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Outcries from Cities, Countryside and Cinema New York
Isaac Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall
11/14/2024 - & November 16*, 2024
Arvo Pärt: Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten
Gabriella Smith: Lost Coast: Concerto for Cello and Orchestra
Aaron Copland: Quiet City
John Adams: City Noir
Gabriel Cabezas (Cello), Ryan Roberts (English Horn), Christopher Martin (Trumpet)
New York Philharmonic Orchestra, John Adams (Conductor)
J. Adams (© The Kennedy Center)
“I’m trying to inject new energy into an art form that I don’t think is dead but needs to show its relevance to the world we live in. I don’t pick these subjects to be controversial. I pick them because I think they are at the psychic center of our collective consciousness.”
John Adams
“I try to put in all the emotions, but joy is the one I care most about. It’s the joy that I experience from the natural world and, honestly, the joy of making music.”
Gabriella Smith
Memorial ... Lost ... Quiet ... Dark ...
The descriptions of the four New York Philharmonic work this week sound desolate in practice. In reality, the pieces were far from lachrymose. Three of the 21st Century pieces, and one from last century encompassed a huge diversity of colors and emotions.
They were first held together by original inspiration. And second, by the exciting meticulous conducting of John Adams, who contributed a New York premiere of his own.
The two works easiest to apprehend were the shortest. Arvo Pärt never met Benjamin Britten, but learned to “appreciate the cultural purity” of his music. Alas, Britten died before Pärt could meet him. But with his Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten, the Estonian offered a moving six‑minute tribute.
The master of tintinnabulation needed no musical tricks here. The very simplicity gave an unalloyed sorrow in a pre‑Baroque cantus, in this case a repeated a minor two‑note descending motive. This, with the frequent tolling of the chime with the increasing density and volume of the strings gave a lamentation which was far from mere lament. It was a most moving tribute.
The ten-minute Aaron Copland Quiet City had a Manhattan feel, though obviously not 5 a.m. New York is many things, but “quiet” ain’t quite the right work. Besides. “Broadway babies don’t sleep tight until the dawn.”
It is a lovely piece, part Ives’ Unanswered Question, part Copland’s own atmosphere. The strings gave it the foundation. But a pair of rare instrumental solos–Ryan Roberts’ English horn and Christopher Martin’ trumpet (both First Chairs of the Phil)–gave Quiet City respectively, the cool almost mystical foundation and the image of a jazz trumpeter practicing by his tenement window. Both soloists had a reflective, even haunting artistry.
G. Smith (© Kate Smith)
The 32-year-old Gabriella Smith presented, by far, the most complex, fascinating, magical music, with abstract pictures and avian sounds. Plus (as Ms. Smith explained before the music) the tragedy of disappearing wilds, the combination of climate change, a synonym for human destruction.
Lost Coast is a part of northern California. San Francisco‑born Gabriella Smith, is an ardent backpacker, and was both ecstatic and fearful after six days hiking through the territory. The latter for the start of human destruction.
She had written several versions of Lost Coast, all for her Curtis Institute friend, cellist Gabriel Cabezas. This was the New York premiere of the full Concerto, and its 24‑minute duration was all too short.
It is a partnership of cello soloist, orchestra, and a percussion conglomeration which makes Sō Percussion seem like a single tom‑tom. Start with Ms. Smith’s “personal A‑flat water bottle”, continue with “cymbals with sounds like white noise and oceanic sounds”, kitchen objects, tin cans, “found objects that complement cello pizzicato sounds”...
Could one hear all these dozens upon dozens of original/nebulous sounds? Well, can you count the leaves on a California palm or sands on an isolated beach? No. But they exist.
Then we have Mr. Cabezas’ cello. One could no more count his harsh con legnos, his harmonic glissandi, his desolate pizzicati, and the vibrato‑less sounds from bottom to almost inaudible top, then to differentiate the percussion instruments. Which produce anthropomorphic noises from his amplified cello which defy words.
Finally we have a full orchestra with (in my ears) sounds of seagulls, winds, discordant pulses (the destruction of Lost Coast).
No this was hardly Gabriella Smith’s version of Alpine Symphony. It was more like John Luther Adams’ homages to the earth. Those, were based on repetition, harmonies, pulses and vibrations. Gabriella Smith’s creation, like nature itself, was abrupt, altering, hard to follow, but mesmerizing in its audacity.
I feel a bit impious writing about Ms. Smith’s teacher and mentor, John Adams’ City Noir. With all my reverence for Adams, especially Klinghoffer and Nixon and his fabulous early music–I found this a very tedious work.
His description was complex enough. The noir referred to both the “film noir” of the 1940’s and 1950’s, the atmosphere of Los Angeles at that time, and the music of those films.
That music was like the second of three voices to these composers. Before they turned to grand MGM productions, Max Steiner and Miklós Rózsa, were atonalists who came from Europe, giving give trills and thills to those great shadowy works. (Most directed by Europeans schooled in German Expressionism.)
Mr. Adams gave further descriptions to the three‑movement work. But most of the 35 minutes were taken up with dense orchestration, with loud outbursts, with huge percussion backing up the full orchestra, and lines that seemed to go nowhere.
Still, Mr. Adams gave us some startling solos. Two incredible saxophone cadenzas, more than enough brass outbursts, an aura of jazz. When these wonderful moments took place, the interest was intense.
Otherwise, I felt that City Noir was like a 100‑dish buffet of commonplace foods, punctuated by occasion platters of caviar, truffles and Kobe beef.
Still, one was happily attracted, if not by the music, then the ultimate conductor, John Adams himself. He was exciting (and obviously excited, exacting and–if we hard a hard time following his thoughts–he knew and achieved precisely what he had created.
Harry Rolnick
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