–in a way–as intensive and personal as Haydn’s symphony.
Together, mezzo, French horn and orchestra made it a latter‑day Strauss Four Last Songs, with one measure from Beethoven’s “Pastoral”. Altogether an original impassioned piece.
Mr. Prieto obviously prides himself on his Central/South American heritage, and the Ginastera Concertante Variations are amongst the most delightful from the Argentine composer. The structure was simple: an unpromising theme (cello and harp), followed by variations for some of the Festival Orchestra’s terrific First Chair players.
No room for all the names, but all the variations–for flute, clarinet, viola (ravishing), a bassoon-oboe canon, a sudden tattoo for trumpet and trombone, a moto perpetuo for violin, a horn solo and a double‑bass solo–wound up in a fiesta finale with whooping brass and pounding tympani. An unchallenging finale for the ebullient conductor and his Festival players.
Harry Rolnick
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