The New York Philharmonic is essentially taking a pass on the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. Instead, the orchestra is celebrating another, more relevant anniversary in 2020: the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which brought women the right to vote. What better way to do so than to celebrate women composers?
Project 19, a multiyear initiative to commission new pieces from 19 women, was inaugurated on Wednesday when Jaap van Zweden led the premiere of the Nina C. Young’s “Tread softly.”
Ms. Young, 35, describes herself as a composer and sound artist. She began her life in music as a violinist, but then became an engineer before taking up composition. She reconciled the two by becoming an “engineer of sound,” as she put it from the stage before the performance. “Problem solved.”
Her 14-minute piece takes its title from a line of Yeats: “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” This thought seemed appropriate to Project 19, she said in her remarks, since women often have dreams that come true only to be smothered. In “Tread softly,” she added, sounds emerge from the ether only to get “shut down.”
The work begins gently, with seemingly stray plucked pitches, hushed sustained tones and fluttering figures. Steady rhythmic pulses creep in almost unnoticed at first, but take hold as waves of sounds grow in density and darkness. Fragments of phrases attempt to coalesce into melodic lines but dissipate. Eventually, this initial whirl of music does give way — less, to my ears, because it is “shut down” than because it segues into another wondrous sound world.
There are intense episodes with instruments breaking into skittish bursts and pitches piling up into tart, raw harmonies. Though there is plenty of content, the manipulation of sonorities drives the music. At one point, the piece kicks into a dance episode, like a party at a rustic wedding. A curious cadenza for solo violin leads into the most tumultuous stretch, though that mood dissolves as instruments drift off, and the piece ends quizzically.
“Tread softly” was a good start to the Philharmonic’s ambitious and timely project. But placing it at the opening of a program dominated by Haydn and Mozart works isolated the new piece. Surely Mr. van Zweden could have come up with other scores that similarly explore unusual sonorities.
Still, the performances of the staples were very fine. Carter Brey, the Philharmonic’s principal cellist, was an excellent soloist in Haydn’s ebullient and inventive Cello Concerto No. 1 in C, playing with burnished sound, elegant phrasing and deft technique during the rippling finale.
Mozart never completed his Mass in C minor, for reasons that have eluded historians. As it stands, the score lasts nearly an hour, and Mr. van Zweden drew a stirring, clear-textured performance from the Philharmonic; the impressive Concert Chorale of New York, directed by James Bagwell; and four appealing soloists: the soprano Miah Persson, the soprano Susanna Phillips (taking the place of Amanda Majeski, who was ill), the tenor Nicholas Phan and the bass-baritone Andrew Foster-Williams.
Project 19 is something to celebrate. But just dropping a new piece into a standard-fare program dulled the party a bit.
New York Philharmonic
This program continues through Tuesday at David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center; 212-875-5656, nyphil.org.
Source: Music - nytimes.com
