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      Review: Ligeti’s Fascinating Polyrhythm at the New York Phil

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      The conductor Susanna Mälkki led a program centered on Ligeti’s Piano Concerto, propelled by the soloist Pierre-Laurent Aimard.On Thursday, the conductor Susanna Mälkki led the New York Philharmonic at David Geffen Hall in an unusually cohesive program built around the bizarro sound world of Ligeti’s Piano Concerto. It was part of the orchestra’s centennial celebrations of the composer.Written in the 1980s, the piece draws its lifeblood from Ligeti’s remarkable rhythmic sense. The piano soloist works out asymmetrical accents from interlocking metrical units while also maintaining composure in scales and running 16th notes. On the surface, there’s a high degree of independence among the wailing strings, fluorescent woodwinds and intricate percussion, but as Pierre-Laurent Aimard, the Philharmonic’s soloist, recently told The New York Times: “It’s a work that renews polyphony through fascinating polyrhythm.” The chaos has a way of coming together if a listener stops resisting it.The concerto seems frozen between states, its harmonic center melting away without ever evaporating, but in Mälkki’s expert hands, it could sound almost traditional in structure. In the first movement, she lined up emphatic pizzicati with the accents that Aimard plucked out of the solo part. In the second, a siren crescendoed into a blaring signal whistle to herald the piano’s violent re-entry — a satisfying climax built from unusual means. The music seemed to levitate with the centrifugal force of rampaging bongos. The strange postludes that close out the second movement (scored for Chromonica) and the fifth (a duet for xylophone and piano) were gripping afterthoughts.The crisp acoustic of the recently renovated hall enhanced Ligeti’s rhythmic vivacity. The orchestra sounded warm and precise, with a tone that was full but not fatty. In the Lento e deserto, the work’s only slow movement, the lonely yowlings of piccolo, bassoon and slide whistle formed a tender yet humorous trio.Mälkki folded the piano into the texture like a firing engine, enabling Aimard, a longtime friend and champion of the composer, to propel the piece. Aimard, something of an elegant mathematician, handled polyrhythms with a through line and sense of ease. Pianistic effects, like scales, crunchy chord clusters and running 16th notes with multiple voicings, had unfussy finesse. The “leggiero, non legato” (“light, but not connected”) passage in the Presto luminoso had a discrete, glockenspiel-like tone that didn’t turn percussive. Aimard and Mälkki were unable to reach the finish line in the Presto in three minutes or less, as Ligeti requests in the score, but it was nonetheless a bravura performance.The Ligeti crowned the first half of the program, which was themed around Hungarian composers. The Budapest-born musician Jeno Lisztes opened the concert with a dazzling solo arrangement of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 for cimbalom, a traditional Hungarian instrument in the dulcimer family that utilizes a pedal mechanism and mallets that resemble cotton-padded bar spoons. His performance had melancholy grace and a rollicking climax that left me wondering where this symphony of notes was coming from. In Bartók’s brief Romanian Folk Dances, the orchestra sounded sturdy and grounded.After intermission, Mälkki and the orchestra leaned heavily into the grotesquerie that characterizes half of the images that Mussorgsky depicts in “Pictures at an Exhibition.” “Gnomus” had a dangerous agility, both aggressive and surprising, and “Bydlo” was moody and theatrical. The brasses, summoning deep, forbidding power, made a meal of “Catacombae.” The penultimate movement, “The Hut on Hen’s Legs” — and not Mälkki’s muscular take on the magnificent “The Great Gate of Kiev” — provided the piece’s true finale. The hut, which houses a witch of Russian folklore, lurched in gleeful, monstrous ways as its inhabitant sniffed out young children to devour.Mälkki and the players dug into the fantastical elements of “Pictures” as if possessed, almost as though they couldn’t shake off the Ligeti — and after such a tremendous performance, neither could I.New York Philharmonic, conducted by Susanna MälkkiThrough Saturday at David Geffen Hall; nyphil.org More

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      Review: An Unexpectedly Relevant Oratorio at the Philharmonic

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      Planned over a year ago, Handel’s “Israel in Egypt” was presented while the Israel-Hamas war unfolds in the Middle East.Handel is not a composer typically associated with controversy, but the New York Philharmonic found itself entering a difficult public discourse with its performances of the oratorio “Israel in Egypt” this week at David Geffen Hall.As thousands have died in the Israel-Hamas war, and as the conflict has inflamed tensions around the world, Cambridge University’s opera society has canceled a performance of Handel’s “Saul,” which depicts the Israelite David’s victory over the Philistine Goliath. That is the oratorio Handel wrote before “Israel in Egypt,” about a powerless people fleeing the subjugation of an oppressive state.“Israel in Egypt” is less dramatic than “Saul,” and for its concerts, the Philharmonic opted for a program note. In it, the organization’s leadership clarified that this week’s performances were planned more than a year ago and added, “What we could not have anticipated is recent world events, making the timing of this program particularly relevant.”The oratorio’s tale could have been a source of empathy and catharsis for audiences, but that’s not exactly the piece Handel wrote. For those familiar with “Messiah,” Handel’s other English-language oratorio that lifts its text from Scripture, “Israel in Egypt” is an oddity. Written almost entirely for choral forces, with few showpieces for the soloists, it narrates the Jewish exodus that Moses led from Egypt. To modern ears, the text painting of the 10 plagues is so lightweight that it verges on silliness: The orchestra leaps to depict frogs, buzzes for flies and thumps for hailstones.Still, the melancholy-saturated lamentation that opens the piece, and the triumphant choruses that close it, adds substance. And on Wednesday, the conductor and Baroque specialist Jeannette Sorrell led a sonorous performance, drawing captivating singing from the choristers of Apollo’s Fire and intermittently inspiring the Philharmonic’s players to embrace fleeter, Handelian style on their modern instruments.The Apollo’s Fire chorus, a gem of an ensemble, anchored the evening with a beguiling sound. In the big, unified moments, the voice parts stacked atop one another in pellucid columns. Tricky double choruses and fugues had a lucent, weightless, nimble quality.Sorrell’s brisk adaptation trims the score to roughly 80 minutes, which offset the orchestra’s occasionally slackened energy. She wisely reinstated the intensely emotional, sometimes cut lamentation (a decision she also made on a recently released recording with Apollo’s Fire). With a theatrical flourish, she cut short the Exodus section so that it concluded with a thrilling depiction of Pharaoh’s army drowning in the Red Sea.Among the vocal soloists, Amanda Forsythe demonstrated a limpid soprano in “Thou didst blow,” and Edward Vogel showed a rather appealing, midweight baritone in his insertion aria, “To God our strength” (aided by Christopher Martin’s dignified trumpet solo). The tenor Jacob Perry and the soprano Sonya Headlam filled their music with character, and the countertenor Cody Bowers sang with a beautifully shaped tone and enthusiasm to spare.Handel devoted much of the final section, “Moses’ Song,” to a triumphant account of the Red Sea’s parting. In “The depths have covered them,” the strings were as broad and far-reaching as the water’s surface. In the score and the story it recounts, the moment is a deus ex machina. Today, though, we do not live in a time of miracles.New York PhilharmonicPerformed on Wednesday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan. More

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      Review: New York Philharmonic Welcomes Back an Old Friend

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      David Robertson returned to the podium to lead the orchestra’s first in a series of performances to celebrate the centennial of Gyorgy Ligeti’s birth.It’s always a good sign when an orchestra’s players light up with smiles at a conductor.And on Thursday night at David Geffen Hall, that happened over and over, with grins passing between the musicians of the New York Philharmonic and its podium guest, David Robertson, throughout a beguiling, smart program.The concert began the Philharmonic’s festivities to celebrate the centennial of the Hungarian-Austrian composer Gyorgy Ligeti’s birth. Robertson led the U.S. premiere of “Mifiso la Sodo,” a short work for chamber orchestra that Ligeti wrote as a student in Budapest in 1948. He began revisions three years later, but never finished the job; the piece lay dormant until last year.With its punchy, fake Italian title, “Mifiso” is crammed full of little musical jokes, show-off brilliance and jovial accents. Ligeti gave it the subtitle “Cheerful Music,” which is both an ironic riposte to the Stalinesque dictums that ruled the Hungarian arts in the 1940s and ’50s and a true description of this piece.Robertson also resurrected a Ligeti work that the Philharmonic hadn’t played since 2004 (conducted by him back then, too): “Concert Romanesc,” or “Romanian Concerto,” a hurricane of color and exuberant virtuosity from 1951 that draws upon Romanian folk music. In this concerto for orchestra, there’s a particularly charming portion in which the basses pluck away, in gritty gutbucket style, while the violins whirl overhead in a zippy dance.Another concerto — the Russian-born, London-based composer Elena Firsova’s Piano Concerto — provided a marked contrast in a delicate work that inverts the genre’s traditional fast-slow-fast structure. Firsova wrote it in 2020 for Yefim Bronfman, who gave its New York premiere on Thursday. (The performance was also the Philharmonic’s first of Firsova’s music.)Firsova’s concerto diverged from the energy of Ligeti by ushering in a meditative pause with a solitudinous, brief introduction. One of her main themes is a wistful, upward-spiraling scale that darts through the piano and the various instruments of the orchestra. Near the end, she retreats into evanescent, gossamer textures from which a haunting, music box-like set of patterns emerges from the glockenspiel, vibraphone, tubular bells and the piano, which is played near the top of its range. Bronfman, an assiduous supporter of Firsova’s work, played with commanding surety.The evening’s second half was devoted to Brahms’s Serenade No. 1, which originally was envisioned as a small chamber piece, but then Brahms kept expanding it. In its final version, the piece’s instrumentation is still lithe — just two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, French horns and trumpets, plus timpani and strings — but the winds and brasses in particular brought in a welcome plushness. The phrasing, under Robertson’s baton, was shapely and intentional, while tracing a persuasive through line back from Ligeti at the start of the program.Robertson’s name has been raised from time to time over the years as a potential music director of the Philharmonic. While that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon, those big grins from players across the stage — not to mention their committed, warm performances — made the musicians’ feelings clear.New York PhilharmonicThrough Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      Review: New York Philharmonic Plays New Steve Reich Piece

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      In “Jacob’s Ladder,” which premiered at the New York Philharmonic on Thursday, Reich’s signature chugging rhythms returned.Thursday evening was a major moment for musical Minimalism.The Chicago Symphony Orchestra brought Philip Glass’s new piece, “The Triumph of the Octagon,” to Carnegie Hall. And further uptown, at David Geffen Hall, the New York Philharmonic gave the premiere of Steve Reich’s “Jacob’s Ladder.”It is no longer news that these composers, indelible faces of an era-defining movement, are eminences. Reich turned 87 on Tuesday, and Glass reaches the same age in January.But don’t forget: They were once downtown rebels, writing for their own ensembles rather than major symphonic forces. (In 1973, Reich’s “Four Organs” was nearly heckled off the Carnegie stage.) Imagine predicting, back then, that they would have new work presented on the same night by two of the country’s great orchestras, in the two temples of New York’s musical establishment.And that it would be cheered. At Geffen Hall, “Jacob’s Ladder” and Reich were warmly received at the center of an excellent concert that placed the premiere between a pair of repertory masterpieces, all conducted by the Philharmonic’s music director, Jaap van Zweden.“Jacob’s Ladder” is something of a return to form for Reich after a quietly daring departure. Since his breakthrough experiments of the late 1960s, his music has been defined by its chugging pulse.But in “Traveler’s Prayer” — begun before the pandemic, completed during lockdown and first performed in 2021 — the pulse was gone. That piece seems to float, with mellow vibraphone charting the calm, patient chant of four voices as a piano makes occasional, deep interjections — somehow questioning and affirming at once.Reich’s work for voices has long suggested the combination of purity and complexity in medieval polyphony; he has cited Pérotin as an important influence. But “Traveler’s Prayer” really felt medieval in its rapt yet free stillness.“When I began to write ‘Jacob’s Ladder,’ I had to ask myself, ‘To pulse or not to pulse?’” Reich says in an interview with his publisher. To pulse, he eventually decided. L’chaim!And from the start, the 20-minute new piece burbles with a steady, propulsive rush of vibraphone. The rhythms are far more tart than in “Traveler’s Prayer,” the melodies more brightly etched and stepwise — more ladderlike. The intimate forces are similar to those Reich used in his last work, with the vocal quartet, small circle of string players, piano and pair of vibes now joined by a handful of flutes, oboes and clarinets that add more lilting vividness.Like its predecessor, “Jacob’s Ladder” sets biblical text in the original Hebrew — in this case, the verse from Genesis in which Jacob dreams of a ladder to heaven, angels ascending and descending on it. But Reich means for the consonants to be smoothed, almost blurred, and on Thursday the four singers of Synergy Vocals managed the difficult task of sounding simultaneously precise and misty, with an antique nasal tang in the two male voices and cool freshness in the women.Swaths of the piece are just instrumental, and the Philharmonic musicians approached the whole thing with forthright gusto. Presumably Reich observed rehearsals and sanctioned the performance style, but the string players used an amount of vibrato that sometimes jarred with the straighter tone of the singers and other instruments; this premiere wasn’t ideally clear.The piece is not as plainly poignant as “Traveler’s Prayer”; the musical and emotional landscape of “Jacob’s Ladder” is more changeable, even flickering. Reich flashes — without lingering — on jeweled moments, and at one memorable point, briefly brightening harmonies in the strings are brought back to somber earth by just a few dark piano notes.Yet nothing is overstated; even the dissonances in this subtle work are softly luminous. Energetic while meditative, “Jacob’s Ladder” doesn’t feel insubstantial, but it does feel light, graceful, refreshing. Twenty minutes passed like a song.Programming the piece alongside Beethoven’s “Emperor” Piano Concerto and Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony seemed less about drawing musical comparisons than about proving how easily Reich fits in with the classics. New works are sometimes doomed by juxtaposition with beloved standards, but “Jacob’s Ladder” plays serenely yet confidently with the big boys.The pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, returning to the Philharmonic for the first time since 2018, did the first movement of the Beethoven concerto with lucid authority and some superb textures, like downward runs that truly sounded as if they were sliding. His slow movement had poetry without indulgence, and the witty, visionary transition from that Adagio to the lively Rondo finale had an exciting sense of improvisation.Schubert’s “Unfinished” was a questionable choice, since the Philharmonic last played it just six months ago. Yet here, as in the Beethoven, van Zweden was strong but not hectoring, with depth and focus to the orchestra’s sound. In the second (and final completed) movement, passages of storminess and lyricism were both persuasive and vibrant.The orchestra played with polished precision. I’ve criticized van Zweden for overly manicured, pushy performances, but on Thursday, in both concerto and symphony, the phrasing felt sculpted with panache, the tension honestly built.New York PhilharmonicThis program repeats through Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      Jaap van Zweden’s Final Season

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      The final season of Jaap van Zweden’s brief tenure as music director in New York began with a new suite for the star violinist Joshua Bell.The elements came out for “The Elements.”A clever friend made that observation at the New York Philharmonic’s concert on Friday evening, as the city emerged from a deluge that broke records and inundated subways. The weather was probably a large part of the reason that David Geffen Hall was pocked with an unusual number of empty seats for a performance featuring the star violinist Joshua Bell.Bell was the soloist in — and instigator of — “The Elements,” a new suite of short concerto-esque pieces inspired by the natural world, with five composers as contributors. He was the focus on Friday, just as Deborah Borda, the Philharmonic’s admired, just-departed chief executive, was on Wednesday at the orchestra’s season-opening gala.On neither occasion was full attention turned to the man on the podium, the season’s ostensible honoree: Jaap van Zweden, the Philharmonic’s music director, who is leaving in the spring after a brief, pandemic-interrupted tenure, before Gustavo Dudamel arrives in 2026.“Celebrate Jaap!” the orchestra’s marketing orders us (with an implied whisper of “…or else”). But the feeling is one of saying goodbye before we’ve really gotten to know van Zweden — and of a man who’s been a participant in the Philharmonic’s recent history rather than its leader.The period since he started, in 2018, will almost certainly be remembered for the ensemble’s survival through the long pandemic shutdown, for the fast-tracked renovation of Geffen Hall and for an influx of contemporary music, especially by women and composers of color. In these achievements, it was more Borda’s Philharmonic than van Zweden’s.His personality hasn’t come through in his choice of works. Even in the kind of pieces for which he was primarily hired — his predecessor, Alan Gilbert, was perceived as less of a polished taskmaster in the likes of Beethoven and Brahms — van Zweden has largely stuck to the most standard of the standards. When the little-done 12th Symphony of Shostakovich, a composer he conducts effectively, was played by the Philharmonic for the first time last season, it was under the baton of Rafael Payare.So van Zweden’s time in New York feels a little faceless, and so short that Steve Reich, whose “Jacob’s Ladder” premieres this week, was mentioned in Friday’s program as a composer van Zweden has “championed” — apparently by leading a single Reich piece, four years ago. There’s the sense of the orchestra’s trying to manufacture an identity for a conductor who hasn’t been around long enough to develop one organically.This final season brings some firsts for him at the Philharmonic in core repertory: his first Schubert symphony, first Mendelssohn symphony, first Mozart Requiem. There’s more Shostakovich and Brahms; yet another Beethoven’s Fifth; Sofia Gubaidulina’s brooding, ferocious Viola Concerto, from 1996; and a handful of newer pieces.His finale, in June, will be Mahler’s grand, choral Second Symphony, an all-purpose Philharmonic favorite for occasions both reflective (the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks) and triumphant (Leonard Bernstein’s 1,000th concert with the orchestra). In all this, there’s not much personal taste to be gleaned.Yo-Yo Ma was the soloist at the opening gala on Wednesday as van Zweden started his final season with the Philharmonic. Chris LeeIf van Zweden hasn’t had an idiosyncratic vision in his choices of music, though, he has shown a consistent, characteristic style in the works he’s conducted. The typical Jaap-led symphony is tense, tight, punchy. He makes the Philharmonic’s sound glint and glare, especially in the live-wire acoustics of the new Geffen Hall, which can tip into harshness rather than encouraging rounded, blended warmth.You get the impression that he’s been attempting an evocation of the flashy, blazing, sometimes blaring reign of Georg Solti at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the 1970s and ’80s, captured in influential recordings. But while the Philharmonic is a very high-quality ensemble, it is not quite at the same level of flawlessly brilliant precision as Solti’s Chicagoans.So you get the overbearing control and aggressive forcefulness without the climactic grandeur or dumbfounding shine. I had never heard Copland’s Third Symphony, which the Philharmonic played on Friday after “The Elements,” sound so un-pastoral. This can sometimes be a baggy work, but van Zweden made it taut — and arid.A sharp edge in the first movement kept the music moving, and avoided sentimentality. Van Zweden brought out the second movement’s machinelike motion, and the eerie transparency of the slow third, before a finale — showcasing the classic “Fanfare for the Common Man” — of lean focus. This was a Third without much sweetness or sumptuousness.It was almost interesting, such a tough, grimly logical progress through the work — as if a reflection on a different United States than the one Copland was commemorating at the victorious close of World War II. And after years of the old hall’s undervaluing bass frequencies, it remains wonderful to feel them so viscerally now; the clarity of solos, particularly in the winds, is impressive.Perhaps surprisingly, given van Zweden’s base in older repertory and firm hand in symphonies, he’s been a game and sensitive leader of a broad swath of contemporary music, and a considerate, never domineering concerto accompanist. On Wednesday, he was polite even as Yo-Yo Ma was too light-textured to make a strong impact in Dvorak’s evergreen Cello Concerto.And on Friday, van Zweden guided the orchestra eloquently and smoothly around Bell in “The Elements.” But this 40-minute suite, an attempt to recast Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” for our time, is basically syrupy schlock.Kevin Puts’s “Earth,” which begins and ends the work, has a sleepily saccharine section plainly borrowed from Copland, and some madcap, off-kilter propulsion plainly borrowed from John Adams. Jake Heggie’s “Fire” sets off bursts of orchestral “sparks” and racing whimsy, trimmed with celesta. Jennifer Higdon’s “Air” is blooming, not particularly airy; Jessie Montgomery’s “Space,” yet another romance-then-romp structure.All of this was practically begging for film to accompany it and fill out its vagueness — with a uniformity of style, texture and color that made the pieces practically interchangeable manifestations of Bell’s warm, genially bland playing.And Edgar Meyer’s tame “Water,” with its undulating winds and trickles of violin, was certainly no match for what had been going on outside. More

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      Conducting Lessons: How Bradley Cooper Became Leonard Bernstein

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      On a late-spring day in 2018, when the New York Philharmonic was deep in rehearsals of a Strauss symphony, an unexpected visitor showed up at the stage door of David Geffen Hall, the Philharmonic’s home.Listen to This ArticleListen to this story in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.The visitor, Bradley Cooper, the actor and director, had come on a mission. He was preparing to direct and star in a film about Leonard Bernstein, the eminent conductor and composer who led the Philharmonic from 1958 to 1969. He was asking the orchestra’s leaders for help with the movie, “Maestro,” which has its North American premiere on Monday at the New York Film Festival.The Philharmonic is accustomed to having luminaries at its concerts. But it was unusual for someone like Cooper to express such deep interest in classical music, a field often neglected in popular culture.“How many top Hollywood stars can be genuine or interested in that way?” said Deborah Borda, the Philharmonic’s then-president and chief executive. “We were really impressed.”Soon, Cooper was a regular at the Philharmonic’s concerts and rehearsals, sitting in the conductor’s box in the second tier and peppering musicians with questions. He visited the orchestra’s archives to examine Bernstein’s scores and batons. And he joined Philharmonic staff members on a trip to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, placing a stone on Bernstein’s grave, a Jewish rite.Cooper as Bernstein.Jason McDonald/NetflixBernstein as Bernstein, in 1962.Eddie Hausner/The New York Times“You could see that he was watching with a very special eye,” said Jaap van Zweden, the Philharmonic’s music director. “He wanted to get into Bernstein’s soul.”Cooper’s time with the Philharmonic was the beginning of an intense five-year period in which he immersed himself in classical music to portray Bernstein, the most influential American maestro of the 20th century and a composer of renown, whose works include not just “West Side Story” but music for the concert hall.He attended dozens of rehearsals and performances in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Berlin and at Tanglewood in Massachusetts. And he befriended top maestros, including van Zweden; Michael Tilson Thomas, a protégé of Bernstein who led the San Francisco Symphony; Gustavo Dudamel, who leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic; and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the music director of the Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra, who served as the film’s conducting consultant.Cooper has portrayed musicians before: He took piano, guitar and voice lessons for his role as Jackson Maine, a folksy rock star, in the 2018 film “A Star Is Born,” which he also directed.But “Maestro,” in theaters on Nov. 22 and on Netflix on Dec. 20, posed a new challenge. Bernstein was a larger-than-life figure with an exuberant style at the podium. Cooper needed to learn not only to conduct, but also to captivate and seduce like a great maestro.Cooper watched archival footage of Bernstein conducting, and Nézet-Séguin recorded dozens of videos on his phone in which he conducted in Bernstein’s manner. He also sent play-by-play voice-overs of Bernstein’s performances and assisted Cooper on set, sometimes guiding his conducting through an earpiece.Nézet-Séguin said the biggest challenge for Cooper, as for many maestros, was “feeling unprotected” and “naked emotionally” on the podium. “He wouldn’t settle for anything less than what he had in mind.”Cooper with Yannick Nézet-Séguin at Ely Cathedral, in England, where Nézet-Séguin coached Cooper for the film’s re-creation of a performance of Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra.NetflixCooper, who wrote “Maestro” with Josh Singer, declined to comment for this article because he belongs to the union representing striking actors, which has forbidden its members from promoting studio films. But in a discussion last year with Cate Blanchett, who played the fictional maestro Lydia Tár in “Tár” (2022), he described conducting as “the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced.”He said that people often ask: “What does a conductor even do? Aren’t you just up there doing this?” He waved his arms.“My answer is it’s the absolute hardest thing you could possibly ever want to do,” he said. “It is impossible.”Cooper grew up near Philadelphia surrounded by music. He played the double bass and showed an interest in conducting, inspired by portrayals of mischievous maestros in “Looney Tunes” and “Tom and Jerry” cartoons. When he was 8, he asked Santa for a baton.“I was obsessed with conducting classical music,” he told Stephen Colbert on the “Late Show” last year. “You know you put your 10,000 hours in for something you never do? I did it for conducting.”Steven Spielberg, who had been planning to direct “Maestro,” was aware of Cooper’s obsession. He recalled Cooper telling him that “he’d conduct whatever came out of their hi-fi system at home.”After a screening of “A Star Is Born,” Spielberg was so impressed that he decided to hand “Maestro” over to Cooper, with whom he shares a love of classical music.“It only took me 15 minutes to realize this brilliant actor is equaled only by his skills as a filmmaker,” said Spielberg, who produced the film, along with Cooper and Martin Scorsese.Cooper worked to win the trust of the Bernstein family, including his children, Jamie, Alexander and Nina, who gave the film permission to use their father’s music. (“Maestro” beat out a rival Bernstein project by the actor Jake Gyllenhaal.)Jamie Bernstein said that Cooper seemed “keen to seek an essential authenticity about the story.” He asked questions about her relationship with her father, and he was adept at imitating his gestures, like placing his hand on his hip as he conducted.Cooper visited the family home in Fairfield, Conn., admiring a Steinway piano that Bernstein used to play and examining his belongings: a bathrobe, a blue-striped djellaba, a bottle of German cough syrup that he brought back from a foreign tour.“Channeling a supernova”: Cooper with Gustavo Dudamel at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.Kazu Hiro/Netflix“He was just like a sponge soaking up every detail about our family’s existence that he possibly could,” she said.Cooper sent photos of himself in makeup and costumes, holding replicas of Bernstein’s batons, to his children. (They defended him recently when he drew criticism for wearing a large prosthetic nose in his portrayal of Bernstein, who was Jewish.)At the gym, Cooper sometimes wore a shirt emblazoned with the words “Hunky Brute,” a nickname that Bernstein used for the New York Philharmonic’s brass players. (Bernstein also wore a version of the shirt.)Bernstein’s musical career unfolds in the background in “Maestro”; much of the film focuses on his conflicted identity, including his marriage to the actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan) and his dalliances with men.Cooper was eager to approach “Maestro” less as a biography and more as the story of a marriage, Spielberg recalled.While Cooper understood Bernstein’s genius, Spielberg said, he also had “an understanding of the complexities of Felicia’s love for this man, whom she would certainly have to share not only with the world but also with his hungry heart.”The film, shot largely on location, recreates several moments from Bernstein’s career, including his celebrated 1943 debut with the New York Philharmonic, when he filled in at the last minute for the ailing conductor Bruno Walter at Carnegie Hall.At Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home in the Berkshires, Cooper’s Bernstein is shown leading master classes and driving a sports car with the license plate MAESTRO1 across a pristine lawn as the real Bernstein had done. He visits his mentor, the Russian conductor and composer Serge Koussevitzky, who suggests he change his surname to Burns to avoid discrimination.Cooper in the pit at the Metropolitan Opera where he observed Nézet-Séguin during a performance of Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande.”Jonathan Tichler/Metropolitan OperaIn his conducting studies, Cooper spent the most time with Dudamel and Nézet-Séguin. He visited Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, dressed and made up as Bernstein, for sessions with Dudamel. And he traveled to Germany, score in hand, to observe Dudamel as he rehearsed Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic. (Dudamel declined to comment because he is also a member of the actors’ union.)Cooper stealthily watched Nézet-Séguin from the orchestra pit at the Met, including at a 2019 performance of Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande.” Later that year, for Bernstein’s 100th birthday, Nézet-Séguin invited Cooper and Mulligan to narrate a staging of Bernstein’s operetta “Candide” with the Philadelphia Orchestra.Nézet-Séguin said he didn’t set out to give Cooper conducting lessons but to refine his portrayals. “I had to take what he already did as an actor,” he said, “and make it into a frame that was believable.”Nézet-Séguin, who also conducts the film’s soundtrack, helped him find the downbeat for Schumann’s “Manfred” overture, which opened the Carnegie program in 1943. And he assisted Cooper with dialogue for a rehearsal scene of “Candide,” during which he conducts with a cigarette in his mouth.Last fall, Cooper and Nézet-Séguin traveled to Ely Cathedral in England to recreate a 1973 performance of Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony by Bernstein and the London Symphony Orchestra, a climactic moment in the film.Cooper, who chose the music in “Maestro,” had studied the piece intensely, watching Bernstein’s performance as well as videos in which Nézet-Séguin dissected Bernstein’s gestures and explained how to count beats.“He would watch the videos,” Nézet-Séguin said, “and then text me and say, ‘Hey, can we talk about this or that moment?”Inside an empty Ely Cathedral, Nézet-Séguin, wearing a sweater that had belonged to Bernstein, coached Cooper as he rehearsed an eight-minute section of the piece with a recording.When the London Symphony Orchestra arrived, Cooper watched as Nézet-Séguin rehearsed in the style of Bernstein, who often broke the rules of conducting with his animated gestures. Sometimes, Cooper offered suggestions, such as adding tremolo in the strings.When Cooper took the podium, Nézet-Séguin provided occasional direction through an earpiece, advising him to hold onto a moment or let go.The musicians of the London Symphony Orchestra were startled by Cooper’s transformation. “It was uncanny,” said Sarah Quinn, a violinist in the orchestra. “It was just kind of a double take.”Throughout his work on “Maestro,” Cooper maintained a connection to the New York Philharmonic, soliciting stories about Bernstein. Van Zweden, who worked with Bernstein in Amsterdam in the 1980s, told him how Bernstein had broken protocol and hugged Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, calling her “darling” and taking a sip of his drink at the same time.Cooper visited Geffen Hall last fall after its $550 million renovation, attending a rehearsal of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and flipping through a Mahler score that had belonged to Bernstein. He returned in February when Dudamel was introduced as the Philharmonic’s next music director, embracing him and admiring a photo of Bernstein.Over the summer, Cooper invited a few Philharmonic staff members and musicians to his Greenwich Village townhouse for screenings of “Maestro.” The orchestra presented him with a gift: a replica of Bernstein’s Carnegie debut program.“From the beginning, he was intent on avoiding a broad burlesque of a personality, especially one as big as Bernstein’s,” said Carter Brey, the orchestra’s principal cellist, who attended a screening.Cooper has compared playing Bernstein to “channeling a supernova.” He said in a recorded Zoom conversation with Jamie Bernstein last year that her father transmitted his soul through conducting.“The pilot light never went out with him, which is incredible given everything that he saw, experienced, understood, comprehended, bore witness to, even within his own self,” he said in the video. “What a person. What a spirit.”Audio produced by More

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      Henry Timms Wants to Tear Down Walls at Lincoln Center

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      For evidence that all is not business as usual at Lincoln Center these days, look no further than its stately travertine campus, which, for much of the summer, was dominated by a giant glittering disco ball, pink and purple flowers painted on the sidewalk and a flock of 200 flamingo lawn ornaments.“There are some who will reasonably eye-roll at this,” said Henry Timms, the center’s president and chief executive, standing on the plaza recently. “I get it. But it sends a message that we are here to have some fun.”“We can afford,” he said, “to loosen up a little.”Since taking the helm in 2019, Timms has been on a mission to remake Lincoln Center. Having helped finally push through the long-delayed $550 million renovation of David Geffen Hall, he is working to forge closer ties with the city and to bring more diversity to the center’s staff, board and audiences.Now he wants to tear down the barriers that literally wall the campus off from Amsterdam Avenue, with its neighboring housing projects, schools and new developments. But as Lincoln Center rethinks its programming — this summer’s festival included hip-hop, K-pop and an LGBTQ mariachi group — it has drawn some criticism for presenting less classical music and international theater.For the summer, Lincoln Center hung up a disco ball on the plaza.Evelyn Freja for The New York TimesThis summer’s festival — which included more popular programming than in the past and choose-what-you-pay tickets for some events — attracted more than 380,000 people, officials said, many of whom were new to the campus. Among them was Sandy Mendez, a saleswoman who lives in Washington Heights, and saw her first Lincoln Center performance, a comedy show, after coming across an advertisement at a community center. She took photos in front of the disco ball with her husband and two children.“It feels like a dance club here,” said Mendez, 42, “not a performing arts center.”It is the kind of observation that both Timms’s admirers and his detractors might make.Running Lincoln Center is not easy. The center acts as landlord to the independent arts organizations on its campus, including the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet and the New York Philharmonic, but has little power over them, since each has its own leadership, board and budget.Linc. Inc., as it’s known, also presents its own work, which has sometimes led to tensions with constituents. Reynold Levy, its president for more than a decade, called his memoir “They Told Me Not to Take That Job.” After he left, in 2013, Lincoln Center cycled through four leadership teams in five years before appointing Timms in 2019.The British-born Timms, 46, who previously led the 92nd Street Y, helped create #GivingTuesday and co-wrote “New Power,” a book exploring bottom-up leadership, including movements like #MeToo and social networks like Facebook. Now he is trying to apply some of those participatory principles at Lincoln Center. He said his efforts were not “some new trendy idea” but a response to the fact that the center has for too long been disconnected from the community.“We very much came with an agenda, which was we were going to tell a different kind of story about Lincoln Center,” Timms said, “to fundamentally shift the institution in terms of who leads it, who represents it, who’s on our staff, who’s on our stages, who’s in our audiences.”Tatiana by Kwame Onwuachi, the new restaurant at Geffen Hall, has been a hit with critics and is drawing crowds.Nico Schinco for The New York Times“We have a long way to go as an organization — nobody at Lincoln Center is taking a bow,” he added in an interview at Tatiana by Kwame Onwuachi, the new restaurant at Geffen Hall that critics have named one of the best in the city. “But relative to where we were, I feel like we’ve made good progress.”Nevertheless, the reduction in programming, and the shift away from classical music and theater to other genres, has raised questions. Joseph W. Polisi, a former president of the Juilliard School who has written a history of Lincoln Center, said that Timms’s vision was a “sea change” for the center that could come at a cost.“It leaves a gap in music programming in New York City that is not being filled — it can’t be filled,” he said. “All the artistic leaders I know are fully in support of more program diversity at Lincoln Center. Now the question is, how far does the pendulum swing?”The critic Alex Ross recently wrote in The New Yorker that the new approach seemed “fundamentally out of step with Lincoln Center and its public, both extant and potential.”The conductor Jonathon Heyward will lead a reimagined version of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra.Lawrence Sumulong/Lincoln CenterBut Timms pushes back on such criticism, partly by pointing out that “we have just spent four years through a pandemic, and half a billion dollars, creating a concert hall to house the New York Philharmonic” and noting that the center had hired Jonathon Heyward, who recently became the first Black music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, to lead a reimagined version of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra.“Lincoln Center was founded as Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; it was not founded as Lincoln Center for the Classical Arts,” Timms said. “You go back to the beginning and there’s a reason Mahalia Jackson was playing here. And it’s not because we’re only supposed to be about the opera and the ballet.”Summers at Lincoln Center look different now. The old Lincoln Center Festival was scrapped a few years before Timms arrived, and with it the large-scale, ambitious productions it brought each summer from around the world, including Noh theater and Kabuki theater from Japan, Indonesian dance and Chinese opera. Lincoln Center’s programming is now overseen by Shanta Thake, its chief artistic officer, who was formerly an associate artistic director at the Public Theater. She and Timms have replaced the Mostly Mozart Festival, which had focused on classical music and recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, with the more eclectic Summer for the City festival.Portia and the American Composers Orchestra at “Freedom Is a Constant Struggle,” which Lincoln Center staged in Damrosch Park as part of its Summer for the City festival.Lawrence Sumulong/Lincoln Center“How do we build on this promise of being a performing arts center for all New Yorkers?” Thake asked. “How do we not rest on our laurels but push for what a performing arts center needs to be right now? Everybody’s willing to have hard conversations.”The coming fall and winter season will feature an array of classical offerings, including a new production of Henry Purcell’s “The Fairy Queen” and a performance of Philip Glass’s piano études. There will also be more experimental fare in line with the center’s new vision, including a reimagining of “The Sound of Music” through a “utopian, Afrofuturistic lens,” featuring gospel, funk, soul and Afrobeat music.Timms has also prioritized diversity backstage: of the 109 current members of the executive and senior management teams, about 60 percent are women and nearly 40 percent are people of color. In addition, the center recently started a two-year fellowship program to develop a diverse pipeline of potential board members for the resident organizations; three have been placed as trustees and three more have elections pending.Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation, who serves on Lincoln Center’s board, praised Timms as a “once-in-a-generation leader” who “genuinely understands that diversity correlates with excellence.”A summer dance party on the Lincoln Center plaza.Mohamed Sadek for The New York TimesThe ballet dancer Misty Copeland, who joined Lincoln Center’s board under Timms, commended his spearheading of the Amsterdam Avenue project, a long-neglected plan to make right Lincoln Center’s initial razing of the low-income San Juan Hill neighborhood where the performing arts complex was built.“He does not shy away from a history that may not look clean and sparkly,” Copeland said. “I don’t think I could imagine 10 years ago that this is where Lincoln Center would be.”Timms, whose mother was an illustrator from the United States and whose father was a British archaeologist, grew up in Exeter, England, where his family often attended regional theaters.“Our childhood was full of ideas and the arts,” he said. “We had access and experience and ownership. You felt like you were a part of something.”He graduated from Durham University in England and landed a job overseeing programming at the 92nd Street Y in 2008, where he helped start #GivingTuesday, a day of philanthropy after Black Friday and Cyber Monday that became a global success. In 2014, he was named the Y’s executive director.Steven R. Swartz, the new chairman of Lincoln Center, said Timms had won over the center’s board with his energy and ideas, quickly recognizing the organization’s main problems, including tensions with the constituents. “He just so quickly diagnosed what needed to be done,” Swartz said.And after years of false starts and bitter feuds, Timms built a good working relationship with the leaders of the Philharmonic — he and Deborah Borda, who was the orchestra’s president and chief executive, sometimes resolved disputes over coffee or martinis — and finally renovated Geffen Hall. By accelerating construction during the pandemic shutdown, they were able to open the reimagined hall ahead of schedule.“He was intent on moving past the history of animosity that existed between Lincoln Center and the New York Philharmonic,” said Borda, who stepped down at the end of June. “He put a premium on working together. He was essentially the right man at the right time at the right place.”Katherine G. Farley, who stepped down as Lincoln Center’s chairwoman in June, said Timms “has led the transformation of a traditional institution” and that he is “quick and eager to experiment.””Not everything works out,” she added. “When it doesn’t work, he’s quick to shut it down and try something else.”Like other arts institutions, Lincoln Center is still trying to recover from the pandemic shutdown, when the performing arts came to a halt for more than 18 months. The organization is spending less on programming than it did when Timms began his tenure: about $14 million in the fiscal year that ended in June 2022, down from $23 million in 2019, a decrease of about 40 percent that officials attributed in part to the fact that Geffen Hall remained closed for construction through the fiscal year of 2022.But fund-raising remains relatively strong, and the endowment has risen to about $268 million, compared to $258 million in 2019. Moody’s recently affirmed its A3 rating on the center’s $356 million of debt but revised its outlook to stable from negative, noting the completion of Geffen Hall and the center’s efforts to cut expenses and attract new audiences.And relations have eased with the constituent organizations — who historically competed with Lincoln Center for audiences, donors and attention.David Geffen Hall, the home of the New York Philharmonic, reopened last year after a long-delayed renovation.Hilary Swift for The New York Times“He’s been very clear that it’s the job of Lincoln Center to honor and pay attention to and try to help all the constituents that make up Lincoln Center,” said Andre Bishop, the artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater. Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, said Timms had signaled to the constituents early in his tenure that the days of infighting were over. “Here was somebody who understood and really seemed to be listening,” he said. And Damian Woetzel, the president of Juilliard, said Timms had proven “tradition is not at war with innovation.”On a recent day, a team of Lincoln Center staff members inside Geffen Hall was conducting research to prepare for the Amsterdam Avenue project, asking visitors where they spent time on campus and what they would like to do more of: attend cultural events? meet friends? play games? exercise? A poster explained the history of the San Juan Hill neighborhood and said: “Help us make our campus more welcoming!”In a few hours, Timms would join a salsa band on the outdoor dance floor in a pair of coral-colored Nike Air Max sneakers.“Changing with the world isn’t just the right thing to do morally,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do strategically. And if leaders in a position like ours don’t lead this change, what on earth are you doing?” More

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      Review: At Mostly Mozart, the Sense of an Ending

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      Louis Langrée, in his last season with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, conducted a classic Langrée program: Mozart and a premiere by Amir ElSaffar.Change is coming for the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra and for its longtime music director, Louis Langrée — this month is the beginning of the end of his tenure with the orchestra. When the ensemble appears at Lincoln Center next year it will be with a freshly conceived name, and with the conductor Jonathon Heyward at the helm. (Heyward also leads the orchestra in concerts on Aug. 4 and 5.)So there is a sense of finality hovering over this summer’s offerings, which began last weekend with a free outdoor concert in Damrosch Park. On Tuesday night, Langrée and his players resumed their more typical places in the recently refurbished David Geffen Hall — renovations that kept the festival orchestra out of that theater last year.In remarks before the concert, Langrée warmly recalled his two-decade relationship with the orchestra and with New York audiences. The program was classic Langrée: a substantial world premiere from Amir ElSaffar, a prominent jazz trumpeter and composer, nestled next to the Mass in C minor by Mozart, who, Langrée noted, sometimes looked eastward (as in the “Turkish March” movement of Piano Sonata No. 11).ElSaffar also spoke, telling the audience how his “Dhikra” (“Remembrance”) — inspired by the 20th anniversary of the second U.S. invasion of Iraq — incorporated Western classical instruments from the festival orchestra’s ranks, alongside the players in his Two Rivers ensemble. (Among other instruments, that group features oud, a steel-string lute and an Iraqi hammered dulcimer, as well as ElSaffar’s trumpet, which channels the melodic style of Iraq’s maqam tradition.)The composer Amir ElSaffar, performing in “Dhikra,” his world premiere, on Tuesday.Lawrence SumulongAll cogent and stylistically broad minded as a précis. But “Dhikra” is not on the same exalted level as ElSaffar’s past work for larger groups, particularly as heard on the album “Not Two” (2017). While “Dhikra” contained some passages of wondrous blended sonority, the amplification of ElSaffar’s musicians had the unfortunate effect of making the Mostly Mozart players inaudible, and for long stretches.It began promisingly enough, with Two Rivers players positioned on the stage near Langrée, and with 10 festival orchestra musicians — the only ones participating in this piece — strewn among the audience, one level up from the orchestra. (The conductor often faced the audience, in order to conduct his far-flung orchestral partners.)A convening salvo from ElSaffar’s trumpet — mellow yet mournful — seemed to inspire droning notes in the strings that gradually flowered into plucked passages that ricocheted across the hall. And when fervid motifs for oboe, clarinet, bassoon and French horn — all positioned at the back of the house — mingled with gentle notes from the Two Rivers bassist onstage, there was a glorious sense of collective blooming.But this was not to last. The orchestral players soon left their stations in the audience, gradually reappearing onstage. And it was there that the amplified nature of Two Rivers tended to swamp ElSaffar’s writing for his Mostly Mozart collaborators. (It was sad to see the violinist Ruggero Allifranchini sawing away with abandon, at a climactic moment, and not be able to hear his contributions over the Two Rivers rhythm section.)Some of this might be improved with slight tweaks to the levels on the Geffen Hall mixer. But some of the balance problems may be baked into the piece as written; 10 musicians is not a significant enough portion of an orchestra to graft onto a group as potent as Two Rivers.After intermission, audiences got to feel the full force of the festival orchestra in Mozart’s Mass in C minor. Also on hand were a quartet of vocal soloists — including the soprano Erin Morley — and a double chorus (well drilled by the director Malcolm J. Merriweather).Following his own edition of Mozart’s unfinished score, Langrée managed to inject an airy, delicate sense of bounce into the gravity of the Kyrie. Taken too sternly, the Mass sounds overindebted to Bach. Taken too lightly, you skate around the profundity of the work. Langrée found the right balance throughout. And he had a star turn from Morley, when it came to a showstopping “Et Incarnatus Est” aria, in the Credo.Change, for this festival and for classical music on the whole, is inevitable. But this Mass was a reminder of the wonders that should be carefully shepherded going forward. After Langrée departs, it will be important for the leaders of this orchestra — whatever it’s called — to continue to balance interpretations of this high order and taking big swings with artists on the level of ElSaffar.Mostly MozartProgram repeats Wednesday night at David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center, lincolncenter.org. More