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Conductor Rouvali’s Trio of Triumphs New York
David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center
11/07/2024 - & November 8, 9, 12, 2024
Julia Wolfe: Fountain of Youth
Richard Strauss: Four Last Songs
Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 5 in E‑flat major, Opus 82
Miah Persson (Soprano)
New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Santtu-Matias Rouvali (Conductor)
S.-M. Rouvali (© Chris Lee for NY Philharmonic)
“Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist.”
Franz Liszt
If, as rumor has it, that the young Finnish conductor Santtu‑Matias Rouvali may be spending much more time with the New York Philharmonic, last night’s performance gave us a trio of motivations to make that come true. In fact, he took three most dissimilar works, gave them his individual stamp and gave a cohesive splendid sense to the whole evening.
Actually, I must apologize. The New York Phil premiere of Julia Wolfe’s Fountain of Youth was such a monumental soundscape that one could hardly put a “personal” touch.
The reason was twofold. First, Ms. Wolfe composed it was “serious fun”, not just for Michael Tilson Thomas’s virtuosic training orchestra, not just for the titular Florida “fountain of youth”. But for the huge resounding Miami New World Center, one of architect Frank Gehry’s masterworks.
In Lincoln Center, with less youthful artists (though a happily youthful conductor), we were given a huge soundscape which rarely settled down to mere music. We started with loud fluttering strings, intercepted by percussive snaps. We continued with more blasts in this tapestry of sound with trumpets, horns, trombones in two guises.
First, in near-blues style notes easing into notes almost glissandi style. The second carnation showed the trombones and horns wailing downward. At first it sound like an ambulance call soaring above the strings. Then I realized that Shostakovich used the same ambulance sound in one of his “Revolution” symphonies.
We had a few moments of relative quietude, even a few bars of Rock. But Fountain of Youth quickly resumed its grandiose effects.
Two things. First, I wish I could have studied the score. The single aural Guernica style painting obviously had great changes that were difficult to hear. Second, I kinda wish Ms. Wolfe had tweaked this sometimes menacing work so it could have been a “Death‑Symphony” for certain events that took place on Tuesday.
Before the second work, I had time to muse on the corporate merger of Death. And Richard Strauss.
First, this weekend’s Four Last Songs. Last week, we heard Metamorphosen with the same NY Phil.
Those were literally in Strauss’s “autumn years”. In his young glory days, he gave us gory multiple deaths in Elektra and Salome. And before that, the triumphant death in Heldenleben, the maudlin demise in Quixote, the funny death in Eulenspiegel (close to Porky Pig’s “Th‑th‑th‑that’s all, f‑f‑f‑olks”).
Did I forget anything? Oh, sorry. Death and Transfiguration!
It was time for that terrific Swedish Strauss soprano Miah Persson to warble the Four Last Songs. If her bearing was that of a Martha Stewart dinner table, her voice was as pure as a carafe of Champagne.
M. Persson (© Reka Choy)
Yes, it was oh as beautiful as one could imagine. The swooping up to the highest range in the opening “Spring” was more like a gentle fountain than a diva trick. Her intensity grew through the next two songs. And in the final words, “How tired we are in wandering. Is this perhaps death?”, one almost cried with Ms. Persson.
The New York Phil responded with equal clarity under Mr. Rouvali. Even those of us accustomed to the underlying emotions of, say, a Jessye Norman or the fluttering feelings of a Janet Baker, perhaps disappointed in such a clean pristine performance last night, had to admire the relationship with so disciplined orchestra.
Yet it was the finale, Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony, that Mr. Rouvali showed a singular, sometimes idiosyncratic genius.
As children, we waited for those grand French horn climaxes, the sudden changes of minor to major. Growing up, we appreciated the perfect orchestration, the inherent color. (Sibelius did remark once that the most perfect orchestrator was Mozart.)
What Mr. Rouvali accomplished was even more stunning. He turned Sibelius into a 20th Century composer! What that opening movement lacked in physical energy was made up for by chunks of almost pointillistic blocks from the orchestra. No, this was not Debussy, but it was an acknowledgement from the Finnish conductor that Sibelius’ logical Schummanesque first symphonies had to be morphed into a musical universe of uncertainty, of stops and starts (and clues to the finale), where logic gives way to instinct and particles and, yes, darkness.
That was the cerebral conductor at work. The segue to the finale was beautifully managed, and the mood in the last movement was suitably disciplined, the strings articulated and the horn climaxes as exciting as they were when we were children.
Briefly, then, Santtu-Matias Rouvali is a conductor with total control, with the intelligence to understand the complete meaning of any long work, and an unpredictably which never imposes mere eccentricity.
A rare and gratifying combination.
Harry Rolnick
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