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Night of the Queen of the Night New York
Isaac Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall
06/11/2024 -
Jessie Montgomery: Hymn for Everyone
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Vado, ma dove?, K.583 – A Berenice... Sol nascente, K.61c [70]
Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Opus 68
Lisette Oropesa (Soprano)
The Met Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin (Music Director, Conductor)
Y. Nézet‑Séguin, L. Oropesa (© Samuel A. Dog)
“The Brahms ‘C Minor Symphony’ sounds morbid, strange and ugly. When it comes to an oboe and a clarinet making speeches to each other (as in the ‘Andante’), we are at great trouble in knowing what the first has said, and whether the reply of the second is pertinent or not.”
Boston Observer, 1878
Like a sudden change of course in a Mad Max movie last night, Yannick jolted aeons from his iridescent French program with his Philadelphia Orchestra last week. His new destination was a personal look at Salzburg and Hamburg. The results were far from ordinary, though. For Mr. Nézet‑Séguin is not afraid–like God–to make music in his own dynamic image.
Actually the two Mozart concert arias were stolen from him by Cuban-American soprano Lisette Oropesa. Her first aria was sung with enough charm, if the high notes were somewhat forced.
But the second piece showed more than a lyrical highly developed voice. In her early Mozart aria A Berenice, Ms. Oropesa changed colors, played with the words, ripped up and down the scale like a marathon sprinter, and offered a rainbow-colored gift to us all.
(By the way the story that A Berenice was the 13‑year‑old Mozart’s thank‑you letter to Aunt Berenice for a bar mitzvah gift is almost certainly fallacious.)
This was Queen of the Night stuff incarnate. Coloratura, yes, with scales darting past a high D. Yet also tender, with a sensuous legato. Trills worthy of any Classical diva, precise leaps over the octaves. But above all, a care for the words, a change of sounds, a miraculous merger of vocalism and verbal understanding.
J. Montgomery (© Todd Rosenberg Photos)
Preceding this, Mr. Nézet‑Séguin performed the cheerfully titled Hymn for Everyone. Jessie Montgomery, presently the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Composer-in-Residence, had written this not as a doleful hymn but an orchestral song from inspiration after a long hike.
“The melody,” she writes, “traverses through different orchestral ‘choirs’, and is accompanied by the rest of the ensemble. It is a kind of meditation for orchestra, exploring various washes of color and timbre through each repetition of the melody.”
That melody was a scale going up and down, followed later by a martial theme. The result wasn’t so much an inventive development as a course in terrific orchestration. Ms. Montgomery knows how to make brassy sections exciting, to give the timpani chances to show off, to trade hues between instruments. In a mere twelve minutes, Ms. Montgomery gave a range of colors which was ever‑intriguing, showing a mastery of her ensemble.
And needless to say, this was grist for Mr. Nézet‑Séguin’s energetic conducting.
One doesn’t usually think of Maestro Nézet‑Séguin as a Brahms conductor. Nor do I believe that Johannes Brahms would have approved the outer two movements. But this was a Yannick Production, not a Brahms Reproduction. Mr. Nézet‑Séguin gave these movements a volatility, not only in tempo but in sheer staccato energy. The first movement was not an introduction to Brahms the reluctant symphonist, but an anthem of trumpets and timpani, leading to ultra-passionate playing.
The second movement was more gentle, with lovely solo violin and clarinet solos, and the scherzo was a playful contrast of bucolic and ferocious.
The finale was less a literal paean to Beethoven to a propulsive engine where the Met’s strings were pushed to the limit, the rest of the orchestra setting to a Mahler-like chorale.
The Vienna Orchestra (and other Central European ensembles) would have been astonished , but this listener wasn’t the least embarrassed from Mr. Nézet‑Séguin’s transformation of tragedy to triumph.
Harry Rolnick
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