Notes on Notes

Bruckner Faces Exodus Following Bounty Of Modern

Ellen Reid, right, accepts applause after the world premiere of her new work by the New York Philharmonic.
(Photos by Chris Lee)

By Leslie Kandell

NEW YORK – The New York Philharmonic concert on Feb. 20 was, if not upside-down, contemporary in more ways than one. A world premiere by Ellen Reid was followed by Renée Fleming performing songs by the Swedish composer Anders Hillborg and by the Icelandic entertainer Björk. The unlikely second half was Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, known as the Romantic. This odd mix made quite the showcase for music director Jaap van Zweden.

Judging from the empty seats in Geffen Hall after intermission, listeners came for the new work, or for the renowned soprano trying out Björk. Then they took a pass on the symphony, which in former days was what they would have come out to hear.

Spoken introductions forced the Reid and the Björk into a context of current reality. Reid’s 10-minute When the World as You’ve Known It Doesn’t Exist is one of 19 Philharmonic commissions from women for Project 19, a nod to the centenary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the vote. Reid was awarded the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for p r i s m, an opera for two singers and four dancers, and has been visible ever since, in chamber music, art, and film.

Before the performance, she described “tracing a new, dizzying feeling, good and bad,” and suggested that recent world events have given the audience similar feelings of being unmoored. (There was a ripple of assent.) And Fleming, before singing Björk’s “Virus” (“I feast inside you”), took a microphone and reminded listeners that this selection had been planned long before the frightening coronavirus outbreak.

Renée Fleming performing with the Philharmonic under Jaap van Zweden.

When the World… is a sympathetic piece, reaching out for understanding rather than making an off-putting statement. It begins with high percussion, closely woven and jingling, before becoming string-heavy and clinky. Off to one side, Eliza Bagg, Martha Cluver, and Esteli Gomez moan in harmony. (These sopranos come from Roomful of Teeth, the choral octet that brought forth Caroline Shaw, who has also been awarded a Pulitzer Prize and a Project 19 commission, to be heard later.)

The orchestra, building, pounds and gallops on, with bass drum, to wordless wailing; clots of brass shoot out. An isolated flute takes over, joined by cymbals and other instruments. The piece calms down, all play lyrically and dwindle off. So we’ll be okay, maybe.

Fleming’s Björk songs were preceded by two Hillborg Strand Settings, composed for her. They are from the Canadian-American poet Mark Strand’s 45-poem cycle, and had their premiere in 2013 with the Philharmonic under Alan Gilbert. So they were familiar sledding to Fleming. (Words appeared on a surtitle screen, though Fleming’s diction is chiseled and fabulous.)

“Dark Harbor XXXV” evokes the words, “Kisses are the subject” in rushing sounds, plucked and swizzling strings, and cymbals.  The vaguely lyrical voice line has huge intervals – a couple of them, like “the mascara of Eden,” too high for her, but so what? “Dark Harbor XI” is in a Samuel Barber mode – Knoxville: Summer of 1915 or “Sure On This Shining Night” – brought out in phrases like “overflowing of mildness” and “Of our freedom while still the captives of dark.” The poem’s last verse calls up “terrible omens of the end,” which Reid also worries about.

Van Zweden ended the program with Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony.

Björk, the Icelandic singer/songwriter, ranges over musical borders in her eclectic style, drawing on influences and genres from – in part – electronic, pop, classical, and avant-garde. Fleming’s two choices are art song, original and pleasurable: “my host is you…My sweet adversary, oooh oooh” is easy to hum after the concert. Fleming has been dipping into jazz since her Potsdam college days hanging out in Alger’s Pub. It’s probably harder than it looks to get the “I’ll have what she’s having” effect, but Fleming is a stylish champion. Björk’s version is on YouTube.

About face to the 67-minute Bruckner on the concert’s plump second half. A famous Wagner acolyte, Bruckner knew a thing or two about brass. The symphony has plenty of tunes loud enough to impress, and ample fat-bottom passages. (The orchestra’s principal horn position hasn’t been filled yet, and a couple of brass mishaps were surely attended to in the two repeat concerts.)  Van Zweden, to quote Scripture, showed strength with his arm, and in the second movement drew smooth, rich, delicious sound. This is, of course, one of the great orchestras.

Leslie Kandell has contributed to The New York Times, Musical America, Musical America Directory, and The Berkshire Eagle.

Peter Serkin, Following His Own Path

This article doesn't have New York Times font, because I don't know how to scan the original in, but this is the text.

A remembrance:

Articles about Peter Serkin often mention his satisfying present life, now that he is acknowledged as a pianist unsurpassed in the wide-ranging repertory he embraces, and is happily married with a houseful of children.

His search for serenity, and the need to search, date to his boyhood. His father, the revered pianist Rudolf Serkin, was a legendary interpreter of the traditional literature. Serkin naturally wanted to guide his prodigiously gifted son, who made his concert debut at age 12, to practice this way, not that way, and to listen to this music, not that.

But the precocious youngster was curious about new works, and drawn to sounds of Asian and American music. For him, knowing how to play piano was a way into that world where the answers were, or the questions. It is easy to see him feeling torn and criticized, especially as a teenager at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, where his father was among his eminent teachers.

Small wonder that in the dashiki-and-beads hippie culture of the 60's, he would turn on and drop out, till he understood he was too good to run away from himself any more, and that he had better come back from Mexico and be the superb pianist he already was.

The curiosity never left him, though he shies away from discussing it. Now a renowned, idiosyncratic artist of 51, Mr. Serkin can now look back as well as forward in study and performance. He pulls neglected concertos out of the closet, and is a persuasive proponent of new and difficult music.

Responsibly commissioning and championing contemporary works, he is also devoted to the heart of darkness--standard German works--and even picks up a few passage notes in Brahms that his father might have dropped. He has recorded the Bach Inventions and the enigmatic Duets, (for BMG) and going Glenn Gould one better, recorded the Goldberg Variations three times.

Mr. Serkin’s recitals compel a focused quiet that is almost Asian. His best interpretations are strikingly pristine, as if an immense intellect were illuminating notes from the bottom. With his hands, he creates a visible, quixotic vibrato, which he says continues the tone. To say he is lost in his playing does not give the right image. He is found in it.

He once put together an entire concert of commissioned works, which he now drops one by one, like depth charges, into his programs of traditional music. And some of the concertos he totes around are like large species found only in the Galapagos: Reger, Schoenberg, Hindemith, Stravinsky. He approaches them as meaty chamber works, rather than with external Teutonic force.

The span of his journey is reflected in this afternoon’s solo recital, to inaugurate a Classical-Music-In-The-Schools program in Greenport, where his brother and sister have homes. The recital, virtually sold out at press time, includes Mozart and Beethoven, (Classical masters) Chopin and Debussy and Messiaen (tracing French pianism) Schoenberg, from the Second Viennese School, and two of his musical descendents, György Kurtág and George Benjamin.

Though he is friendly or perhaps has family history with many composers whose work he performs, Mr. Serkin has not met Mr. Kurtag, an eccentric Hungarian who composes small, even fragmented pieces that are sometimes grouped together by his colleagues. From his “Games,” Mr. Serkin chose two he describes as extremely short and playful, about a minute long.

Mr. Benjamin’s short “Meditation on the Name of Haydn” is built on connections between notes and letters of Haydn’s name. Mr. Serkin has met the composer and sympathizes with his burden of having been a favorite pupil of Messiaen, whose stunning works Mr. Serkin performs with some frequency, considering how complex and difficult they are.

One composer visiting Tanglewood, where Mr. Serkin teaches in the summer, directed that her string quartet be performed the way Beethoven is played. “That’s not necessarily conceited, as long as one’s Beethoven is bold enough,” Mr. Serkin said in an interview there last year. “Schoenberg for some of us is like Beethoven, and he asked for his music to be played like Schubert. It’s the sense of treating it with the same respect and care.”

Some years ago, an eminent composer said that if audiences “won’t listen to Bartok, they have no right to listen to Beethoven.” “I’m not quite as doctrinaire as that,” Mr. Serkin said. “It’s only natural to be interested in music of our own time, music written now. But I’d never insist on a quota--it implies that it’s something unpleasant to be somehow swallowed. It’s a natural continuity from the boldness of older music. Beethoven was shunned as being crazy, and Bach was threatened for his wild improvisations. One can still be in touch with it. Conversely, the music of today requires a relatively spontaneous, open mind.”

Mr. Serkin’s biggest concern about performing new commissions is that he won’t see the music in time to learn it for the concert. Aside from that, he said, “I can’t account for players who avoid new music. I think people are hungry for it. I suspect that the public has a more open mind than it is generally credited with. All one can do is follow one’s own path.”