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    Review: The Great Emerson String Quartet Takes Its Final Bow

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    A pillar of chamber music for nearly a half-century, the Emerson players bid farewell with Beethoven’s Opus 130 and Schubert’s String Quintet.Farewell to the Emerson String Quartet, a group that has beaten at the heart of chamber music in the United States, and far beyond, for almost half a century.More than two years after the essential string quartet of its era announced that it had decided to retire, its players took their final bows on Sunday before an Alice Tully Hall audience that paid them the best tribute any musician can hope to receive: listening, and listening well.The time was right, and the place was, too. It was on a Sunday in 1981 that the Emerson made its breakthrough on that very stage, playing all six Bartok quartets in a single, three-and-a-half-hour-plus sitting. The host of Sunday’s concert, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, is the institution for which the Emerson served as quartet in residence from 1982 to 1989, and for which its cellist David Finckel left the ensemble in 2013 to co-direct.Finckel’s departure permitted his successor, Paul Watkins, to spend a decade with the violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer to his right, and Lawrence Dutton, the violist, to his left. Even at the end, as Finckel rejoined the group for one last performance of the Schubert String Quintet, Watkins looked as if he could barely believe his luck.Who would feel any differently? For if Sunday’s concert was a reminder of anything, it was that the Emerson String Quartet was never just a string quartet. It was an establishment, a touchstone, a catalyst. Entire generations of listeners grew up with its recordings, or made one of the hundred and more concerts it undertook each year, with famous collegiality, a habitual date in their diaries. As early as 1984, George Tsontakis had composed it a piece called “Emerson,” as if it already owned the genre; Sarah Kirkland Snider, the last living composer whose music it played, has written that, to her, the Emerson catalog had appeared to be “the definitive interpretation of all the great string quartets in history.”From left, Drucker, Setzer, Watkins and Dutton in the concert’s first half.Da Ping LuoWas the Emerson the Emerson to the end? Close enough. “We were afraid of going on too long,” Setzer said recently, and Sunday suggested that he, Drucker and Dutton have stopped at the timeliest of moments, without cause for regret. Watkins, a soloist and a conductor before he took his chance, still has half his career ahead of him. There were speeches on Sunday, quiet notes of pathos, even a joke or two, but nothing really to get in the way of the music, which is as it should be. The Schubert received a heartfelt performance of inimitable focus, and before it came Beethoven’s Opus 130, with the “Grosse Fuge” duly included as its finale. It was exactly the valediction that one would have hoped for.It was also touching. Nobody could pretend that Sunday saw the Emerson reclaim the heights from which it conquered chamber music, though it was hardly far-off. If its most celebrated predecessors, the Juilliard after World War II and the Guarneri later on, were responsible for a boom in American quartet playing, then it was the Emerson’s part to demonstrate how accomplished a quartet could become. Surely it was not a coincidence that Setzer, who once told The New York Times that “when things aren’t together in the quartet, it sets off a real alarm,” was the son of two violinists in George Szell’s Cleveland Orchestra, and taught by two of its concertmasters.It did not take the Emerson long to set the formidable technical standards that we take for granted among chamber musicians today. “After five minutes of playing,” the critic Bernard Holland wrote of that Bartok concert in 1981, “one began to assume perfection. There were no disappointments.” There are none to be heard, either, in the Emerson’s recorded legacy, which, with all its vitality and its security, Deutsche Grammophon ensured defined the sound of a quartet in the digital age. Hearing them now is to be confronted with persistent excellence, an enduring commitment to quality that any musician would be proud of.If there was ever a justified criticism of the Emerson, it was that its playing was too responsible, too objective, too bland. That was not the case at its passing. Rarely can this ensemble have shaped Schubert’s melodies with such humanity and poignancy, or given such a raw, intense account of the Beethoven fugue. The Cavatina, the delicate emotional core of the Opus 130, will resound in the memory as little short of heartbreaking, and for all the right reasons: As its song faltered on the first violin, it seemed to be embraced, as if the other instruments were helping it through.Farewell, then, to the Emerson. But not to what made it great.Emerson String QuartetPerformed on Sunday at Alice Tully Hall, Manhattan. More

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      Translating the Music of Trees Into the Sounds of Opera

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      The tech-forward composer Tod Machover has made a chamber opera of Richard Powers’s novel “The Overstory,” featuring Joyce DiDonato.Musical themes abound in the work of the novelist Richard Powers, often intertwined with science and social issues. The parallel decoding of Bach and DNA (“The Gold Bug Variations”), the saga of an interracial family of classical performers unfolding against the events of the Civil Rights era (“The Time of Our Singing”): A signature of Powers’s novels is the virtuosity with which he weaves these strands into narratives that seem both surprising and inevitable.With his 12th novel, “The Overstory,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2019, Powers draws on the findings of dendrology (the study of trees) and contemporary environmental anxieties to hint at a music that is always present but largely unrecognized — that of nature itself, as represented by the lives of trees.Powers said in an interview that his “preoccupation with the more-than-human world, the living world beyond the human” had pushed his work in a new direction for “The Overstory,” which he called “the most operatic of my novels.” It is told on a large scale, with an extended cast of characters, wide geographical scope and a long time frame.The composer Tod Machover sensed this operatic potential as soon as he read it and was especially drawn to its relevance. “The subjects Powers brings together here are so important,” Machover said in a phone interview from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, where he directs the Opera of the Future group. “I’ve always wanted to write a theatrical work with many strands that come together in an unusual way.”Machover’s first pass at the material, “Overstory Overture,” a brief chamber opera featuring Joyce DiDonato, premieres on Tuesday at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center. The work, which was conceived both as a prelude to a full-scale opera and as a stand-alone piece, was commissioned by the string orchestra Sejong Soloists — their largest contemporary commission to date — and will be performed under the young conductor Earl Lee.Machover’s score.Alex Hodor-Lee for The New York TimesMachover — a composer, inventor, educator and researcher into the interface between music and technology — has developed novel approaches to electronics and is a trailblazer in the applications of artificial intelligence to music. “Overstory Overture” blends electronic and instrumental sonorities with DiDonato’s voice and acting to portray the book’s protagonist, the dendrologist Patricia Westerford. Four closely woven scenes distill not only her trajectory but also the novel’s larger themes of communication, environmental devastation and what Machover described as “the necessity of getting outside yourself and of recognizing connections we take for granted.”More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.Feeling the Buzz: “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” is back on Broadway. Its stars? An eclectic cast of dancers who are anything but machines.This isn’t the first operatic adaptation of Powers’s fiction. When the Belgian composer Kris Defoort’s reworking of “The Time of Our Singing” had its premiere in Brussels in 2021, it made for “a lovely closing of the circle,” Powers said, taking his music-centered narrative and “putting it back into musical form.”But the challenges posed by “The Overstory” are different. Powers said several composers had expressed a desire to adapt it to the opera stage but he chose Machover because of a longstanding admiration for his music and a thematic affinity. He noted that works like Machover’s “Death and the Powers: The Robots’ Opera” (2010) examine issues of technology and its human ramifications that are very close to concerns in his earlier novels.“It was interesting to me that both Tod and I, who had explored human-machine interdependence, have now shifted attention to the interdependence between humans and other living things,” Powers said. A fan of DiDonato, he added that he was “completely delighted” when he learned that she would create the role of Patricia Westerford — “the heart and soul of the whole book who ties all the rest of it together.”DiDonato.Alex Hodor-Lee for The New York TimesMachover.Alex Hodor-Lee for The New York TimesRather than become involved in creating the libretto, Powers said he preferred it to be done by “people who know how to target the viscera and the minds of people inside a concert hall in real time.” Machover turned to the British writer, actor and director Simon Robson, with whom he had collaborated on his opera “Schoenberg in Hollywood” (2018).For this first part of the project, Robson compressed Powers’s delineation of Patricia throughout the sprawling novel into a sequence of scenes that evoke mythic archetypes as she comes to understand the hidden language of the forest. The soul and moral compass of the novel, she suffers with the trees the assault of “petrochemical props, chainsaw and machete” before finding peace in a new connection — which Machover sees as “what a different kind of synergy between a human being and the trees might feel like.”Powers’s novel resonated strongly with DiDonato, she said, because of her multiyear, global touring project, “EDEN,” that addresses climate change and our place in nature. She also has a longstanding connection to Machover: Her first leading role came in his 1999 opera “Resurrection,” based on a novella by Tolstoy. “That was the first time I was able to make my mark as a complete artist,” she said in an interview.Finding a vocal language for Patricia was collaborative, “totally a Tod Machover experience,” she said. “We looked for what kind of sounds we could create from me and in conjunction with the electronics and the acoustic instruments as well.”The process was playful. “But it had a deep level as well,” she added, “because both of us are passionate about this topic. Patricia is discovering these sounds that the human ear hasn’t heard before.”The orchestra — string players, a marimba and a bass drum — rehearsing. The ensemble becomes a metaphor for the forest.Alex Hodor-Lee for The New York TimesThe orchestral ensemble — 19 string players augmented by a five-octave marimba and a low bass drum — becomes a metaphor for the forest. The electronics play a multifaceted role: sonic fragments recombine to mimic chemical signaling, the process used by the trees to communicate and interact, even to warn of the harsh human threat. Patricia’s decoding of this plant language is based on the work of the scientific pioneer Suzanne Simard, who also was an inspiration for James Cameron’s “Avatar.”Yet for all the technological intervention, it’s melody, the most natural of musical elements, that is accorded critical importance here. “I tried to make the melodic line very present — one big development from beginning to end,” Machover said. Plans for a larger-scale “Overstory” opera are still being put in place, but “Overstory Overture” maps out a musical language that he expects to incorporate.“There is a music in words,” Powers said. “When I write, I try to use that music to support the semantic underpinnings of the story.” When a composer like Tod Machover adapts this to a musical form, “he is also exploring that equivalent from the other side — to take the meaning of the words and put them back into a soundscape that will embody that meaning.” More

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      ‘The Whale’ Premiere in NYC Inspired Strong Reactions

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      More than 100 actors, singers and creative professionals attended the New York premiere of Darren Aronofsky’s new film at Alice Tully Hall this week. Some of them shared their thoughts.The carpet was blue. The poster was blue. The suits were blue.That is, until the actor Ty Simpkins arrived at the New York premiere of “The Whale” at Alice Tully Hall this week — in a magenta suit.“I want the summer weather back,” Mr. Simpkins, 21, explained of his choice to break with the otherwise muted palette of the film’s cast and creative team, who arrived on the red carpet — well, oceanic blue carpet — in navy suits and black dresses.The moment of levity was at odds with the character Mr. Simpkins plays in the director Darren Aronofsky’s somber new film, adapted from the play by Samuel D. Hunter and produced by A24. The movie centers on Charlie, played by Brendan Fraser, a reclusive, morbidly obese gay man trying to reconnect with his teenage daughter (Sadie Sink) after the death of his lover. (Mr. Simpkins plays a young evangelical missionary who tries to convert Charlie — and wrestles with some of his own demons in the process.)“The Whale” has received rapturous reviews at film festivals — including a six-minute standing ovation in Venice — and has been hailed as a comeback role for Mr. Fraser, whose career faltered in the years after his success in the “The Mummy” (1999). Though Fraser is regarded as a front-runner to win his first Oscar for his performance, and the film will most likely be nominated for best picture, it has also been criticized for Mr. Aronofsky’s decision to put Mr. Fraser in a so-called fat suit rather than cast an obese actor. The director has said that doing so would have been difficult.When asked about his choice to use a “fat suit,” Mr. Aronofsky objected to the phrasing. “I wouldn’t use that word,” he said. “It’s prosthetics and makeup.”The film’s makeup artists, he said, “were able to create this incredible illusion that not only works with the audience but I think helped Brendan inhabit his character and bring it to life.“That you can be transported into the life of someone who seems incredibly different than you and still learn something about yourself is why I love movies,” Mr. Aronofsky continued.On the carpet and at the after-party, the film’s cast and creative team discussed the themes the film tackles, the emotions it raises and what they hoped audiences would take away.The writer and playwright Samuel D. Hunter, left, with the actor Brendan Fraser and the director Darren Aronofsky at La Grande Boucherie after the New York premiere of “The Whale.”Jackie Molloy for The New York TimesMitch Bukhar, left, a talent agent, with Ty Simpkins, who played a young evangelical missionary in “The Whale.”Jackie Molloy for The New York TimesMr. Fraser gained weight for the role, in addition to wearing the prosthetics, which added as much as 300 additional pounds to his frame. He has said that he prepared for the part by speaking with people who have struggled with eating issues, asking about their diet and the impact of their weight on their relationships.“Very often people who live with severe obesity are disregarded and shut away and silenced,” said Mr. Fraser, 53, who attended the premiere with two of his sons, Holden Fraser, 18, and Leland Fraser, 16. “So it was my obligation — my duty — returning dignity and respect and authenticity.”He continued: “The creative choices we made — the makeup, the elaborate costuming that I wore — with the help of the Obesity Action Coalition, I’m pretty sure that we came really close to creating a film with a main character who hasn’t been seen in this way, as authentically before, and I’m proud of that.”The film, which shows Charlie inhaling whole buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken and double-stacked slices of pizza — with ranch dressing added on top — and being subjected to relentless verbal abuse by his teenage daughter, can at times be hard to watch. But stories that push and challenge audiences remain essential, said Mr. Hunter, who wrote the film.“In academia, there’s kind of a push for no more trauma-based stories, and I struggle with that,” said Mr. Hunter, 41, after posing for photos next to his husband, the dramaturge John Baker, on the carpet. “Not only because that is discounting a broad swath of world literature — maybe the majority of it, certainly the Bible — but also because I think there’s utility in looking at dark things through the lens of fiction.”Mala Gaonkar and David Byrne at the after-party for “The Whale.”Jackie Molloy for The New York TimesBut Mr. Aronofsky wanted to be clear: The film is not meant to induce two straight hours of waterworks. “What’s surprising to many people is how funny it is,” he said. “I think when people see the heartfelt material, there’s a lot of laughs.”At an after-party at the heated outdoor atrium of the upscale French brasserie La Grande Boucherie on West 53rd Street, where sliders, artisanal cheeses and wine were served, David Byrne, the former Talking Heads frontman, said it wasn’t the humor that had surprised him, but the humanity.“It’s surprising, the amount of heart in it,” Mr. Byrne, 70, said.Over by a gleaming Christmas tree, the comedian Jim Gaffigan was still processing what he had just experienced.“A film that moves you that much, you want to give a standing ovation to,” Mr. Gaffigan, 56, said, clutching a glass of wine. “But I feel like the audience was so emotionally drained that we needed the walker.”“Darren always does that,” he continued. “He accesses emotions that are very credible, very personal. It’s going to take a while to process.”Quick Question is a collection of dispatches from red carpets, gala dinners and other events that coax celebrities out of hiding. More

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      Review: An Audition Season Begins at the Philharmonic

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      Jakub Hrusa is the first of several guest conductors appearing with the orchestra in the coming weeks as it searches for its next music director.It’s audition season at the New York Philharmonic.Well, not officially. But ever since the orchestra’s music director, Jaap van Zweden, announced that he would step down in 2024, every guest conductor’s appearance has carried the weight of speculation. When an outsider takes the podium these days, it’s hard to get through the concert without thinking: Could this be our future?And, for the next six weeks, the Philharmonic’s calendar is filled with nothing but guests.It began Thursday with Jakub Hrusa, a conductor with an ear for rarities and the skill to make persuasive cases for them. Next up are Santtu-Matias Rouvali, a charismatic and promising young talent; Manfred Honeck, a master of the standard repertory; Herbert Blomstedt, an elder statesman who, now in his mid-90s, is unlikely to be a music director again; and Gustavo Dudamel, who is being given substantial real estate with a Schumann festival in March. (That’s an awful lot of Y chromosomes, though other notable appearances in recent months have included Dalia Stasevska, Simone Young and Susanna Mälkki.)Hrusa last led the Philharmonic in 2019 — as it happens, at the end of another stretch of guest programs. Beyond bringing out a dynamic sound often absent from van Zweden’s indelicate style, Hrusa had a subtle gift then of giving the audience something it would enjoy but not necessarily ask for: Dvorak, say, but the underrated Sixth Symphony.That happened again with this week’s concerts at Alice Tully Hall. (I attended the one on Friday.) The evening had the surface-level same-old of dead European dudes — Central Europeans, to be exact — but was rich with novelty and spirited throughout, enough to inspire applause in the middle of a symphony. Two of the three works had never been played by the Philharmonic, and the centerpiece concerto, featuring the pianist Yuja Wang, hadn’t been on a subscription program since the 1980s.Even among those rarities were names you should but don’t see here often: Zoltan Kodaly and Bohuslav Martinu.Kodaly was represented by his Concerto for Orchestra, which premiered in 1941 — ahead of the more famous work of the same name by his Hungarian compatriot Bela Bartok. The piece harkens back to Bach, in its “Brandenburgs”-like treatment of the ensemble and contrapuntal writing, but with a folk flavor.Under Hrusa’s baton it had the feel of a festive opener, and the Philharmonic players responded accordingly: a big sound delivered at a breakneck pace, yet crisply articulated (which helps at Tully, whose acoustics tend to punish grandeur with muddle). The score is not without its swerves, though, and Hrusa navigated them by dropping to a whisper in an instant for lyrical, chamber-size passages and making space for intriguing sonorities that arose from, for example, the doubling of cello pizzicato in the bassoon.Martinu’s Symphony No. 1, from 1942, was comparatively quiet — at least at first, because Hrusa took a long, almost theatrical view of the piece, building toward a climax and threading the four discrete movements. With a soft approach, his opening, of upward chromatic scales passed around the orchestra, was a garden of strangely beautiful flowers in bloom.Those scales recur later, but Hrusa didn’t overemphasize them. Rather, they arose gracefully amid the work’s shifting character: the unsteady and rapidly escalating second movement, with strings given fleeting fragments of a phrase that could just as easily soar, the shards of a Dvorak melody; the thick textures of the darker third movement; and the dancing finale, in which even dolce passages sprint as if sprung.Yuja Wang performed Liszt’s First Piano Concerto wearing chunky white sunglasses — doctor’s orders, but readily accepted by an audience familiar with her blend of glamour and thoughtful artistry.Chris LeeIt was heartening to see that nearly all of the audience had stayed after intermission for the Martinu, given that the evening’s clearer selling point had come earlier: Wang playing Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat.Wang has Liszt’s storied star power as a performer: easily able to command a stage and entertainingly showy, yet sensitive and never excessively emotive. Her glamour is so established, she came out wearing chunky sunglasses — doctor’s orders as she recovers from a recent procedure — and the audience simply greeted it, with cheers, as a fashion statement.She played the opening with muscularity and precision, matched by the orchestra’s vigorous reading of the first movement’s theme. But later, in a nocturne-like solo, Wang exquisitely flipped the piece’s scale to that of an intimate recital. She made the concerto sound better than it actually is.In the spirit of Liszt, she returned with an encore of crowd-pleasing, breathless athleticism: the Toccatina from Kapustin’s Opus 40 Concert Etudes. But then she came back — still virtuosic, yet expressive and absolutely lovely — for Mendelssohn’s “Songs Without Words” (Op. 67, No. 2). As she played, Hrusa listened from the conductor’s podium, his eyes closed and his head nodding in bliss, a stand-in for all of us there.New York PhilharmonicPerformed Friday at Alice Tully Hall, Manhattan. More

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      Review: At the Philharmonic, Contemporary Is King for a Week

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      Music by Missy Mazzoli, Anthony Davis and John Adams was conducted by Dalia Stasevska, in her debut with the orchestra.You could hear a tantalizing possible future for the New York Philharmonic on Wednesday evening at Alice Tully Hall — as well as some of the orchestra’s present difficulties. The program at Tully, one of the Philharmonic’s bases as David Geffen Hall is renovated this season, featured three contemporary works. One was by the safely canonized John Adams, the other two by names newer to Philharmonic audiences: Missy Mazzoli and Anthony Davis.Not that either of the two is really unknown. Both have been tapped for premieres at the Metropolitan Opera in the coming years — for Davis, the belated Met debut of his “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X,” from the 1980s, and for Mazzoli, a new adaptation of George Saunders’s novel “Lincoln in the Bardo.” But until this week, neither had been played on a Philharmonic subscription program.Their works landed with persuasive panache on Wednesday, aided by powerful but never overly brash conducting by Dalia Stasevska, also making her Philharmonic debut. But there were some problems with the overall sound. The sonic glare of Tully, generally a home for chamber music rather than larger-scale contemporary symphonic repertory, sometimes worked against the haunted sensuality of Mazzoli’s “Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres),” written in 2013 and revised three years later.Stasevska fostered warmth whenever possible, shaping the 12-minute piece’s transfers of elegantly gloomy melodic ornaments from section to section of the ensemble with care and relish. And when a small army of harmonicas gently peeked out from behind the work’s often mournful textures, they glimmered delicately. Stasevska also found moments to collaborate with the bright harshness of Tully’s acoustic, allowing herself a leap and a stomp on the podium during one transition between a string glissando and a full-orchestra blast. Call it fighting the hall to a draw.Davis’s 25-minute, four-movement clarinet concerto “You Have the Right to Remain Silent,” written in 2006 and revised in 2011, fared more unevenly. The superbly varied work was inspired by a time that Davis, who is Black, was pulled over by the police while driving in Boston in the 1970s. Amid the dense music, he sometimes asks the players to recite portions of the Miranda warning. (On a recording by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, this is done in a deadened Sprechstimme.)On Wednesday, the Philharmonic did well by the concerto’s debt to Charles Mingus in passages of gravelly extended technique and others of deceptively breezy swing — and, as with Mingus, at the intersection of the two.But the initial vocalization of the Miranda text wasn’t quite crisp enough, slightly deflating the dramatic stakes. And the frenetic cello figures that followed lacked the tight ensemble necessary to suggest the first movement’s title: “Interrogation.”Yet the soloist, the Philharmonic’s principal clarinetist Anthony McGill, excelled in the grave material for contra-alto clarinet in the second movement, “Loss,” while his sound turned more arid amid more assaultive music in the third movement, “Incarceration.” The sly final movement, “The Dance of the Other,” felt the most inspired. There’s a satirical edge to this music, but in lingering, affecting phrases McGill also evoked a fully sincere yearning to travel from the grimness of interrogation, loss and incarceration.With its febrile mixture of influences from Minimalism, Hindemith’s pellucid peculiarity and classic cartoons, Adams’s 22-minute Chamber Symphony for 15 musicians, from 1992 — which the Philharmonic has played just once before, in 2000 — needs subtlety as well as brio. On Wednesday the middle movement, “Aria With Walking Bass,” was more plodding than witty. But an energetic “Roadrunner” finale was a saving grace. (And McGill deserves plaudits for playing the fiendish piece right after the Davis concerto, and without any intermission.)Philharmonic audiences will get more Adams soon, and in more welcoming acoustics, when the orchestra plays his Saxophone Concerto at Carnegie Hall in January. But here’s hoping we also hear more of Davis’s music; how about his piano concerto “Wayang V,” with its composer as soloist? And more Mazzoli, too. Hopefully both will be frequent presences once the Philharmonic returns to Geffen Hall next season. Refreshed acoustics do only so much; Davis and Mazzoli can be part of a refreshed repertoire.New York PhilharmonicThis program continues through Saturday at Alice Tully Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      Renovating Its Hall, New York Philharmonic Plans a Roving Season

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      With David Geffen Hall under construction, the orchestra will spend most of 2021-22 at two other Lincoln Center venues.For any major music ensemble, planning a season of concerts as a pandemic stretches on is daunting. For the New York Philharmonic, there is an added challenge: The orchestra’s home, David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, is in the midst of a $550 million renovation.That will leave the orchestra roving for the next year as it tries to recover from the pandemic, which resulted in the cancellation of its 2020-21 season and the loss of more than $21 million in ticket revenue, forcing painful budget cuts.But the Philharmonic won’t travel too far. On Tuesday, it announced its 2021-22 season: a slate of about 80 concerts, compared to 120 in a normal year, spent mostly at two other Lincoln Center venues, Alice Tully Hall and the Rose Theater, with four forays to Carnegie Hall and a holiday run of “Messiah” at Riverside Church.“People are starved for live entertainment,” Deborah Borda, the Philharmonic’s president and chief executive, said in an interview. “There may be some slight hesitancy at the beginning, but I think people are going to come flocking back.”The season opens Sept. 17 with the pianist Daniil Trifonov playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 at Tully. Other prominent artists on the schedule include the pianists Yuja Wang and Leif Ove Andsnes; the violinists Hilary Hahn and Joshua Bell; the saxophonist Branford Marsalis, who will play a concerto by John Adams; and the conductor Gustavo Dudamel, who will lead Schumann’s four symphonies and two world premieres over two weeks in March. The Philharmonic’s principal clarinetist, Anthony McGill, will be featured in Anthony Davis’s “You Have the Right to Remain Silent.”Soloists appearing for the first time with the orchestra include the cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, who will play Dvorak’s concerto and also participate in a Young People’s Concert; the soprano Golda Schultz; the pianist Beatrice Rana; and the conductors Jeannette Sorrell and Dalia Stasevska.In its fourth year with the conductor Jaap van Zweden as its music director, the Philharmonic will also premiere a variety of works, including by the American composers Joan Tower and Sarah Kirkland Snider. Those two premieres are part of Project 19, a multiyear initiative to commission works from 19 female composers to honor the centenary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which barred the states from denying women the right to vote.A few of the concerts will be at an unusual time: The orchestra will present three Sunday matinees, the first time it has done that since the 1960s, in an effort to broaden its audience.The Philharmonic has been at the center of the recent revival of the arts in New York. The orchestra appeared at the Shed in April, its first indoor concert in 13 months. And it performed at Bryant Park last week, the first time its musicians had played together without masks since the start of the pandemic.The orchestra is taking precautions in its planning to ease fears about the virus. There will be no intermissions at least through December, to prevent crowds from gathering. Borda said the orchestra would follow guidance from the state and federal authorities in deciding other public health measures, like requiring masks or proof of vaccination.“What it will be like in September is anybody’s guess,” Borda said. “We have to remain flexible.”The Philharmonic had to make a series of painful cuts as more than 100 of its concerts were canceled. The orchestra reduced its administrative staff by about 40 percent, largely through layoffs. In December, its musicians agreed to a four-year contract that included a 25 percent cut to the players’ base pay through August 2023, with compensation gradually increasing after that, though remaining below prepandemic levels.There were some bright spots amid the turmoil. Donations increased 11 percent last year, totaling $31.5 million. The orchestra also worked to deepen its connections with city residents through two series of Bandwagon concerts, bringing first a pickup truck and then a 20-foot shipping container with a foldout stage to neighborhoods across the city, and giving local artists an opportunity to perform.Several of the organizations that took part in Bandwagon concerts, including National Black Theater, a nonprofit arts group in Harlem, and El Puente, a social justice organization in Brooklyn, will be featured in the 2021-22 season. Those collaborations will be organized by Anthony Roth Costanzo, a countertenor who produced the Bandwagon series and is also the orchestra’s artist-in-residence next season; he has also helped prepare a two-week festival focusing on identity, “Authentic Selves: The Beauty Within.”The coming season will be the first time in recent decades that the orchestra has not had access to its own hall. Its administration and Lincoln Center decided to use the shutdown to accelerate the renovation of Geffen Hall, which is set to reopen in the fall of 2022, a year and a half earlier than planned. The hall will feature state-of-the-art acoustics and a more intimate feel, with seats that wrap around the stage.Borda said much of the coming season would be devoted to preparing for the orchestra’s return to Geffen.“This hall provides an opportunity to transform ourselves,” she said, “but also to paint on an even larger palette.” More