This program exploring different stages of life opened with Julia Wolfe’s Fountain of Youth, 2019, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall and the New World Symphony. The title pays homage to the young musicians of the NWS, a training orchestra founded by Michael Tilson Thomas, and to the legendary Fountain of Youth that 16th-century Spanish explorers searched for in Florida, where the ensemble is based.
The composer intended the piece to be ‘serious fun’, a large part of which comes from the surprising sounds and instrumental techniques she employs, such as to the trumpets: ‘Harmonic glissando, expressive and raw – have the mouthpiece partially out to allow for less pressure and greater freedom to get a loud, wild sound’.
The nine-minute work, permeated with touches of pop, folk, classical, jazz and rock, opens with a dense mix of fluttering strings, low timpani beats, and scraping sounds from washboards. Out of this, a soothing melody emerges and expands as other instruments join in. A crescendo leads into a buoyant and energetic expression of sound that gradually dies down and moves into a quieter, jazz-like groove, before dissolving and coming to an abrupt end. Through it all, Santtu-Matias Rouvali effectively coordinated the different elements and kept things moving along, the musicians assured and comfortable.
Making a rare New York appearance, Miah Persson in Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs, a farewell to both his life and his artistry. Since her 1998 operatic debut as Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, Persson has distinguished herself as a leading interpreter of Mozart’s lyric soprano roles. More recently she has made role debuts in the heavier Strauss repertoire. While she sang beautifully – with bright, burnished tone and the touch of imagination that the music requires – her voice was often overpowered by Strauss’s rich and harmonically complex orchestration. She began somewhat hesitantly with ‘Frühling’ (Spring), her volume decreasing as it went along. In ‘September’ she displayed a similar lightness of tone, which bore little connection with the text’s darker tone. In ‘Beim Schlafengehen’, concertmaster Frank Huang’s rapturously played solo was the highlight. In the concluding ‘Im Abendrot’, artfully shaded and shaped, Persson was at her best, but the overall impact was less than spectacular. The orchestra was clear, lush and invigorated, with Geoffrey Pilkington’s horn solo at the end of ‘September’ coming off especially well.
The evening reached its high point with Jean Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony, commissioned by the Finnish government in 1915 to mark the composer’s 50th birthday. Rouvali elicited elegant playing in the first movement – the horns and woodwinds conveying the splendor and awe of the opening paragraphs to perfection – as well as the feeling of mystery in the development, aided by some outstanding solos from bassoonist Judith LeClair. The transition was well handled, the tempos of the ensuing music feeling just right. The central Andante was mainly superb, with the chirping flutes and pizzicatos creating a wonderfully lighthearted feeling, but it was the spirited rendition of the triumphant Finale, with its the glorious swan-inspired theme taking flight in the horns, that most impressed.
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