If you need a lesson in celebrity programming used for the greater good, look no further than the Philadelphia Orchestra’s most recent subscription concerts. The majority of the audience came to hear Yuja Wang in Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto no. 1 in B flat minor – a lion of the literature that, despite its vaunted reputation, doesn’t appear that often in these environs (it was last heard locally in 2016). Yannick Nézet-Séguin smartly bookended the money slot with two works by 20th-century American composers that deserve a wider hearing and that he and the ensemble delivered with conviction and panache. ‘Come for the star but stay for the show,’ he seemed to say.
The Philadelphians premiered William Grant Still’s Symphony no. 2, “Song to a New Race” in 1937 and then promptly ignored it for nine decades. Its neglect makes little sense, as the music feels tailor-made to this orchestra’s strengths, with a luscious, vibrato-laden string complement that envelopes gossamer woodwinds and stormy percussive elements. The second movement, which opens with variations on the Jerome Kern standard The Way You Look Tonight, accomplishes the same witty juxtaposition of classical and popular music for which Rachmaninov was also prized. Still surrounded this familiar tune with snatches of the spiritual and references to jazz – attempting, in the same vein as contemporaries like William Dawson and Florence Price, to distill the Black American experience into a symphonic language. Nézet-Séguin’s reading was complex and detailed, yet easily graspable to an uninitiated audience.
Margaret Bonds made her name as an arranger of spirituals, though she was a respected and accomplished composer in her own right. The Montgomery Variations, which opened the concert, was her musical memorial to the Civil Rights Movement, centered on seismic events that occurred in the state of Alabama. Refashioning the spiritual I Want Jesus to Walk with Me, Bonds gave voice to the spiritual perseverance of Black demonstrators who organized boycotts and led protests in the face of unspeakable violence. The Orchestra traced a historical timeline across the work’s seven movements, from the triumphantly defiant attitude of March to the soulful suspension in Lament, which addresses the horrors of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. The concluding Benediction contained spiritual resolution and earthly resolve.
And what about Yuja? Two years after giving a marathon performance of all four Rachmaninov concertos with this orchestra, she managed to cram just as many musical ideas into the Tchaikovsky. Her style is bravura, sure, but it’s also thoughtful: her phrasing marvelously sculpted in the first movement, with keen attention to detail in the dynamic range. Whether playing fast or slow, eruptions and pinpricks carried the same emotional weight. Some pianists coax as much volume as Wang without as much visual effort, and hammered chords occasionally resulted in a hardening of tone. Nézet-Séguin, deferential to Wang’s preference for relaxed tempos, led a somewhat meandering performance, although individual voices within the ensemble were on top form. The sum total was appropriately exhilarating – a mood that carried into Wang’s encore, selections from Nikolai Kapustin’s 24 Preludes in Jazz Style.
