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Tao-Ism Made Radiant New York
Lincoln Center Concert Hall
08/09/2024 - August 10, 2024
Johann Sebastian Bach: The Musical Offering, BWV 1079: Ricercar a 6 (arr. Anton Webern) – Keyboard Concerto in A major, BWV 1055
Hannah Kendall: He stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth on nothing (World Premiere)
Robert Schumann: Symphony No. 2 in C major, Opus 61
Conrad Tao (Pianist)
Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, Jonathon Heyward (Music Director, Conductor)
Part of Festival Orchestra (© Lawrence Sumulong)
“It’s easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.”
Johann Sebastian Bach
“The Idea is distributed in space. It isn’t only in one part; one part can’t express the Idea any longer, only the union of parts can completely express the Idea. The Idea found it necessary to be presented by several parts. After that, there was a rapid flowering of polyphony.”
Anton Webern
The balance of selections for last night’s concert by the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center was as perfectly aligned as a Shakespeare sonnet. We had one work written by Johann Sebastian Bach, one transformation of Bach, one original Schumann symphony inspired by Bach, and one World Premiere inspired by Robert Schumann.
The fact that the music came from three different centuries was relevant only in demonstrating that music does not “progress” in a Darwinian sense. Rather, it has the DNA or genes or (as Anton Webern writes above) the Idea which continues through the centuries.
To this listener, the concert had an indisputable triumph in Conrad Tao playing the Bach A Major Keyboard Concerto. Mr. Tao, like a quantum mechanical electron, can move through time and space with such speed that one can rarely catch up with his greatness. Perhaps one could call him the descendent of a Hamelin or Kemp. But Mr. Tao has his own way to make his performances shine as if nothing had preceded them.
One might imagine that a modern pianist could make the Bach A Major Piano Concerto as a pedantic exercise or a flamboyant showpiece. Mr. Tao took a third path. This was a concerto of joy without icing on the cake.
C. Tao (© Brantley Gutierrez)
The fingers were not only perfect, but they danced around the keyboard like those electrons. Perhaps he offered an unwritten trill or two, but they only added to the structure as a whole Bach composition. One can claim that these concerti were Bach’s “less serious” side. Tao obviously thought they were delicious exercises to be played straight (so to speak), since one can hardly improve on the Baroque Master of Masters.
Mr. Tao continued with an impossible encore. Elliott Carter wrote Caténaires (curves) at the age of 98. Not a single chord or harmony, simply (!!) lines of notes played at electron‑speed changing meters, volumes, accents, rhythms, at an unheard‑of velocity.
Mr. Tao dun it right. I ain’t religious, but won’t argue that I am now a highly devout Taoist.
The other Bach work, the Ricerare from The Musical Offering, had been transformed by Anton Webern. This, along with Schoenberg’s Brahms rendition, is one of the greatest metamorphoses of any dodecaphonist, albeit with very different results.
Jonathon Heyward tried his best with his orchestra, but those sparest of lines, the leanest of instrumental solos for virtually each note, merged into each other. Perhaps only recordings, with mikes catching every solo, can succeed. Here it sounded like a marginally muddled Bach.
The single World Premiere was by British composer Hannah Kendall, with a title from the Book of Job. The quote, He stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth on nothing, is a metaphysical one, worthy of John Donne. The eight‑minute work was athematic (as far as I could hear), but was extremely colorful, starting with growls from the bass trombone, evolving into more brass, evolving into full orchestral color.
Ms. Kendall had said she was influenced by the sufferings of Robert Schumann, but that was a distraction for an interesting work.
That Schumann 2nd Symphony was conducted by Mr. Heyward with as much spirit and excitement as he could rev up by his orchestra. But this piece needs more than conductorial impetus. It needs a large orchestra (the Festival Orchestra is a mere 42), it needs swelling and turbulence, not simply a meteoric first and last movement.
The Adagio was warm and lovely indeed. And that finale, even at a near‑reckless pace, blazed ahead to a triumphal finish.
Harry Rolnick
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