Karen Kamensek, conducting the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center at Summer for the City, made introductory remarks in a winningly breezy style, before launching into Jacques Ibert’s Divertissement in a similarly breezy style, even graciously acknowledging between-movement applause. But while the quieter moments were gorgeous and lucid, louder passages and entire movements were muddy despite their energy, possibly because not enough adjustment had been made for the smaller ensemble’s concentration toward the center of the stage. The few somber moments in this generally genial and raucous piece were passed over without emphasis, missing a chance to have shadows cast the highlights into more vivid relief.
Certainly when the entire string section took the stage for Benjamin Britten’s Les Illuminations there were no issues with clarity. The “trumpet call” figures at the beginning were hard-edged and compelling, and throughout the 20-minute song cycle the strings were elegantly, economically communicative. However, while soprano Gabriella Reyes has a thrilling voice, this was not a piece that suited her well. A couple of the songs required more agility than she seemed able to command while negotiating the bottom of her range. As Arthur Rimbaud’s pre-Surrealist texts do not make logical sense, the projection of mood is essential, but Reyes seemed not to have made any decisions about what the poetry was saying.
She had a much stronger connection to the texts of Osvaldo Golijov’s Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra. Even her diction was clearer. The first of the songs began as an a cappella lullaby, but primarily consisted of what sounded like a transcription for orchestra of klezmer music. The latter two, both elegiac in nature, were melancholy and affecting. In Golijov’s eclectic vocabulary, the poetry of Emily Dickinson can lend itself to something like a cross between a contemporary aria and a torch song; Reyes seemed more at home here, both vocally and interpretively.
Kamensek took back the spotlight for George Bizet’s Symphony in C major, written to fulfill an assignment when he was a 17-year-old student and never performed during his lifetime. Kamensek made the architecture and logic clear, and phrasing and balances were generally good, the one exception being a failure to make the first movement’s string pizzicato sections audible. But the first movement had some distracting ensemble issues, with brass and timpani lagging behind strings and woodwinds. And in the finale, Kamensek emphasized the slower rhythm of the phrases, rather than of the beats, making the whole thing feel about a quarter of its actual tempo.
The slow movement provided the evening’s one piece of undeniable magic. Ryan Roberts’ featured oboe solos were sinuous and expressive, and Kamensek and the orchestra traveled in their wake to a sublime plateau. Would that more of the evening could have been spent there.
