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      Review: Julia Wolfe’s ‘unEarth’ Is Crowded Out by Multimedia

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      Not for the first time this season at the New York Philharmonic, a premiere was muddled by obvious, sometimes intrusive video art.Since moving back into David Geffen Hall this season, the New York Philharmonic has tried to use its newly renovated, technologically adept space to give extra multimedia glamour to a few premieres.Etienne Charles’s “San Juan Hill” opened the season in October, and dealt directly with the midcentury displacement of economically vulnerable populations on the blocks that became Lincoln Center. “The March to Liberation,” a program in March featuring the music of Black composers, was accompanied by video art.On both occasions, I felt that the multimedia — however sensitively rendered — undercut my experience of the music. During “San Juan Hill,” Jaap van Zweden, the Philharmonic’s music director, would be building a real rapport, and momentum, with Charles’s group Creole Soul; but then there would be a pause for a lengthy new interjection of video commentary. And a new work by Courtney Bryan during “The March to Liberation” was so transporting, I at times found myself closing my eyes to avoid having my experience filtered so strongly through the lens of another artist.I felt the need to close my eyes again on Thursday, when van Zweden led the Philharmonic in another buzzy premiere that showed off the multimedia capabilities of Geffen Hall. It happened during the imaginative second movement of Julia Wolfe’s “unEarth” — the latest in her recent series of oratorio-like protest efforts, which served as the opening of two weeks of ecologically minded programming.During that second movement, Wolfe — a Pulitzer Prize winner and a founder of the influential Bang on a Can collective — amasses a powerful mix of sonorities: chattering, antiphonal choral music (often heard uttering the word “tree” in different languages); percussion indebted to gamelan tradition; punchy orchestral writing; intense electric guitar lines that, as played by her regular collaborator Mark Stewart, were biting but not too imitative of rock styles.After the solemn choral writing in the first movement — which drew on the combined talents of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City and male singers from the Crossing — this mix of sounds was a welcome transition. The writing for Stewart’s guitar was a reminder of the muscular verve heard in the “Breaker Boys” movement from Wolfe’s “Anthracite Fields” (2014), for which she won that Pulitzer. And in moving from dry orchestral ruffling to powerful tutti riffing, this section of “unEarth” also recalled the “Factory” movement of her “Fire in my mouth” (2019), which the Philharmonic premiered and memorably recorded.When the soprano Else Torp entered — with beaming, stratospheric straight-tone singing that quoted Emily Dickinson’s “Who robbed the woods” — this movement of Wolfe’s piece proved delightfully, consistently weird. But it was a weirdness in service of dramatically clear ends, since the whole thing worked as a sonic commentary on the wonders of biodiversity.The piece was designed for both amplified and acoustic sounds, which van Zweden kept in balance. The animated projections that accompanied “unEarth,” however, were far less imaginative than the score; the video played instead like a slideshow of each language’s word for “tree,” along with some local arboreal information at the margins. The music was an impassioned litany; the multimedia amounted to a listicle.When a stage director (Anne Kauffman), projection designer (Lucy Mackinnon), two animators and four video technicians are listed in the program — while soloists like Stewart and the electric bassist Gregg August are not — that’s another sign that the multimedia urge has transgressed a bit much on the Philharmonic’s presentation of, you know, music.This same literalism of the video art held sway, in sound and image, during the third and final movement of “unEarth,” in which Wolfe sets some texts contributed by the younger singers to droning yet anxious music. Here, the projections — portraits similar to screen tests, featuring members of the Young People’s Chorus — were of a piece with the music: serious, but a bit too obvious to be moving.The entire concert was something of a muddle, down to the random-seeming pairing of “unEarth” with Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, in which the solo part’s difficulty was often audible in the account by Frank Huang, the Philharmonic’s concertmaster.Next week’s program seems to be on firmer conceptual footing, though. The orchestra will present Britten’s “Four Sea Interludes From ‘Peter Grimes,’” Toru Takemitsu’s “I hear the water dreaming” and the New York premiere of John Luther Adams’s majestic “Become Desert.”Most important: On those nights, the focus will be entirely on the music.New York PhilharmonicThis program continues through Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      The Composer Julia Wolfe Focuses on Climate in ‘unEarth’

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      Julia Wolfe’s latest in a series of increasingly political, oratorio-like works, “unEarth,” premieres this week at the New York Philharmonic.Julia Wolfe, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and co-founder of Bang on a Can, has a way with words.In “Anthracite Fields,” the coal-dark highlight of a series of folklike, oratorio-adjacent works in which Wolfe, 64, has been putting American injustices under her unsparing sonic microscope, she lists the men named John with single-syllable surnames who can be found on an index of Pennsylvania mining accidents — a litany hundreds of Johns long.Her memorial to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory disaster, “Fire in my mouth,” concludes with an ethereal incantation of the 146 workers who died, their names drifting in sound, as if into the smoke of history. “Her Story,” a reflection on women’s rights, quotes some of the choicest insults that were spat at suffragists a century ago, as if to ask whether they sound familiar today.Now comes “unEarth,” a confrontation with climate change that premieres on Thursday at the New York Philharmonic, with Jaap van Zweden leading the soprano Else Torp, the men of the Crossing and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, in a staging by the director Anne Kauffman. It starts, and ends, with words sung by the children who helped write them.Wolfe’s “Fire in my mouth” at David Geffen Hall in 2019.Caitlin Ochs for The New York Times“Of course, it’s so important for everyone but particularly poignant for younger people,” Wolfe said of the climate crisis in a recent interview. “A lot of the leadership right now, a lot of the feisty leadership is coming from young people, particularly from young women.”The texts that Wolfe uses in “unEarth” have a sense of literary adventure familiar from her earlier oratorios. She read widely to research it, and noted the influence of such writers as Sami Grover, Peter Wohlleben and Elizabeth Kolbert, a friend. The libretto draws on Emily Dickinson and the book of Genesis; in the second movement of three, “Forest,” the word tree is translated into myriad languages, which she pounds into a celebration of all things arboreal, backed by conga drums.“She is always taking kernels of text that have a lot of resonance in the stories of the world we live in,” Donald Nally, the conductor of the Crossing, said of Wolfe. “Honestly, at some point, you start to stop thinking about the words and you drift off into larger ideas.”Many of Wolfe’s compositions — another, an orchestral work called “Pretty,” will premiere at the Berlin Philharmonic next week, under its chief conductor, Kirill Petrenko, a Wolfe admirer — have had political themes. But the larger ideas of “unEarth” are more directly delivered than those of any of her other socially conscious but primarily historical oratorios, dating back to “Steel Hammer” more than a decade ago.The impulse to speak plainly comes not just from the subject matter, but from Wolfe’s chosen collaborators. When she decided to involve the Young People’s Chorus in the work, as she had in “Fire,” she sought the input of its singers; she and Kauffman asked its conductors to lead the choristers in discussions about the climate crisis, and recorded them.“Something that I remember is everybody agreeing on this sense of urgency,” Ryoko Leyh, 16, said of the conversations she took part in. “Everybody was saying something like ‘I’m scared,’ or ‘I’m always thinking about it, it’s always on my mind and making me anxious.’ So I feel like we all had different ideas of what is actually going on and what we can do to stop climate change, but we all had that collective sense of dread.”The children of the chorus come from all kinds of educational backgrounds, said Francisco J. Núñez, its artistic director. For many of them, the discussions were a learning opportunity; some were as young as 8.“It really made me think on how impactful learning about climate change and global warming itself can be on the young population,” Irene Cunto, 12, said, “because at the end, we’ll be the ones that’s facing it.”Wolfe’s works in this vein have grown increasingly political. “I can be poetic, poetic, poetic,” she said, “but then at a certain point it’s like, what are we doing here?”Amrita Stuetzle for The New York TimesThe process was instructive for Wolfe, too. She was amazed at the subtlety of the conversations, and decided to use parts of them in the piece. It begins with a quotation of one of the most junior participants, who saw global warming as “like a monster devouring the Earth.” The work ends with another quotation, this time of an older singer, as their phrase “hope requires action” is chanted like a mantra, before the chorus and the soprano demand that the audience “act,” with an insistent, if fearful and minor-key, final crescendo.“We just feel powerless because of this idea that we’ve inherited all these problems and now it’s our responsibility to fix everything,” Leyh said, pointing to the importance of the chorus singing words its members have written themselves. “It’s like we’re being given a platform that we don’t usually have, literally, to say what we want to say in a way that we know is going to be heard.”Making the Young People’s Chorus the voice of hope in “unEarth,” and ensuring that the audience would have to look at them “in the face,” as Wolfe put it, offered the composer something of a way through the dilemmas involved in creating explicitly political art, a challenge that climate-conscious composers are finding becomes more acute as catastrophes grow. Wolfe said that she was trying not to be too didactic, but that she was content with her solution in the final movement, “Fix It,” which lists a number of ways in which individuals can make a difference — Meatless Mondays, No Mow May — as well as broader policy concepts, like “reforestation” and “solarification.”“I can be poetic, poetic, poetic,” Wolfe said, “but then at a certain point it’s like, what are we doing here?”The Philharmonic commissioned “unEarth” after the success of “Fire in my mouth” four years ago, and is presenting it on the first of two programs that make up “Earth,” a climate mini-festival. The second program, next week, includes the belated local premiere of John Luther Adams’s “Become Desert,” which debuted in Seattle five years ago.“In the end, music is about emotion,” said Deborah Borda, the president and chief executive of the Philharmonic, “and Julia is able to combine, in that way that we cannot quite explain, a combination of beauty and emotion. It carries an even stronger message as a result.”Each of Wolfe’s oratorios has offered a different answer to the question of where the balance of poetry and politics lies, though she sees a progression through them. “Anthracite Fields” was not exactly shy about its views — it sets a speech by John L. Lewis, the militant leader of the United Mine Workers — but, as one listener pointed out to her, it does not explicitly mention protest. “Fire,” partly as a consequence, has an entire, thumping movement called “Protest.” “Her Story” is more of an inquiry into change than an indictment of the past, but as Wolfe put it, “it’s a little sassier.”“UnEarth,” though, includes lines like “the house is on fire,” and “clean up your corporation.” It goes further, and with good reason.“The others were more reflective. ‘Who were we?’ ‘Who are we?’” Wolfe said. “And this is like: ‘Guess what. We have to do something.’” More

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      Lincoln Center Names Conductor for Reimagined Mostly Mozart

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      Jonathon Heyward will succeed Louis Langrée as music director of the center’s revered summer ensemble.Jonathon Heyward, the rising young conductor who this fall will become the first Black music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, has been tapped to lead Lincoln Center’s summer ensemble, a reimagined version of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, the center announced on Wednesday.Heyward, 30, will start a three-year contract with Lincoln Center next year. His appointment is part of the center’s changes to the revered Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, by giving it a new name, embracing a wider variety of genres and bringing more racial, ethnic and gender diversity to the stage.“If a 10-year-old boy from Charleston can fall in love with this music, then anyone can,” Heyward said in an interview. “It has everything to do with accessibility and presentation.”Heyward succeeds the orchestra’s longtime music director, Louis Langrée, whose contract expires this year. During Langrée’s 21-year tenure, he has helped rejuvenate the ensemble and cement its reputation as an acclaimed interpreter of the music of Mozart and the Classical repertoire.“The orchestra musicians and I have developed a unique bond that I will treasure forever,” Langrée said in a statement. “I wish Jonathon as many joys as those I experienced during this extraordinary journey.”Under Henry Timms, Lincoln Center’s president and chief executive, the organization has worked to appeal to a younger, more diverse crowd. Its efforts have led to some complaints from audience members, who say the center is not doing enough to promote classical music — which was once a fixture of the season and festivals there, but has been reduced significantly.Since the pandemic, the future of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, established in 1973, has been uncertain. The festival whose name it bears — once one of Lincoln Center’s premier summertime events — no longer exists. In its place is “Summer for the City,” featuring a wider variety of genres, including pop music, social dance and comedy.Shanta Thake, Lincoln Center’s chief artistic officer, said that the rethinking of Mostly Mozart was aimed at “opening this up and really saying that this is music that belongs to everyone.”“It’s a necessary evolution,” she said. “This is an orchestra that I think has a big place in the hearts and minds of New York City, and we want to keep it that way.”The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra will get a new name when Heyward takes the podium next year. Thake said that its longtime moniker felt “a little myopic right now.”“We’d love to just open up that conversation and have this orchestra be something more than just one composer, or mostly anything,” she said.The center and the orchestra are negotiating a new contract — the previous agreement expired in February — and discussing issues including auditions, the process for hiring substitutes, diversifying the ranks of the ensemble and promoting community engagement.Heyward, who made his Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra debut last year and will return this summer, said that he would work to broaden the ensemble’s repertoire, including by programming more works by contemporary composers. He mentioned Hannah Kendall, a friend, as an example of an artist he was eager to explore.“We have to continue the lineage and the storytelling of today in order to really grow the art form,” he said.Heyward said he would also seek to preserve the ensemble’s heritage. “I just don’t see that just completely disappearing overnight,” he said. “It won’t, simply.”“I don’t plan on just throwing out the Beethoven symphonies, the Schumann symphonies or Mozart,” he added. “That’s not the approach to take, and that’s not what I believe in.” More

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      High Schoolers Get In on Tyshawn Sorey’s Latest Music

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      Pleasant spring weather warmed the grounds of Girard College here on a recent afternoon. But even as classes were letting out for the weekend, some high school students at this boarding school had a few hours of work ahead of them.Inside the gymnasium of the school, which is devoted to children from single- and zero-parent homes who come from underserved communities, five teenagers began to gather around the bleachers.Nearby, in the middle of the basketball court, the contemporary classical group Yarn/Wire commenced a soundcheck while, off to the side, the director Brooke O’Harra consulted with a theater-tech team that was supervising audio amplification and video projections. But she quickly broke away to welcome the students as they entered. A few minutes later the composer Tyshawn Sorey conferred with the instrumentalists.Brooke O’Harra, with the microphone, speaking with student performers in the show, which will be performed inside a gym at Girard College.Rachel Wisniewski for The New York TimesThey had all gathered for one of the final rehearsals of their years-in-development, multimedia adaptation of Ross Gay’s book-length poem “Be Holding,” which premieres on Wednesday at the gym — featuring movement, music and work behind the scenes by the school’s students.Gay’s text is nominally about a balletic, baseline scoop shot from the 1980 N.B.A. finals, as improvised and executed by Philadelphia 76ers star Julius Erving (known as Dr. J); but it is also about the legacy of Black genius off the court, and about notions of community, or its faltering absence, in the United States.Adeshina Tejan, 16, a Girard sophomore who contributes movement to the production, praised Gay’s poetry, saying he particularly relished “the way he’s able to jump from topic to topic. But you still feel the sense that he’s still talking about ‘the shot,’ even when he’s talking about different situations.”Sae Hashimoto, one of the Yarn/Wire percussionists.Rachel Wisniewski for The New York TimesThe 18-year-old senior Jaelyn Handy, who contributes movement as well as chiming tubular bell playing alongside members of Yarn/Wire, cited a passage having little to do with basketball as one of her favorites. “The part in the poem where he’s describing a picture — and it’s a picture of a girl, and the girl is falling with her godmother,” she said. “That hits home because of the detail that’s given. And the background information of photographing Black pain: That was deep!”After the show’s performances this week, it could run elsewhere, including New York. If that happens, Gay might also participate in the recitation of his poem. In Philadelphia, the production will engage the talents of the local poets Yolanda Wisher and David A. Gaines, as primary speakers and movement artists.As the afternoon rehearsal gave way to a run-through around 8 p.m., Wisher and Gaines handed off selections of the text to perform as spoken-word solos; at other junctures, they echoed each other, or enunciated identical phrases in phasing patterns. At moments, the student collaborators mimed basketball scoop shots as an ensemble of dancers; at others, they contributed cascading individual vocalizations that echoed the lines being read by the adult performers.The poet Yolanda Wisher, who with another poet, David A. Gaines, is reciting “Be Holding” in the show.Rachel Wisniewski for The New York TimesDuring a dinner break, Wisher — a longtime friend of Gay’s — said that the poem’s imagery of Dr. J’s athletic feat works well as a visual element in the production, but that the show doesn’t rely solely on that imagistic coup for its drama.“There’s something about that poem on the page that is still superpowerful when you read from start to finish,” Wisher said. “He’s switching times: You’re going from the Middle Passage to a Dr. J clip. How to communicate that sonically, rather than cinematically, I think, is what’s happening here.”While finishing up a burger, she added: “A lot of times we’re working against the music, rather than trying to be floating on top of it — which, sometimes, is a lot of what poets and spoken-word artists do.”Gaines, center, with students in a rehearsal for “Be Holding.”Rachel Wisniewski for The New York TimesIn the piece, Yarn/Wire’s two pianists and two percussionists interpret what Sorey calls a “living score”: stretches of written-out material that can be juggled or adapted at will. After Friday’s rehearsal, Russell Greenberg from the group wrote in an email: “In ‘new music’ we are used to fully notated scores or instructions (this being related to CONTROL). But I’ve come to think about the music in this piece as an ‘energy map’: of different builds; densities; ebb and flow; tonal/chromatic; metal/wood; extended/traditional, etc. They all work together to push and pull against the text.”Sorey’s music here revels in a dreamy consonance during Gay’s first extended description of Dr. J’s drive to the basket. But as the poem explores tangential ideas and metaphoric asides, Sorey’s score trends chromatic — while making use of Yarn/Wire’s facility with the experimental techniques that Greenberg mentioned in his email. Later, there is a return to the opening’s beatific energy while the text of “Be Holding” lands on its expanded conception of communal joy.Gay’s poem is about a storied basketball play, the legacy of Black genius and notions of community.Rachel Wisniewski for The New York TimesIn a phone interview, Sorey congratulated Yarn/Wire for its ability to break down his personal language of conducted improvisations, known as Autoschediasms, and to apply it to this new “quote-unquote score,” to the point where he doesn’t even need to conduct the music.He said that the involvement of Girard students “makes the poem even more powerful, when they do the movements and when they get involved in some of the conversational parts of the poem.“It amplifies the positive spirit that it has; it gives it a different character,” Sorey added. “I think if it was just the poetry and the music, it might not affect me in the same way.”O’Harra said that her vision for Gay’s poem “starts out really kind of simple: We’re in a gym, there’s a person speaking,” then marshals an unusual blend of elements. (Itohan Edoloyi designed the lighting. Matthew Deinhart and the artist known as Catching on Thieves co-designed the video; Eugene Lew is the sound designer.)“You think almost mathematically” about all those layers, O’Harra said. “And then something nails you, and you wanna cry. Or you feel really moved. That’s what I love.” More

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      Henry Threadgill’s Musical Spring Is Varied and Extreme. Like He Is.

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      The Pulitzer Prize-winning composer has released a memoir, “Easily Slip Into Another World,” and a new album, “The Other One.”Even as a child, Henry Threadgill liked to experiment.In this Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and saxophonist’s new memoir, “Easily Slip Into Another World,” he recounts a youthful attempt to fly from a window using a “contraption” of his own devising.He managed to escape the ensuing, predictable crash without breaking any bones, but the young Threadgill did earn a reputation for daring in his Chicago neighborhood. His mother’s response — “Henry, why do you have to be so extreme?” — became, as he writes, “the refrain of my childhood.”That same question may have occurred to a few listeners. But Threadgill, 79, has done plenty of soaring, on stages, over the years: composing music intended for social dancing, and pieces for orchestra and string quartet in which players are encouraged to improvise. He has also led some of the most widely acclaimed ensembles in the past half-century of American jazz.

      kronosquartet · Henry Threadgill – SixfivetwoAppropriately, he has an interdisciplinary spirit. In addition to his book — written with Brent Hayes Edwards and published by Knopf earlier this month — Threadgill is engaged in a flurry of additional artistic activity, including a new album, “The Other One,” out on Pi Recordings.Scored for a 12-piece ensemble and recorded live at Roulette last year, Threadgill’s chamber music on this release impressed me immediately, as I wrote when it was performed. Those concerts also featured multimedia elements, which Threadgill incorporated into a documentary film that provides a fuller look at the material. That movie, which he produced and edited with D. Carlton Bright, screened at the Museum of Modern Art in late May.Both the show and the film helped Threadgill scratch a long-held creative itch. In a recent interview, he recalled having been impressed by Alban Berg’s opera “Lulu,” which, in an unusual touch for its period, makes dramatic use of a short film at its midpoint. (“That’s one of my favorite operas,” he said. “Love ‘Lulu!’”)Threadgill said that when he produced the staged version of “The Other One,” he realized: “Now is my chance to integrate art, poetry, photographs — everything — into one piece.”This can be a lot to keep up with. But as in his childhood, Threadgill comes by his extreme approach to artistic production honestly.That much was clear earlier this spring when I met him at one of his favorite spots: a combination coffee shop and plant store in the East Village. At one point, as I was peppering him with questions about his mutability, he gestured to consumers throughout the store.Threadgill writes in his new book, “I find that the less I say about my music, the better.”Rahim Fortune for The New York Times“It has to do with cognition,” he replied. “What do we really see or observe? All these people are different sizes, but it’s the same bone structure.”Put another way, all his work is connected, even if he’s not going to get into the DNA of it all with you at the drop of a hat. As he writes in his book, “I find that the less I say about my music, the better.” (And at another point: “Music is about listening. Nothing I say can mean anything once you start to listen.”)Still, a question or two may linger. For example, doesn’t the piano music that kicks off “The Other One” flirt in a surprising way with noirish harmony? And doesn’t that represent something of a break with much of his output this century, which has been conceived outside major/minor composition?

      The Other One by Henry ThreadgillWhen I brought that up, Threadgill said, with a touch of good-natured evasion: “These tonal centers, they don’t really mean anything. I love harmony and stuff. But it’s kinda like looking at those flowers over there. You keep scanning; you never really stop.”Fair enough. This piano music — laced as it is with those recognizable tonalities — doesn’t simply resolve there. At the end of that opening section, two saxophones enter with staggered lines that hustle into a more frenetic state of mind. That’s the more recognizable, recent sound world of Threadgill’s music, driven by a quasi-serialized use of intervals, that has most often been performed by his core ensemble, Zooid.Subsequent sections in “The Other One,” like the track titled “Mvt I, Sections 6A-7A,” sound more like the Zooid recording of “In for a Penny, In for a Pound,” which won Threadgill his Pulitzer.

      The Other One by Henry ThreadgillStill, there’s a sense of that language being developed on the new album, particularly in the music for strings, which is featured during much of “Movement II.” “I’ve been able to expand the language,” Threadgill said. “I have a whole ’nother freedom now, where I’m moving.”

      The Other One by Henry ThreadgillHe then leaped from his seat, seeking a piece of paper from the shop’s employees. On the scrap, he began to diagram some of the modernist composer Edgard Varèse’s ideas about flipping musical intervals — an approach he also describes toward the end of “Easily Slip” — and showed how he was building on Varèse’s example in “The Other One.”After Threadgill filled up the paper with sequences of intervals and melodic phrases — the latter built from a pattern, like Morse Code, of long and short phrases — he moved to toss his notes in the trash.I stopped him. Preserving Threadgill’s working methods is no small matter. Throughout “Easily Slip,” there are tantalizing references to recordings of vintage orchestral performances that have yet to be made available to the public. Some important collaborations, such as concerts with Cecil Taylor, ‌have not been preserved on fixed media at all.Threadgill is thinking about fixing some of these problems. One orchestral recording in his possession may eventually see the light of day on a website, currently under construction, called Baker’s Dozen, a portal that he also plans to offer to other artists who have valuable unreleased tapes in their possession. (He mentioned the pioneering Minimalist Terry Riley as someone who might wind up providing material for the site.)“The Other One” is a majestic addition to Threadgill’s discography, but its film version deserves a wider airing, too. It captures his sense of humor, which tended to emerge during this show whenever he was discussing photographs that he took of possessions abandoned in New York City streets early in the pandemic. He is currently sending the documentary to various festivals, he said, “to see what kind of credits we can pick up.”Other projects in the works, as ever, seem bound to have an unconventional slant. Threadgill said that he has been impressed by the strides that collaborators and acquaintances like Anthony Davis and Terence Blanchard have had in mainstream opera, a world he says isn’t really for him.Instead, Threadgill is planning what he called a “corrupted oratorio,” featuring two choirs: “a traditional choir and a gospel choir,” plus piano and organ, and other instruments as it develops. “I don’t like preconceived forms, you know?” he said. “I like to create new forms.” More

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      Gustavo Dudamel in New York: Selfies, Hugs and Mahler

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      Our photographer followed the maestro when he came to town to conduct Mahler’s Ninth — his first time leading the New York Philharmonic since being named its next music director.The violins were tuning, the woodwinds warming up and the trumpets blaring bits of Mahler. Then the musicians of the New York Philharmonic began to whistle and cheer.Gustavo Dudamel, one of the world’s biggest conducting stars, strode onto the stage this month for his first rehearsal with the Philharmonic since being named the ensemble’s next music director. On the program was Mahler’s epic Ninth Symphony.“I will have the opportunity in the next few days to hug everybody,” he told the musicians, smiling and pumping his fist. “I’m very honored to become part of the family.”As it happened, the orchestra’s new hall, the recently renovated David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, was occupied that day, so Dudamel’s first rehearsal took place at its old home, Carnegie Hall. Dudamel said he felt a connection to Mahler, who conducted the Philharmonic at Carnegie when he was its music director from 1909 to 1911.At his first rehearsal, in Carnegie Hall, Dudamel offered a mantra for his tenure: “We will have a lot of fun.”James Estrin/The New York TimesWhile the orchestra rehearsed Mahler, Dudamel rushed to the center of David Geffen Hall to briefly assess the acoustics.Dudamel, one of the world’s biggest conducting stars, is known for his bouncy curls and fiery baton.The violinist Ellen dePasquale warmed up backstage before a rehearsal of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, one of the repertory’s most sweeping and profound works.“This was Mahler’s orchestra,” he said, noting Mahler’s ties to New York when he wrote it. “Even if they are not the same musicians, they have that heritage of Mahler.”While Dudamel does not take the podium in New York until 2026, his five days with the Philharmonic this month, for rehearsals and performances of the Mahler, were an unofficial start. They came at a moment of transition for him in more ways then one: a week later he would announce that he was resigning as music director of the Paris Opera. But New York felt like a new beginning, and as he got to know the orchestra and the city, he offered a mantra for his tenure: “We will have a lot of fun.”Dudamel took a pause backstage before going to meet with percussionists during a break in rehearsal.“I’m very honored to become part of the family,” Dudamel told the Philharmonic’s players.Dudamel grabbed a sip of coffee in his dressing room during a break in rehearsal.Dudamel examined a Mahler score that once belonged to Leonard Bernstein, a predecessor. He said he felt a connection to Mahler, who led the Philharmonic from 1909 to 1911. “Even if they are not the same musicians,” he said, “they have that heritage of Mahler.”Judith LeClair, the Philharmonic’s principal bassoon, embraced Dudamel after a rehearsal. He was greeted as a rock star by the orchestra, with musicians lining up for selfies and hugs.There were hours of intense rehearsals, during which Dudamel urged the players to embrace Mahler’s operatic impulses and his varied style.There were Champagne toasts and rites of passage. In his dressing room Dudamel examined a Mahler score that once belonged to Leonard Bernstein, a predecessor and noted Mahlerian. There were hours of intense rehearsals, during which Dudamel urged the players to embrace Mahler’s operatic impulses and his varied style.“It’s not bipolar, it’s tripolar,” he said of one passage. “This is Freud. A new character — a new spectrum of humanity.”When Dudamel and the orchestra got back to Geffen Hall for the final rehearsals and performances, there were some surprises.After a spectral whirring sound surfaced during an open rehearsal, he turned to the audience. “Maybe it’s Mahler,” he said.Dudamel spoke backstage with members of the Philharmonic’s artistic team about the timing of a rehearsal break. A few seconds before walking onstage for his first concert at the newly renovated Geffen Hall, Dudamel adjusted his tie.The Philharmonic was warmly received at its performances with Dudamel. On the first night, the ensemble got a seven-minute standing ovation.Dudamel’s appearances were highly anticipated by music fans eager to catch a glimpse of the Philharmonic’s next music director. All three concerts sold out.Dudamel abstained from solo bows, gesturing instead to highlight the contributions of the members of the orchestra.Dudamel in his dressing room. “To arrive here, to achieve this connection with you, is for me a prize of life,” he told musicians at a reception. “We will develop this love, this connection.”Throughout his visit, Dudamel was greeted as a rock star, with musicians lining up for selfies and hugs.“You’re part of my family,” Cynthia Phelps, the principal violist, told him at a reception. “Welcome.”Dudamel thanked the musicians, saying he never imagined he would one day lead one of the world’s top orchestras.“To arrive here, to achieve this connection with you, is for me a prize of life,” he said. “We will develop this love, this connection.”At the opening concert, Dudamel was nervous. As is his custom, he conducted the symphony, one of the repertory’s most sweeping and profound works, from memory. At the end of the piece, Dudamel abstained from solo bows, gesturing instead to highlight the contributions of the members of the orchestra.Backstage, an aide handed Dudamel a glass of scotch.“My God,” he said. “What a journey.”Dudamel with his longtime friend and mentor, Deborah Borda, the president and chief executive of the New York Philharmonic, who lured him east from Los Angeles. More

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      Ingrid Haebler, Pianist Known for Her Mastery of Mozart, Is Dead

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      In concerts and on dozens of recordings, she applied a delicate touch that critics said set her apart from other performers.Ingrid Haebler, a pianist who drew particular acclaim for her performances and recordings of the works of Mozart, impressing critics while still in her 20s with elegant interpretations that set her apart from other musicians of her day, died on May 14. She was believed to be 96.Decca Classics, which last year released “Ingrid Haebler: The Philips Legacy,” a boxed set of dozens of recordings she made for the Philips label, posted news of her death on Facebook. The Austrian newspaper The Salzburger Nachrichten reported her death, attributing the information to her circle of friends, but did not say where she died.Ms. Haebler was born in Vienna, probably on June 20, 1926 (some news reports said 1929). Her father was a baron. Her mother played piano and began teaching Ingrid when she was a young child; she gave her first public performance at 11. They lived in Poland when Ingrid was young but settled in Austria in the late 1930s.As a teenager, she wrote poetry and dabbled in composing. But at 19 she decided to focus fully on piano — “I had to kill a lot of my interests,” she told The Sydney Morning Herald of Australia in 1964. She trained at the Salzburg Mozarteum in Austria and in the early 1950s began earning accolades at European piano competitions. By 1954, recordings she made for Vox with the Pro Musica Symphony of Vienna were drawing notice in the United States.“Ingrid Haebler: The Philips Legacy,” a boxed set of dozens of recordings, was released last year by Decca Classics.“A delicate — but not finicky, to make the distinction — articulation of Mozart that is uncommon today is the way Ingrid Haebler plays the A major (K. 414) and B-flat major (K. 595) Piano Concertos,” Cyrus Durgin, a music critic for The Boston Globe, wrote in August 1954, reviewing one of those records. “You will always find people (including musicians) defending or attacking this manner, but it does meet Mozart’s requirement that his keyboard music ‘flow like oil and water.’”That same year she performed as a soloist in England with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Mozart was her calling card, but she proved an adept interpreter of other composers as well, as she did in 1956 when she played a program of Mozart, Haydn and Schubert at Wigmore Hall in London. She “captured and held spellbound her audience,” The Daily Telegraph of Britain wrote.By 1958, The Bristol Evening Post reported, her stature was such that, at the Bath Festival, she felt free to reject the Steinway that was provided to her during the practice session and sent the organizers scrambling to find another piano.At that festival, she further showed that there was more to her than Mozart. She played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and impressed The Daily Telegraph of Britain. “Without ever invoking a spurious foresight of the Beethoven that was to come,” the newspaper wrote, “she placed the work in the 18th century, yet across the gulf that already separated him from Mozart.”Ms. Haebler in 1959. “The poise and simplicity of Ms. Haebler’s Mozart,” one critic wrote, “is a rare treat.”The New York TimesIn October 1959 she made her American debut in Minneapolis with the Minneapolis Symphony, playing the Mozart Piano Concerto in B-flat.“The acclaim of the audience brought the pianist back to the stage five times,” Ross Parmenter wrote in a review in The New York Times, “and the members of the orchestra joined in the applause.”Ms. Haebler, who was a baroness but did not use the title, was still impressing audiences with her Mozart interpretations in 1976, when, at Hunter College, she played her first New York recital, augmenting her program with works by Schubert and Debussy but shining as usual on the Mozart selections.“This was cloudless, untroubled Mozart,” Donal Henahan wrote in a review in The Times, “in line with the last century’s view of him as a miraculously blessed child.”Ms. Haebler continued to tour until early in this century. On her numerous recordings, many of them for Philips, she covered a range of composers, but again it was often the Mozart recordings that stood out. Reviewing her recording of Mozart sonatas in 1990 for The Kingston Whig-Standard of Ontario, the critic Richard Perry zeroed in on what made her refreshingly different.“In a concert world rife with pianists of dazzling technique who seemed forced by competition and cavernous concert halls to demonstrate their mettle at every turn,” he wrote, “the poise and simplicity of Ms. Haebler’s Mozart is a rare treat.”Information on Ms. Haebler’s survivors was not immediately available.Christopher F. Schuetze More

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      The Conductor Thomas Guggeis Is Rising Fast After a Surprise Debut

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      Thomas Guggeis was a young repetiteur at the Berlin State Opera five years ago when he was asked a career-changing question: Could he conduct “Salome”?He had worked with the singers, but this new production of Strauss’s opera was meant to be led by the veteran maestro Christoph von Dohnányi — until a dispute with the director led him to back out mere hours before the final dress rehearsal. So Guggeis went on in his place. And he was back in the pit on opening night.“This was a situation of a star is born,” said Bernd Loebe, the general manager of Frankfurt Opera, who saw Guggeis lead that performance.It wouldn’t be the last time Guggeis, now 29, stepped into a high-pressure situation. Earlier this season, as the State Opera’s Kapellmeister, or house conductor, he picked up rehearsals and two runs of a new “Ring” cycle after Daniel Barenboim withdrew because of illness. And on May 30, he will make his North American debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, leading a revival of Wagner’s “Der Fliegende Holländer,” taking over from Jaap van Zweden.Things are happening quickly — Guggeis starts as the general music director of the Frankfurt Opera this fall — but he is trying to maintain a steady development that some of his peers have abandoned in favor of peripatetic celebrity.“There was a question of how to go on,” he said in an interview at the State Opera here. “Do you jump on the moving train or do you stay on track? Together with my agent, I decided to keep calm. If an opportunity is meant to be, there will still be interest and possibility in two or three years.”APART FROM an uncle — the accomplished percussionist Edgar Guggeis — Guggeis grew up in a nonmusical family in Bavaria. His father was the director of a brewery, and his mother was a tax clerk. But he played instruments from a young age, and sang in choirs.Guggeis followed those interests to the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich, but not with single-minded focus. He studied conducting but, aware of the precarious life it promised, also picked up a degree in quantum physics.“I was really interested in the subject,” he said, “and I just wanted to have something on the safe side. You never know how it works out as a conductor. When I started, if you asked me, ‘Where do you see yourself in 10 years?’ I would say I don’t know. But I will have this other degree, and I can always go back to that.”Guggeis is trying to maintain a steady development. “There was a question of how to go on,” he said. “Do you jump on the moving train or do you stay on track? Together with my agent, I decided to keep calm.”Ava Pellor for The New York TimesNow, Guggeis might read about a discovery related to something he remembers studying in school. But his specialty was theoretical particle physics, which is impossible to follow on a part-time or casual basis. So he has stopped keeping up with the field.During his time in Munich, Guggeis was often at the Bavarian State Opera while it was under the music directorships of Kent Nagano and Kirill Petrenko. In between classes one day, he sat in on a rehearsal of Strauss’s “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” led by Petrenko. By the second act, he decided to skip school and stay. He was hooked, and saw nearly everything the house had to offer in what amounted to a parallel education. “To see those conductors,” he said, “was amazing, but also so formative.”Guggeis continued to study conducting in Milan, then returned to Germany to serve as a repetiteur in Berlin. He coached singers from the piano but almost never spoke with the house’s long-reigning maestro, Daniel Barenboim. “It was hard to get close to him,” Guggeis said, “because everyone wants something from him there.” But slowly, the two built a relationship in which Barenboim became increasingly approachable.For his part, Barenboim didn’t need much time at all. He recalled watching the young conductor lead a rehearsal and immediately thinking he was gifted.“You can see these things straight away with somebody,” Barenboim said. “And he was obviously a very natural conductor. He had a rare combination of easiness and comfortable responsibility. He moved his arms in a natural way, and was naturally in command. From the very beginning.”Their bond deepened. “It felt like family,” Guggeis said. “He was generous, supportive, kind and always there when I had questions about career.” They talked about music, art and philosophy, or gossiped about Pierre Boulez. Between those conversations and the rehearsals Guggeis would watch and later ask about, Barenboim became, he said, “the most influential mentor for me.”GUGGEIS BELONGS to a class of conductors — more common in Germany — that comes up through opera houses rather than concert halls, even if their careers eventually balance both. He said that the repertoire he learned as a repetiteur has stuck “deeply in my head and guts,” and that his time at the State Opera in Berlin, as well as in Stuttgart and Berlin as a Kapellmeister, has defined his approach to the podium, such as how to manage rehearsals and soloists or wrangle a large-scale work for orchestra and chorus.“You can never buy that experience,” he said, “no matter how talented you are.”He has also tried to test out famous pieces like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony away from very public stages like the Philharmonie in Berlin or the Musikverein in Vienna. He has conducted the Beethoven, but in Italy, in a five-concert series with the Milan Symphony Orchestra, following advice he once heard attributed to Herbert von Karajan, that regardless of where you lead this work, the first 15 times won’t be good; so start early.Guggeis at the Met. In fall, he becomes general music director of the Frankfurt Opera.Ava Pellor for The New York TimesWhen Guggeis shares memories and insights like that, he sounds like a conductor looking back on a career rather than forward. His mix of confidence and self-awareness was part of what endeared him to Barenboim, who said: “He’s very talented, but he knows that he has a lot to learn. He has a great curiosity, and that will go until the end of his life.”Curiosity, but also the courage to take on classics by Wagner and Strauss in front of the boo-happy audience at the Berlin State Opera. (Reviews during his time as Kapellmeister have tended to be positive.) So, when he stepped into the pit for “Salome,” it was just another day on the job. He was supported by Dohnányi, who remains a mentor — and gave him most of his score library — and stunned Barenboim.“It was remarkable,” Barenboim said. “There was no ‘What shall we do now?’ His future was absolutely clear.”Loebe, Frankfurt Opera’s general manager, was similarly struck by this 24-year-old conductor he had never heard of before. “I wanted to know more,” he said. “So I saw him many more times, and we started to have many meetings.” Loebe was looking for a new music director, and Guggeis was “the only guy I wanted.”Frankfurt’s orchestra, Loebe added, was used to having two or three choices, but he insisted on Guggeis, who formed a quick bond with the musicians. During the pandemic, he led them in a streamed performance of Mozart’s “Requiem” — one of the few videos online of his conducting — that reveals his clear direction, level head and sense of shape. Then, in 2021, he was named as their new music director.Mozart is how Guggeis will begin his tenure next season, with a new production of “Le Nozze di Figaro” premiering on Oct. 1. In a demonstration of the range he hopes for there, he will also lead Ligeti’s “Le Grand Macabre,” Wagner’s “Tannhäuser,” Verdi’s “Don Carlo” and Strauss’s “Elektra,” in addition to concert programs.Guggeis’s inaugural season in Frankfurt took shape as he was wrapping up his time as Kapellmeister in Berlin. There, he was working with Barenboim on a new production of Wagner’s four-opera “Ring” that was unveiled all at once last October, an immense and virtually unheard-of undertaking for a repertory house. It was years in the making, but Barenboim’s health rapidly declined that summer, and the planned four cycles were split between Guggeis and Christian Thielemann.When his condition permitted, Barenboim shared his wisdom with Guggeis about, for example, which notoriously tricky passages in the operas’ 16 hours of music should be the focus of rehearsals. They still speak; Guggeis values his advice, seeing it as the equivalent of singers working with coaches long into their careers.Guggeis was also in constant contact with Thielemann, an experienced hand in Wagner. “We were working out problems together,” he said. “It was very interesting. But then he would also say things like not to worry about ‘Ride of the Valkyries,’ because it’s self-going, it will become loud by itself. All this was really fantastic for me.”Earlier this month, Guggeis said goodbye to Berlin, for now; his tenure as Kapellmeister ends this season. He led two concerts with the Staatskapelle, the opera house’s storied orchestra, and was on a plane to New York for “Holländer” rehearsals the next day.“The little bird is now flying from its nest,” he said in an interview at the Met. “I’m conducting professionally since five years, more or less. I was with this fabulous orchestra and now I’m here working at this tremendous place. To be here is something I never would have expected, and couldn’t ever wish for.” More