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Conducting Light from Darkness New York
Wu Tsai Theater, David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center
08/05/2025 -
Gabriela Lena Frank:Elegía Andina
Dmitri Shostakovich: Chamber Symphony; Opus 83a (arr. Rudolf Barshai)
Maurice Ravel: Pavane pour une infante défunte
Sergei Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Opus 63
James Ehnes (Violinist)
Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, Joana Carneiro (Conductor)
J. Carneiro (© Vasco Vilhena)
“I’ve been around for quite a while and—Pachamama (the Aztec Earth Mother) willing—I’ll be here another 50 years. I would love to hit one hundred and be active and to see how things turn out. I want to see if we get ahead of the climate crisis. I want to see if we can have this incredible, rich, vibrant, classical art form and have a whole wonderful peaceful militia of art citizens out there doing incredible humanitarian work and writing beautiful music.”
Gabriela Lena Frank
“I have never doubted the importance of melody. I like melody very much, and I consider it the most important element in music, and I labour many years on the improvement of its quality in my compositions.”
Sergei Prokofiev
The incongruity between the selections from the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center and conductor Joana Carneiro last night were almost comic. The first three works were moody, saturnine, remote almost cold. An elegy, a pavane for a dead princess, a string quartet banned for 20 years.
The Portuguese Maestro was anything but morose. No matter what the music, Ms. Carneiro was electrifying. She was graceful, sometimes dancing, the baton precise. Nothing Bernstein-style showy, but absolutely in control–and with her motions, demonstrating that she had the 60‑plus orchestra under her leadership. Was she able to make these dark openers radiant, beamy? Thank heavens, no. But she extracted the essences easily.
One doesn’t like bringing up genealogies to describe music. But Gabriella Lena Frank–like the late Tatar-Russian Orthodox-Jewish Sofia Gubaidulina–has the most variegated heritage. Let’s see. Lithuanian Jewish, Spanish, Peruvian, Aztec and Chinese gives this wonderful composer a cornucopia of choices.
Her Antrópolis played here by the LA Phil last year, was as urban as possible, an homage to the Mexican music hall. Last night, her Elegía Andina hit the jungles of the Andes. The sounds of flutes, woodblocks, trumpets, clarinets and (rarely) the full orchestra was indeed the music of the Andean jungles. The music I heard in the Ecuadorian jungles was mainly panpipes and drums, but this was an aural painting of the reality. Ms. Frank is always original, always inventive, and has her own past world to choose from.
The following Shostakovich Chamber Symphony was not from the popular 8th String Quartet. Violist/conductor Rudolf Barshai, in the heritage of Mahler and Weingartner, had orchestrated five quartets, all from a very appreciative Shostakovich.
This, the Fourth, was prohibited from performance by the anti‑Semitic Josef Stalin. And Shostakovich had the chutzpah... oh, sorry, the nerve to write Jewish folk tunes into the work.
G. L. Frank, J. Ehnes (© Mariah Tauger/Benjamin Ealovega)
That aside, this Chamber Symphony was hardly a Fiddler on the Roof. Barshai had taken the austere, almost haunted loveliness of the opening for full orchestra, and Ms. Carneiro brought out the folkish element. The original string quartet was very subjective, very personal, and Mr. Barshai’s orchestration often wandered into the usual Shosty Fifth Symphony climaxes. Yet it was still disturbing, disoriented, sometimes hypnotic. (Though the mysterious ending was counterpointed with an audience baby wailing, screaming, destroying.)
The Ravel Pavane is a masterpiece of layered orchestration, but neither the solo horn or the orchestra gave it impetus or interest.
The Second Violin Concerto, like the piano concertos, is caviar for the virtuoso. And fiddler James Ehnes was easily the right virtuoso for the job. For an audience now accustomed to somewhat remote selection, Mr. Ehnes’ opening solo promised a somewhat foreboding work. That, though, was an illusion. No cadenza here, but a movement easily lyrical and, under Mr. Ehnes’ fiddle, almost comforting. (Though the last dry pizzicato thuds are almost ghostly!)
The second movement is as beautiful as a Prokofiev ballet. Expansive, linear, leading to a typical sarcasm, then back to this lovely line. The end danced, took the violin on wild rides, and ended the evening with tumult and triumph together.
For both Mr. Ehnes and the galvanizing Joana Carneiro.
Harry Rolnick
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