The final program in this Met Orchestra season opened with Antrópolis by Gabriel Ortiz, the current holder of the Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall. A ten-minute work inspired by the legendary dance halls and nightclubs in the composer’s native Mexico City (nicknamed ‘antros’ by locals), it premiered there in 2018. The vibrant music, replete with throbbing Latin dance beats, was great fun, not least for timpanist Parker Lee, whose solo opened the piece. Yannick Nézet-Séguin handled the syncopated rhythms with great panache, the players in the groove, at one point voicing a vigorous ‘Mambo’ shout reminiscent of West Side Story.
In Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Jeremiah’ Symphony Nézet-Séguin effectively conveyed the threatening urgency of the first movement (‘Prophecy’). Driving the accents and syncopations of the second movement (‘Profanation’) even harder, he elicited a rhythmically precise, virtuosic response, perfectly depicting the general sense of bedlam and devastation during the 586 BC fall of Jerusalem. In the final ‘Lamentation’ Angel Blue’s expressive soprano movingly captured all the sadness and resentment in the Hebrew text.
Next up was the Suite from Blanchard’s 2019 opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones, the story of Charles, a young Afro-American man who transcends the hardship of his past. Fusing classical idioms with influences from the worlds of jazz, opera, and the cinema among others, the music – played continuously – proved more enjoyable than when tied to the uneven libretto. Like the opera, the Suite opens restlessly. Rising figures in the strings and brass set against a relentless drumbeat suggest the hero’s inner turmoil as he sets out to confront his childhood abuser. From there on, the music seamlessly interweaves material from all parts of the opera and moves on to a quiet, meditative closing.
The evening ended with an electrifying rendition of Dvořák’s Symphony No.9, Nézet-Séguin emphasizing dynamic changes and tempo switches, making the most of every opportunity to draw a broad, muscular sound from the ensemble. The familiar second-movement Largo, with its haunting English horn melody elegantly dispatched, sounded particularly sumptuous in its sublime reiterations by the strings. The pulsating rhythms in the Scherzo pranced along gracefully, and the Finale weaved its way homeward to a triumphant conclusion.
The post The Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall – Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Gabriela Ortiz, Bernstein, Terence Blanchard and Dvořák appeared first on The Classical Source.
