Gustavo Dudamel, who becomes the NY Phil’s Music Director in 2026, led this American program, opening with Stravinsky, with whom the orchestra enjoys a strong connection. Following his 1925 US debut, the composer led the ensemble 34 more times, including the 1946 premiere of Symphony in Three Movements. As conducted by Dudamel with energy and stylish flair, the music – from the powerful, frequently explosive opening movement, through the delicately meditative Andante second, to the turbulent pages of the Finale – showcased the orchestra’s splendid range.
Kate Soper’s Orpheus Orchestra Opus Onus featured her Philharmonic performing debut. The half-hour monodrama centers on the legend of the Thracian singer, poet and composer whose music was able to enchant both living and nonliving things. Mostly speaking, but sometimes singing, Soper herself portrayed the mythic musician of the title, blending a retelling of the tale with a poetic reflection on the power of the orchestra. At the start, she addresses the audience: “Is there anything like that first strike of the bow? A hundred players moving as one! All that splendor, all that might!” The orchestra vividly illustrated her argument with snippets from settings inspired by the Orpheus legend – Lully’s Orphée, Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice and Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, among others – along with passages by Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Grieg, all embedded into a lively and inventive musical tapestry accompanied by a mostly original, often humorous text that interpolates quotations from Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus. The Philharmonic played with exuberance and élan, as Soper used her seductive speaking voice and stunning soprano to make a strong case – sometimes enthralling, always entertaining – for the future of music.
The second half was taken up by an invigorating account of Philip Glass’s Symphony No.11. Cast in three movements, the engaging work is marked by the composer’s trademark cross-rhythms and arpeggios but is also brimful of unanticipated melodic passages and harmonic changes scored for a huge orchestra with a colorful nine-member percussion section and significant roles for mournful-sounding instruments such as the contrabass clarinet. After an insistent opening theme on the piano, punctuated by low brass, the first movement built into a richly layered series of wheeling arpeggios, surging strings, and constantly shifting timbres. As the dream-like beginning of the second movement gave way to a fast-paced middle section, Dudamel skillfully managed the shifting tempos and wound the movement down to a muted coda. The breathtaking Finale showed Glass and the Philharmonic at their best, the maestro – in total control – becoming more and more animated as he kept momentum going and the vibrant, polyrhythmic, increasingly cacophonous music moved from its heavily percussive opening to a well-shaped conclusion.
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