Most Mozart Festival Orchestras bear the names of festivals that no longer exist, but they still maintain their place in the new creative landscape of Lincoln Center, with 12 concerts in the past three weeks. showed.
In April, Lincoln Center announced this year’s new simplified festival, “Summer for the City.” It incorporates (or actually replaces) a huge number of offerings such as the Mostly Mozart Festival and Midsummer Night Swing. Shanta Sake, Chief Artistic Officer of Lincoln Center Said Due to the organization’s civic role, the updated lineup is still sprawling, but its focus is squarely on the community. With ballroom dancing, a Pride and Juneteenth celebration gathering, and a tribute to Brooklyn-born hip-hop star Notorious B.I.G., many events were free and filled the schedule.
Central to Lincoln Center’s long-standing identity, classical music was allotted about two and a half weeks of prime time in the middle of a three-month calendar.
How does a genre that has battled accusations of elitism fit in with the populism of ‘Summer for the City’? No time wasted in delivering an expansive, breezy yet focused concert.
I attended the first four programs before being pulled out due to COVID-19, and the concerts I saw were very successful. They largely followed a template of spotlighting highly individual soloists and quietly emphasizing the inclusion of works by black composers that had been neglected over the years.
The series began with a free show at Damrosch Park juxtaposing the work of black composers and their contemporaries. An evocative overture to Joseph Boulogne’s “L’Amant Anonyme” flowed seamlessly into a lively and elegant exposition of Mozart’s 17th Piano Concerto. William Grant’s glass-like, small-scale work connected more tenuously with George Gershwin’s ecstatic “Rhapsody in Blue.”
Pianist Conrad Tao seemed to revel in Gershwin’s crowd-pleasing tunes and directing his own symphony on keyboard. At one point, with sirens blaring in the distance, he stopped and looked at the audience as if to say, “I’ll be waiting.” The crowd loved it.
Prior to the concert, Thake led the audience in a verbal ritual derived from the three themes of Summer for the City: “Summer for the City” (Remember, Relive and Rejoice). This is a reflection of the healing process the community has undergone during the pandemic.
The orchestra played a total of six programs, twice each on consecutive days. All five of his other programs were at Alice Tully Hall, with a minimum fee of $5 and a model of choosing a payment method. The concert lasted no more than 90 minutes without intermission.
Whether it’s the price of a ticket, the attractive playing time, or the chance to escape the debilitating heat, concert-goers seem exuberant and unguardedly enthusiastic, clapping between symphonies. And in the first program at Alice Tully Hall, conductor Shang Chan played Beethoven’s No. 4 tight, Given what you’ve read definitively, why not? Summer seems like a good time to shed your layers and get into concert etiquette.
There’s something heartening about seeing crowds in shorts and T-shirts jumping around the concert hall to cheer on the spectacular productions of Ravel, Barber and Jacques Ibert. Shakes the notion that casual atmosphere and high musical value are incompatible.
As the brilliant Trinidadian soprano Janine de Vique sang a rendition of Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” I was so moved and so closely observed that I instinctively reached out my husband’s hand. did. De Beek’s rich, down-to-earth voice seemed to blossom from deep within her, taking on a thin, shimmering quality towards the upper end of her range.
Other soloists included saxophonist Stephen Banks, who radiated mellow charm with the lengthy lines of Glazunov’s concertos. Violinist Augustin Harderich delves into the raw strangeness of Ravel’s Tzigane, bringing out the warm midrange of Guarneri’s violin, which is relatively rare in Boulogne. and violinist Joshua Bell, who performed works by Florence Price and Henri Vieuxtemps in a concert I missed, led by Jonathon Hayward, who will become the Baltimore Symphony’s first black music director in 2023.
Replacing printed programs with QR codes felt like a nod to budget constraints, casual trimmings of concert amenities, and the ongoing new pandemic normalcy. However, it drew at least one major complaint from attendees.
As if to answer it, Langré took the stage and offered an amusing explanation before a lucid description of Ravel’s “Mother Goose” Suite. Conductor Roderick Cox, despite the peculiar atmosphere of Barber’s “Knoxville” and Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” suites suffering from the climax of his shapeless orchestral performances a few nights later He spoke emotionally about his program.
There were also new frontiers: Nokuthula Ngwenyama wrote the beautifully direct “Primal Message” (2020), a more emotional version of the Arecibo message sent into space in 1974. Concert.
If the series told a story of memory, rebirth, and rejoicing, it seemed appropriate to conclude with Mozart’s Requiem.
But here’s another story. Langre’s contract runs through the 2023 season, and the orchestra’s contract is in negotiations in February (Take has already expressed his desire to join next season).
If these concerts felt like auditions for the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra to join Saake’s new Lincoln Center, the ensemble did everything it could to secure the role.
