The New York Philharmonic doesn’t just present concerts any more; in the 21st century, it offers festivals, collaborations and explorations. The orchestral concert I attended last night was the culmination of a mini-festival called “Authentic Selves: The Beauty Within”, created in partnership with the Philharmonic’s current Artist-in-Residence, countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, which had also included recitals, chamber performances and panels.
What Beethoven’s Leonore Overture no. 3 was doing opening a concert with this theme is a mystery. In any case, Jaap van Zweden led the orchestra in a spirited, capable rendition of it that did not capture my interest at all. I was more engaged when Costanzo took the stage to sing Berlioz’ song cycle Les Nuits d’été. The piece is not often sung by a countertenor; the original score specified either tenor or mezzo-soprano. Costanzo sang it in the higher octave, of course, and his voice, a salted-caramel tone balanced between sweetness and pungency, made the piece intensely personal. Most memorable were the tiny, thread-like pianissimo moments, which somehow were still heard over the orchestra, and the few places where the vocal part went low enough that he dropped shockingly into his chest voice. Van Zweden was an able accompanist here, keeping Berlioz’ primarily slow tempos from becoming lugubrious, and realizing the subtle yet inventive colors of the orchestration without drawing focus from the soloist.
It’s rare for even the best contemporary singer to seem completely at ease expressing the florid sentimentality of Romantic-era poetry (by Thèophile Gautier, seen here in English supertitles). Costanzo was no worse or better at this than most of his peers, seeming by turns either stiff or affected. This contrasted notably with his complete naturalness and vulnerability in Gregory Spears’ Love Story, a setting of a poem about loss by former Poet Laureate Tracy K Smith. This piece, a world premiere, takes the unusual tack of creating an emotional arc by giving the same text four different musical settings in succession. It proved an extremely successful tactic here. Costanzo negotiated the angular vocal lines with aplomb; the text-setting was mostly very good, with only occasionally awkward moments. The orchestral material ranged from surging, oceanic tones without vibrato, sounding practically electronic, through a triumphant neo-Baroque section and portions that seemingly drew on film-scoring language without ever touching on cliché.
The concert closed with Julius Eastman’s lost jewel Symphony no. 2. This was the last large-scale work that Eastman composed, written in the weeks after the 1983 eviction that eventually spiraled into the homelessness and substance abuse to which he succumbed at age 49. The piece was rediscovered decades later and edited and reconstructed by Luciano Chessa. The Philharmonic’s performances are the first by a professional orchestra.
Eastman was known for his uncompromising minimalism and modernism, so I was quite surprised to hear a piece that reminded me more of late Sibelius’ aphoristic utterances than anything else, albeit filtered through a more modernist sensibility. The opening statement, for instance, is a declarative violin section solo, moving at a deliberate, almost religious pace. Nothing repeats. The score calls for wildly unusual forces; in addition to six timpanists playing 24 timpani (the Philharmonic seems to have found a way to pare that down to four players and 16 drums), it requires three each of bass clarinets, contrabass clarinets, bassoons, contrabassoons, trombones and tubas. The timpani sometimes contribute to hair-raising builds, but most often provide a gravelly background texture; all those low instruments rarely take the foreground, but instead cast a shadow behind the strings and higher woodwinds. It was an effective, affecting piece, at 15 minutes over too soon.
