New Zealand conductor Gemma New led the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra in a “Prague” Symphony that was about 80% pure magic and the rest good, solid music making, like a bird soaring on thermals that occasionally has to flap its wings.
The program opened with the New York premiere of Sarah Gibson’s warp & weft. The title refers to the art of weaving, as a woman’s art not usually seen in a high-art context. Gibson introduced the work, saying that the recurring chord progression represented the warp, while the ongoing melody represented the weft. I did not find this helpful. For one thing, the chord progression, constructed of parallel triads, has a more accessible melodic aspect than most of what comes between, which is melodic only sporadically, unless perhaps one counts Klangfarbenmelodie. Toward the middle of the piece even that seems to evaporate, and it frankly begins to meander until it regains the thread (sorry) and begins to build to a strangely bottom-lacking climax.
Warp & weft is sonically and orchestrationally ingenious, though, and made for an interesting listening experience despite its structural vagueness. New delivered an incisive clarity of texture throughout, highlighting noodling on muted piano strings, aggressive quacking from the brass, hissing cymbals and defiant repeated string stabs.
Stewart Goodyear covered all the bases as soloist in Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto no. 1 in G minor, from thundering octaves and precision filigree to exquisite lyrical playing. His and New’s tempi were virtuosically fast, but not horrifyingly so; the concerto came across as a comfortable exhibition of skill, not a gallop along a precipice. I did detect a couple of difficulties in coordination between soloist and orchestra; and New coaxed such a luscious tone from the low strings in their statement of the second movement’s main tune that it stole focus from Goodyear. But pianist and conductor came together nicely to build tension before the cruise to the double bar. Goodyear’s encore, his own Panorama, inspired by his half-Trinidadian heritage, was more interesting than the concerto. Imagine if Liszt had written a Caribbean Rhapsody instead of Hungarian, except while channeling Bartók.
With the opening notes of the slow introduction, New announced that we were in for a uniquely vivid reading of Mozart’s “Prague” Symphony. Notes became gestures; gestures became drama; the music breathed and flexed. When the Allegro began, string runs had the power of horn rips, and the sheer exuberance of it conjured images of powerful animals running for sheer joy. But the Andante was truly the revelation. The slow movement of a Classical symphony overstays its welcome as often as not, just something you have to sit through to get to the finale, but New made this one a gripping adventure. Somehow she and the orchestra gave it simultaneously a grounded physicality and a floating quality. Every phrase’s intention was crystal-clear and heartbreakingly effective.
Okay, it wasn’t all magic. The gestural, dramatic approach meant that the repetition of the first movement’s exposition felt a little washed out. The third movement took a while to find its footing, and even when it did, there weren’t quite as many handles for the type of grip New had taken on the first two movements. There’s just less drama in a romp. But this was my first time hearing New conduct, and I’m a fan (a “Newbie”, perhaps?). I hope we get to hear her in New York again soon and often.
