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      Review: Without a Note of Beethoven, an Orchestra Shines

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      At Carnegie Hall, the Philadelphia Orchestra gave pride of place to a once-forgotten Florence Price symphony, alongside new works and a classic.The vast majority of the music the Philadelphia Orchestra is playing in its eight concerts at Carnegie Hall this season is by Beethoven.Under its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, this ensemble plays the master with warmth and verve. And alongside the nine classic symphonies, it is presenting contemporary works written in response, a tried-and-true technique to scooch in the new with the old, spoonful-of-sugar style. They’ve been worthy performances.But even though three of the concerts are yet to come — Beethoven’s First and Ninth on Feb. 21, then his “Missa Solemnis” and a John Williams gala in April — I reckon that nothing the Philadelphians do at Carnegie this season will be more impressive than Tuesday’s performance.There was not a note of Beethoven. Nor, for that matter, any piece that could be considered a standard audience draw. The closest thing to a chestnut, Samuel Barber’s 1947 soprano monologue “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” bloomed in the fresh company of two new works and Florence Price’s once-forgotten Symphony No. 1.When the Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered the Price in 1933, it was the first work by a Black woman to be played by a major orchestra. While women and composers of color are now better represented on programs, it is still all too rare for them (or for anything but a canonical piece) to have the anchor position at a concert’s end.So it was a progressive, even inspiring statement for Philadelphia — which released a recording of Price’s First and Third symphonies last year — to close with the First. And the players gave it the same vitality and subtlety they’ve brought to Beethoven.The opening bassoon line was here less a solo showpiece than a mellow song nestled modestly within the textures of the strings. In that bassoon call — along with the blending of folk-style melodies and classical sweep, and a dancing finale — Price’s symphony bears the unmistakable influence of Dvorak’s “New World.” But it is very much its own piece, with an arresting vacillation between raging force and abrupt lyrical oases in the first movement and a wind whistle echoing through the vibrant Juba dance in the third.Price clearly knew she had a good tune in the slow second movement, a hymnlike refrain for brass chorale that she milks for all it’s worth. But the many repetitions, with delicate African drumming underneath, take on the shining dignity of prayer. And the ending, with rapid calligraphy in the winds winding around the theme, rises to ecstasy, punctuated by bells.Sounding lush yet focused and committed, Nézet-Séguin’s orchestra even highlights a quality I hadn’t particularly associated with Price: humor, in her dances and in the way a clarinet suddenly squiggles out of that slow hymn, like a giggle in church.The concert opened with a new suite by Matthew Aucoin adapted from his opera “Eurydice,” which played at the Metropolitan Opera last fall. At the Met, Aucoin’s score swamped a winsome story, but in an 18-minute instrumental digest, it was easier to appreciate his music’s dense, raucous extravagance, the way he whips an orchestra from mists into oceans, then makes pummeling percussion chase it into a gallop. Ricardo Morales, the Philadelphians’ principal clarinet, played his doleful solo with airily glowing tone, a letter from another world.There was grandeur, too, in Valerie Coleman’s “This Is Not a Small Voice,” her new setting of a poetic paean to Black pride by Sonia Sanchez that weaves from rumination to bold declaration. The soprano Angel Blue was keen, her tone as rich yet light as whipped cream, in a difficult solo part, which demands crisp speak-singing articulation and delves into velvety depths before soaring upward to glistening high notes. Blue was also superb — sweet and gentle, but always lively — in the nostalgic Barber.In its inspired alignment of old and new, the concert recalled last week’s program at the New York Philharmonic, which also closed with a rediscovered symphony by a Black composer. When it comes to broadening the sounds that echo through our opera houses and concert halls, change can be frustratingly slow. But to hear, within a few days, two of the country’s most venerable orchestras play symphonies by Julius Eastman and Florence Price did give the sense of watching the tectonic plates of the repertory shift in real time.Philadelphia OrchestraAppears next at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan, on Feb. 21. More

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      Review: Philip Glass and the Bangles, Mashed at the Symphony

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      Anthony Roth Costanzo and Justin Vivian Bond brought their gleeful opera-cabaret show “Only an Octave Apart” to the New York Philharmonic.It’s not like the New York Philharmonic hasn’t been queer before. I can’t have been the only boy for whom Jessye Norman’s hair, when she sang Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene with the orchestra on national television in 1995, was a turning point. The ensemble backed Mariah Carey in Central Park, and Elaine Stritch for Sondheim’s 80th. It once paired Lou Harrison and Bruckner.But it’s safe to say it hasn’t presented anything quite like Anthony Roth Costanzo and Justin Vivian Bond’s Philharmonic debut as a duo on Thursday at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Performing a rich helping of their recent show “Only an Octave Apart,” they cracked jokes about G spots and traveling for sex, mashed up Purcell’s Dido with Dido’s “White Flag,” layered Philip Glass over the Bangles, and generally camped up the joint.When “Only an Octave Apart” played at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn last fall, it was a riff on Beverly Sills and Carol Burnett’s high-low 1976 special of the same name, bringing together Costanzo, an operatic countertenor, and Bond, the gleefully savage cabaret diva. I went in with a little trepidation — a fan of both performers, but not quite sure whether the experiment would go off. Would it be too stiff? Too silly? Too talky? Too self-indulgent?It was sublime.By turns hilarious and tender — those dual Didos are very much not played for laughs — the show was a small miracle of careful craft and improvisatory looseness, of arch personae and moving sincerity. Costanzo was a superb, well, straight man to Bond’s battiness, and their voices — one slender and pure, the other husky and vibrato-heavy — improbably blended. The return to live performance after a year and a half of lockdowns only increased the poignancy and delight of their obvious mutual love and respect. It was a confection that nourished.It still is. Alongside the release of an album version, the show is an apt opener for the festival “Authentic Selves: The Beauty Within,” organized by Costanzo as part of his Philharmonic residency. Focused on marginalized identities and (forgive the self-helpism) being yourself, the festival’s programs include a pair of premieres sung by Costanzo, as well as a rare countertenor take on Berlioz’s song cycle “Les Nuits d’Été.”On Thursday I missed Zack Winokur’s daffy yet elegant full staging of “Only an Octave Apart,” especially Jonathan Anderson’s delirious gowns. But the 90-minute show compressed nicely into a 50-minute concert half, the union between classical and cabaret smoothed by Nico Muhly’s lush yet subtle orchestrations.Costanzo also joined the orchestra and its music director, Jaap van Zweden, in the premiere of Joel Thompson and Tracy K. Smith’s “The Places We Leave.”Chris LeeSome moody Nelson Riddle-style string arrangements — like the scoring of a Douglas Sirk melodrama — nodded to what came before intermission: the premiere of Joel Thompson’s “The Places We Leave.” Setting a new text by the poet Tracy K. Smith, Thompson also reveled in sumptuous, worried strings, and gave Costanzo mellow, narrative vocal lines that surge into piercing climaxes. There was even a patch of exhausting Handelian coloratura, a wink at the text’s account of a lover who “left me breathless,” and at a Costanzo specialty. (He appears in “Rodelinda” at the Metropolitan Opera in March.)The concert opened with Joan Tower’s stout “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman” No. 1, and also included Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1, “Classical.” What was this chestnut doing here? Particularly as conducted by Jaap van Zweden, the Philharmonic’s music director — who was otherwise a sensitive leader — with his all-too-characteristic clenched, unwitty approach to the standard repertory.But an aspect of the choice resonated. Like “Only an Octave Apart,” Prokofiev’s First was created in a time of crisis, the violence of the February Revolution in Russia, but has little hint of that darkness in a work of sparkling energy and grace.Is making joyful music in grim times escapist, even reactionary? Sometimes the opposite: The “Classical” looked, as does “Only an Octave Apart,” to the past with a fresh spirit, a kind of progressive nostalgia. And like Costanzo and Bond in their show, Prokofiev used the work not to rest on his laurels but to spur himself to develop; the symphony was the first big piece he wrote without leaning on his beloved piano as a composition tool. It made his future possible.As unlikely yet satisfying a pairing as Costanzo and Bond, then, these two works — bridging an intermission and a century — are a reminder that what emerges and survives from our distressing era may not be what we expect. All we can do is give artists the space to create, and keep our ears open.New York PhilharmonicThis program continues through Saturday at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      A Singer Brings His Authentic Self to the Philharmonic

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      Anthony Roth Costanzo, a restless countertenor with a vast network of collaborators, has planned a wide-reaching festival.Anthony Roth Costanzo was never just going to step onstage and sing.Instead, as the New York Philharmonic’s artist in residence, this countertenor is planning a series of events — beginning Thursday and continuing through the spring — that add up to a self-portrait of a musician who, among other things, is also a charismatic impresario, cross-discipline connector and community organizer.His festival, “Authentic Selves: The Beauty Within,” reaches from Lincoln Center to the Lower East Side, the Bronx and Queens; includes premieres as well as recastings of classic repertory; and brings the queer joy of “Only an Octave Apart,” his show with the cabaret artist Justin Vivian Bond, into the concert hall.It’s the product of a restless personality who believes there are too many hours in the day to be only a countertenor.“I sleep eight hours every night,” said Costanzo, who turns 40 in May and speaks with unflappable effervescence. “So I have 16 other hours. Singing more than two hours is not a great idea, because you’ll just kill your voice. I can probably handle two more hours of learning — doing ornaments, something musical. That then leaves me with 12 other hours. If I wanted four of those to live a life, then I’ve got a full workday left.”That feels like plenty of time, he added, but the schedule is certainly daunting. He’s also releasing the album version of “Only an Octave Apart” this week, preparing a revival of Handel’s “Rodelinda” at the Metropolitan Opera and returning there later this spring to repeat his star turn in Philip Glass’s “Akhnaten.”You can see why he hasn’t taken a vacation in a decade.
      Costanzo didn’t even go on much of a break when the pandemic brought live performance to a halt in March 2020. Within a week of the first lockdown, he was writing an essay for Opera News about the effect mass cancellations might have on the industry. Then, over Zoom cocktails with Deborah Borda, the Philharmonic’s chief executive, he began to shape an idea that became Bandwagon: pop-up concerts from a pickup truck that doubled as community engagement programs and, leading up the presidential election, a voter-registration drive.Rest, such as it is, comes whenever Costanzo rides a bicycle or cooks a meal, which is often. (Among those who know him, he is famous as a host.) “I cannot have my phone or be checking email,” he said. “I have to be focused on just that.”Life has more or less always been like this for Costanzo, a former child actor. James Ivory, the director of films like “Howards End” and “A Room With a View,” recalled in an interview the pluck of a young Costanzo handing him a cassette recording of his singing after an audition.“The next day, I was driving and played the music,” Ivory said. “It was music that I very much like — Bach and Handel — and he sang it so beautifully.”Costanzo singing last summer from the bed of the pickup truck that was the Philharmonic’s venue for the first iteration of its Bandwagon project.Dina Litovsky for The New York TimesCostanzo got the part, and the two have been friends ever since; Ivory was even involved with Costanzo’s undergraduate thesis project at Princeton University. There, instead of writing the typical paper, the young singer marshaled a team of prestige artists, including the dance-maker Karole Armitage, to create a film imagining the life of an 18th-century castrato. Costanzo raised $35,000 from various academic departments, and eventually persuaded Princeton to provide roughly $100,000 more to produce a documentary about the project.After he graduated, in 2004, Armitage asked Costanzo to be the executive director of her company, Armitage Gone! Dance, where he raised about $3 million, planned a gala and continued to wrangle the support of celebrities — such as Christopher Walken, who filmed a commercial for the troupe. His “pretty gigantic network,” as the director Zack Winokur described it, has since been deployed in projects like “Glass Handel,” an interdisciplinary concert that incorporated choreography by Justin Peck, live art-making by the painter George Condo and costumes by Raf Simons.Bond joked that after walking offstage at the end of “Only an Octave Apart,” Costanzo could text 20 people and make a dinner reservation in the time it took Bond to pull out a single bobby pin. But Costanzo, a member of the enterprising collective American Modern Opera Company and the recent recipient of a $150,000 Mellon Foundation grant to support interdisciplinary collaboration, said he doesn’t network for its own sake.From a young age, Costanzo has marshaled a vast network of high-profile collaborators to pull off his ambitious projects.Erik Tanner for The New York Times“I’m not interested in any artist because of their fame,” he said. “My relationships are beyond that. Unless there’s a sense of community, you can accomplish nothing; without that, it’s so boring.”Borda, the Philharmonic’s leader, said that he “develops a rapport with everyone, and has that capability of relating to the guy driving the truck and the diva superstars of the Met.”In late summer 2020, Costanzo was at an entrance to Brooklyn Bridge Park, explaining what a countertenor is from the bed of the Bandwagon pickup truck. About a year later, he was just down the street, at St. Ann’s Warehouse, performing “Only an Octave Apart” with Bond.That St. Ann’s show, and the new album it’s based on, were inspired by Carol Burnett and Beverly Sills’s 1970s special of the same name, blending Bond’s gravelly pop with Costanzo’s classical repertory.“The dreaded word ‘crossover’ never even occurred to me because that’s not how I see this project,” Costanzo said. “Each thing amplifies the other and makes it more than what it is.”Winokur directed the show, which featured arrangements by Nico Muhly, music direction by Thomas Bartlett and costumes (at times blinding) by Jonathan Anderson. It had Bond’s trademark political fervor masquerading as frivolity, and laughs galore, but also, opening as performances cautiously returned indoors, a touch of melancholy.“It tethered us to ourselves throughout the pandemic,” Bond said, adding that with two artists, one transgender and the other a countertenor, whose voices routinely defy expectations based on appearances, “it was one of the most profoundly queer projects I’ve ever been involved in.”Costanzo, used to the rigor and precision of classical music, grew comfortable with a looser style. Bond, usually not needing more than a bare stage and a small band, developed an appreciation for the interlocking parts of a large production. Now they plan to take the project as far as possible.Justin Vivian Bond, left, and Costanzo in “Only an Octave Apart” at St. Ann’s Warehouse last fall.Nina Westervelt“What we say is that we should try to EGOT with this,” Costanzo said, referring to the rare artist who wins an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony.At the very least, “Only an Octave Apart” will travel to the Philharmonic — where excerpts, arranged for orchestra by Muhly, close this week’s program. “I’m very aware of how queer this is in that space,” said Winokur, who is returning to direct the concert presentation. “But it doesn’t really have any choice to be any other way.”Bond said there will still be banter and gags: “I’m not just going to stand up there and be silent. That’s not the way I do it.”“Authentic Selves” also includes premieres by Joel Thompson and Gregory Spears, both settings of commissioned texts by the poet Tracy K. Smith; an unconventional take on Berlioz’s “Les Nuits d’Été,” which is virtually never sung by a countertenor; the Philharmonic’s first performances of work by the posthumously rediscovered composer Julius Eastman; and a series of talks and community events.“I’m an artist first,” Costanzo said, “but my brain exists in a world of engagement, marketing, education, press, leadership, fund-raising, collaboration, curation — all of those things.”Deborah Borda, the Philharmonic’s chief executive, said that Costanzo “should be running an opera company or an orchestra.”Erik Tanner for The New York TimesHe often sounds like an administrator in the making. Opera singers, like ballet dancers and professional athletes, all face expiration dates. Borda said that, while Costanzo should stay onstage as long as it’s comfortable, “when I see a talent like that, he should be running an opera company or an orchestra.”Bond said that it was just a matter of what he wanted to do: “He could limit himself to something as small as running the Met, but I can see him doing more than that.”The future, Costanzo said, is “always” on his mind.“I feel like my identity is and always will be as a singer, but I’m most interested in where I can have impact,” he added. “So far that’s as a combination of being a singer and sometimes being a producer and creator and leader. If at some point the impact looks like it’s going to be in the direction of not singing, that doesn’t really faze me.” More

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      Review: A Conductor Adds Her Name to Philharmonic Contenders

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      As the orchestra searches for a new music director, Susanna Mälkki was given the distinction of leading it at Carnegie Hall.It’s auditions season at the New York Philharmonic — and not for a seat among its players. With Jaap van Zweden, the orchestra’s music director, having announced in September that he will depart in 2024, every guest conductor now takes the podium with the search for his replacement looming.This game of Fantasy Baton is complicated by the fact that the Philharmonic is wandering while David Geffen Hall is renovated, playing sometimes unfamiliar repertory in unfamiliar (and perhaps uncongenial) spaces. But the fall brought good reviews for Dalia Stasevska, Simone Young, Giancarlo Guerrero and Dima Slobodeniouk.No guest so far, though, has received a platform like Susanna Mälkki got on Thursday. Making her fourth appearance with the Philharmonic, she is the only outsider to be granted one of the orchestra’s four dates this year at Carnegie Hall, its home until Lincoln Center was built in the 1960s and where it had not appeared since 2015. (Van Zweden leads the other three Carnegie concerts, this spring.)The chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Mälkki presided over a program tailor-made for a Finnish conductor’s tryout with an ensemble across the Atlantic: two beefy, brassy American works followed after intermission by one of Finland’s most famous symphonic exports, Sibelius’s Fifth.Adolphus Hailstork’s 1984 overture “An American Port of Call” depicts Norfolk, Va., as a mixture of bustling activity and sweet nocturnal relaxation. Mälkki brought out piquant touches, like some characterful wails of clarinet, and the tidal undercurrent of the low strings at certain moments even anticipated the grand “swan call” climax of the Sibelius.She patiently, persuasively built that symphony’s fitful first movement, and the whole work had a feeling of straightforwardness, lightness and modesty; neither tempos nor emotions were milked; the performance was more lovely than intense. Ensemble sonorities in the winds and brasses were clean, if not pristine or particularly atmospheric — though Judith LeClair, the orchestra’s principal bassoon, brought gorgeously buttery foreboding to her important solo.A former section cellist before embarking on her conducting career, Mälkki was unafraid of encouraging some aggression in the strings: a few forceful accents in the first movement and, most arresting, a slapping spiccato burr in the double basses during the stirring swan motif in the finale. But the chords at the end, in some performances slashing and stark, were here warm, resonant, full, even mellow.John Adams’s Saxophone Concerto is almost the same half-hour length as the symphony, but felt far longer on Thursday. The distinguished soloist, Branford Marsalis, made a tender sound in some lullaby-like passages, but often Adams’s virtuosically burbling fabric of alto-sax notes seemed to vanish into the dense orchestral textures — sometimes inaudible, sometimes just bland in color and bite. Occasionally rousing for some of this composer’s trademark peppy rhythmic chugging, and a fun section riffing on “The Rite of Spring,” the 2013 work as a whole felt muted and glum, with a tinkling celesta nagging.This was my first time hearing the piece live, so I can’t be sure whether these balance and energy problems are common. But the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s recording under David Robertson — with Timothy McAllister, for whom the concerto was composed, as soloist — makes a far better, more seductive and varied case for it than Thursday’s performance.As for the Philharmonic’s future, Gustavo Dudamel — whom the orchestra’s chief executive, Deborah Borda, recruited in her last job to lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic — conducts two weeks of Schumann in March. He and others appearing in the coming months, like Jakub Hrusa, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, Tugan Sokhiev and Long Yu, could all be considered music director contenders.Mälkki deserves to be on that list, too. But perhaps the best indication of the field will come soon, when the orchestra announces its lineup for next season, its return to the renovated Geffen Hall. Game on.New York PhilharmonicPerformed on Thursday at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan. More

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      A Conductor Considers Her Future

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      Susanna Mälkki is at the top of her field as major American orchestras search for their next music directors.HELSINKI, Finland — It was late morning recently, not long after sunrise, as members of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra unwrapped their scarves, unpacked their instruments and settled in for rehearsal at the Musiikkitalo concert hall here.The orchestra’s chief conductor, Susanna Mälkki, walked in from the wings, stopping to banter with players as she made her way to the podium. Once there, she removed her medical mask with a feigned look of relief and raised a baton. With no words and barely a pause, a Lamborghini going from zero to 60 in the blink of an eye, the orchestra launched into the galloping grandeur of Szymanowski’s Concert Overture.Mälkki’s rehearsals tend to unfold like this, with seamless shifts between cordiality and efficiency. A former orchestral cellist, she understands the value of concision in a conductor and precisely articulates what she wants. With results: Her performances often strike a remarkable balance of clarity and urgency, whether shepherding a premiere or reinvigorating a classic.The classical music field has taken notice. At 52, Mälkki is one of the world’s top conductors, widely sought between her appearances in Helsinki and with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, of which she is the principal guest conductor. And with openings on the horizon at major American orchestras — especially the New York Philharmonic, which she leads at Carnegie Hall on Jan. 6, and which is searching for a music director to succeed Jaap van Zweden in 2024 — her name is on leading wish lists.“I’m counting my blessings, that I get to work with all these orchestras,” Mälkki said during a series of interviews this fall. “Any speculation — there’s no need for that.”She is aware of the eyes on her, and of the pressure to appoint women in the United States, where there are currently no female music directors among the largest 25 orchestras. (Nathalie Stutzmann takes the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s podium next year.)“My standpoint has always been that since I do not wish that my gender is something that is held against me, I also shall not use it to benefit from it,” Mälkki said, adding, “Music, with the capital M, remains its own independent entity — and that, for me, is the best part.”Her work, she said, should speak for itself. And it does: “Susanna has to be at the top of anyone’s list,” said Chad Smith, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s chief executive.Mälkki leading the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, where she is the chief conductor, in early December.Maarit KytöharjuBorn in Helsinki in 1969, Mälkki has almost always led a life that revolved around music. She played multiple instruments as a child but settled on the cello, rising to become the principal cellist of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in her mid-20s. But she also studied conducting and longed to move into that field, which would have been virtually unthinkable for a woman when she was growing up.Among the first major conductors to see Mälkki wield a baton was her compatriot Esa-Pekka Salonen, at a workshop in Stockholm. “He came to me afterward,” she recalled, “and, unbelievably, he said, ‘You look like you’re in the right place.’ So, if you get rotten tomatoes thrown to you later, you can still think, ‘Well, you know, maybe I’m doing something right.’”In 1998, she made the leap to full-time conducting and gave up her post in Gothenburg, where the orchestra’s manager told her, “I’m sure you’re very talented; it’s just a pity that you can never become anything.”Mälkki said the remark was so hurtful that “for years I couldn’t even tell people about it. But again, it comes back to the music, because I was not thinking of myself; I was thinking of all the things I wanted to do with the music.”She first made a name for herself in contemporary repertory, and moved to Paris to serve from 2006 until 2013 as the director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the group founded by Pierre Boulez. (She still lives there, while also keeping an apartment near the Helsinki waterfront, where she likes to go for restorative walks.)“Those years of all those world premieres — it was an incredible school,” she said. “My brain was overheated many times, but it was actually a really fantastic way to learn the craft, because you have to be able to read your score and organize the rehearsals so that the musicians understand what their part is in the big context.”From left, the singer Fiona McGown, the composer Kaija Saariaho and Mälkki preparing Saariaho’s opera “Innocence” in France.Jean-Louis FernamdezIn 2016, Mälkki became the first female chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic. She had made guest appearances with the orchestra before, but this was a homecoming that felt, she said, “like the chance to make a contribution to Finnish music life after the fantastic education I had received.”Her players now included old classmates from the nearby Sibelius Academy, the prestigious school that has produced other conducting luminaries, such as Salonen, as well as emerging talents like Santtu-Matias Rouvali and Klaus Mäkelä.That same year, Mälkki was named the principal guest conductor in Los Angeles, at an orchestra she had first led in 2010. The ensemble had not had a principal guest since Michael Tilson Thomas and Simon Rattle, then rising stars, in the 1980s. But the players liked her, and she was invited back repeatedly after her debut.At the time, the orchestra was run by Deborah Borda, who is now the New York Philharmonic’s chief executive. Mälkki had made an impression with her “very deep connection to the music,” Borda recalled recently.“She’s very passionate, but it’s a quiet passion, a quiet charisma,” Borda added. “It’s stunning: More than an outward manifestation, this is like a flower that opens.”During a rehearsal in Los Angeles in October, Mälkki was, as in Helsinki, amiable and assertive. Carolyn Hove, the Philharmonic’s English horn player, described Mälkki as “100 percent prepared” by the time she arrives at the podium, and that “when a conductor is really efficient, it just makes our jobs so much more fun.”While running through Scriabin’s “Le Poème de l’Extase,” Mälkki gestured to sections of the ensemble but also let her gaze shift upward. (“Some people listen with their eyes closed,” she said, “and I guess my way of looking up is the same, that I want to free my ears.”) All the while, she kept notes in her head that she rattled off as soon as the playing stopped.Those notes were thorough, and crucial, as the orchestra rehearsed for the American premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s “Vista,” a piece dedicated to Mälkki, who is a leading navigator of Saariaho’s idiosyncratic sound world. “I always trusted her, and she understands my music,” Saariaho said in June, shortly before Mälkki conducted the world premiere of her opera “Innocence” at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France.Over the past two decades, their relationship has developed to the point where, Saariaho said, “we don’t need to verbalize very much.” When “L’Amour de Loin” arrived at the Metropolitan Opera in 2016, Saariaho insisted that Mälkki conduct it. (She will return to the Met to conduct Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress” this spring.)Mälkki’s specialty in living composers like Saariaho is one of the reasons she was brought to Los Angeles, Smith said. “The other part,” he added, “was just the way she thinks about programming, which is unique.” He used that October concert as an example: opening with “Vista,” followed by Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and the “Poème.”Mälkki rehearsing a program of works by Saariaho, Tchaikovsky and Scriabin with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in October.Chantal Anderson for The New York Times“On paper those things are not related to each other, but there’s this remarkable thread that goes from the Kaija through the Scriabin,” Smith said. “You experience it as a listener, as a musician. It informs the way each piece is played.”Mälkki continues to learn new works — “little by little,” she said. “Some young people want to do the Mahler right away, and we know many of those, whilst I actually waited quite a long time because I wanted to make sure that I had all my tools.”Some composers, she added, demand maturity — like Bruckner, whose symphonies she is studying now. And, experienced in 21st-century operas by Saariaho and Unsuk Chin, she is looking back toward Wagner.“It’s just quite extraordinary to think that there’s all this repertoire,” she said, “and I could actually just keep exploring that endlessly.”The question is what comes next. The Helsinki Philharmonic recently announced that Mälkki would step down in summer 2023 and become the orchestra’s chief conductor emeritus. A mix of symphonic and opera appearances will follow. Where or whether a music directorship fits into that is anyone’s guess.Borda, the chief executive of the New York Philharmonic, said that a list of candidates for her orchestra’s opening is “always going” in her head. But, she added, “you cannot rush one of these searches,” and at any rate she is more focused at the moment on the renovation of David Geffen Hall, which is set to be completed by fall 2022.Though the orchestra has never had a female music director, Borda added that she is “not striving to demonstrate a social agenda in this appointment.”“We are striving to make the right choice,” she said. “It’s a chemical equation. There has to be combustion, no matter what. Even if you have social goals and aims, you have to, in working with the musicians and the board, make sure that it’s the best person for the job.”There’s also the matter of whether Mälkki would want it.“I think this is a question that will be carefully thought about if it comes up,” she said with diplomatic care. After a pause, Mälkki continued: “There are all sorts of things to be considered, and it would be wrong to choose something just for the prestige of it. It’s ultimately a choice of artistic fulfillment. We’ll see.” More

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      Review: ‘Messiah’ Brings the New York Philharmonic to Church

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      Jeannette Sorrell led superb voices and a stylish orchestra in Handel’s classic of the holiday season at Riverside Church.When performing arts institutions reopened in New York this fall, there were serious fears that audiences would stay away. But while ticket sales for classical music and opera have reportedly been soft elsewhere in the country, most of the events I’ve attended here in the city have had sizable audiences.So it was on Tuesday, when the New York Philharmonic — joined by Apollo’s Singers, the chorus of the early-music ensemble Apollo’s Fire, and four superb vocal soloists, all led by Jeannette Sorrell — gave a splendid performance of Handel’s “Messiah” at Riverside Church.Before the concert, ticket holders waited patiently in a line that circled the block to enter the church, after going through a vaccination check and temperature reading. With seating for about 1,430 inside, the performance was sold out. (There are limited tickets through Saturday.)“Messiah” is so familiar that it’s difficult for a performance to stand out. But this one did — not because Sorrell brought any striking interpretive approach to the score, but because she guided a lithe, glowing and elegant performance from the fine soloists, stirring chorus and orchestra.This was the Philharmonic debut of Sorrell, who founded Apollo’s Fire, based in Cleveland, 30 years ago. Starting with the Sinfonia, the players brought qualities associated with early music to bear: focused sound (with just a touch of vibrato), supple flow and clear articulation.Though there was wonderful vitality in the performance, Sorrell tapped into the melancholic underside of Handel’s work, even during spirited choruses — sung with rich, robust sound and crisp diction by Apollo’s Singers — and ardent arias. (She made some cuts to keep the evening, with an intermission, to two hours and 15 minutes.)This “Messiah” offered as rewarding a quartet of soloists as you are likely to hear this holiday season. The appealing tenor Nicholas Phan set the mood for the evening in the recitative “Comfort ye, my people,” performed with melting sound and beguiling sincerity, and the rousing aria “Ev’ry valley shall be exalted.”The soprano Amanda Forsythe, in her Philharmonic debut, sang with shimmering sound and tenderness. The formidable bass-baritone Kevin Deas brought chilling fervor to “Why do the nations so furiously rage together,” yet exuded palpable joy in “The trumpet shall sound” (abetted by Christopher Martin’s clarion trumpet playing).Then there was the remarkable countertenor John Holiday, also making his Philharmonic debut, who is having a momentous week in New York. He recently made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Orpheus’s double in Matthew Aucoin’s “Eurydice,” a role he created when the work premiered in Los Angeles in February 2020. (Holiday will sing the final performance of the opera on Thursday, his only night off from this string of “Messiah” performances.)His gleaming voice is natural and full-bodied, even in its top range. And there is almost a baritonal cast to his singing when he dips lower. Beyond his sound, the directness and charismatic intensity of his singing were captivating. An auspicious debut.At the end, the audience, having gone through some rigors to enter the church, was in no hurry to leave, as a hearty ovation went on.New York PhilharmonicThrough Saturday at Riverside Church, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      N.Y.C. Arts Organizations Awarded $51.4 Million Dollars in Grants

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      The Department of Cultural Affairs is awarding $51.4 million in grants to more than 1,000 nonprofit arts and cultural groups that are seeking to rebound from the pandemic.As New York City’s arts and culture sector seeks to rebound from the economic devastation wrought by the pandemic, the Department of Cultural Affairs announced on Thursday that it would award $51.4 million in grants to more than 1,000 nonprofit arts organizations.The grants, for the 2022 fiscal year, represent the largest-ever allocation for what is known as the Cultural Development Fund. Some of the grants will broadly increase funding for organizations that need a financial shot in the arm; other grants will offer more targeted support of disability arts, language access, arts education and more.Officials also said that a chunk of the money — about $5.1 million — is being sent to more than 650 groups working in underserved communities that were hard hit by the pandemic.“This improved funding will encourage artists, creators and producers across the city to continue to express their insights and stories on their own terms,” Vicki Been, the deputy mayor for housing and economic development, said in a statement.A survey of the effects of the coronavirus commissioned by the Department of Cultural Affairs in the spring of 2020 found that overall, about one in 10 arts organizations thought they would not survive the pandemic. Smaller organizations in particular were some of the hardest hit, according to the survey.Some of the grants, of less than $10,000, have been awarded to small theater companies, choirs and museums. And to further help ensure that modestly sized groups and even individual artists receive a share of the funding, almost $3 million will be given to five local arts councils serving each borough. Those councils, in turn, will distribute the money to local constituents, city officials said.But large organizations will also benefit. Some of the city’s most recognizable arts institutions like the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the 92nd Street Y are among the organizations that will receive some of the largest grants, in excess of $100,000 each.The grants — $45.5 million in mayoral funds and $5.9 million in City Council member items — are part of what officials said was a roughly $230 million annual budget for the Department of Cultural Affairs.“Culture is essential to healthy, vibrant neighborhoods, and there is no recovery for New York City without our cultural community,” Gonzalo Casals, the city’s cultural affairs commissioner, said.Sarah Bahr More

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      Review: An Ambitious Project Returns at the Philharmonic

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      Project 19, the orchestra’s series commissioning female composers, came back with a new work by Joan Tower.After a long delay, Joan Tower’s “1920/2019” was premiered on Friday by the New York Philharmonic at Alice Tully Hall. It was worth the wait to hear this 14-minute work by one of America’s most eminent composers — who, at 83, is as inventive as ever.The piece is part of Project 19, the orchestra’s initiative to commission 19 female composers to honor the centennial of the 19th Amendment, which extended the vote to women. It began auspiciously in February 2020 with Nina C. Young’s “Tread softly” and, later that month, Tania León’s “Stride,” which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize this year.Ellen Reid also got her work in under the wire before the pandemic shut down the performing arts. But with the premiere of Tower’s hurtling, dark new piece, Project 19 has finally resumed. Her title juxtaposes 1920, when the amendment was ratified, with 2019 — “another significant year for women,” as Tower writes in a program note, “the height of the #MeToo movement, which raised the status of women to yet another level.”In her description Tower leaves the larger thematic resonances to listeners’ perceptions and focuses on the materials — steady repeated notes, chords, runs in scales and such — that drive the music. The piece begins with weighty blocks of orchestral chords heaving over kinetic rhythmic riffs. Rising runs and, soon, a persistent yet varying five-note motif keep spiraling forward. Imaginative writing for percussion and bustling rhythmic activity — long traits of Tower’s music — course through this restless, episodic score. On the surface the mood is ominous, even threatening. But the sheer intricacy lends a stirring fortitude to the music.During a long later section, the piece becomes like a little concerto for orchestra, featuring star turns for instruments in solo, duo, trio and small ensemble groups. Some observers have found Tower’s lucid music accessible almost to a fault. A better word to describe this engrossing, effective piece — and her style overall — is audible: All the multilayered, meter-fracturing workings of the score are laid out clearly. The Philharmonic’s music director, Jaap van Zweden drew a glittering, moody performance from the orchestra.Though the program didn’t make thematic or musical connections between Tower’s piece and the longer works that followed — Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 and Dvorak’s Seventh Symphony — it was a pleasure to hear both those classic scores in such winning performances. Emanuel Ax was the animated and elegant soloist in the Mozart.The variety of his articulations and shadings was especially fine: sometimes crisp and sparkling, other times milky and subdued, as when the piano part shifts into wistful, minor-mode excursions during the sunny first movement. In the restrained, lyrical slow movement, Ax proved sensitive to Mozart’s evocations of his operatic aria style. The finale, a buoyant theme and variations, was splendidly stylish.Dvorak’s Seventh Symphony is suffused with the breadth, lyricism and wayward approach to harmony of his hero, Brahms. Yet Dvorak’s distinctive, rustic voice pervades the score. The Philharmonic’s performance captured the engaging yet elusive quality of the episodic first movement, and the dancing, bucolic third movement was especially vibrant. Van Zweden summoned fervor and opulent sound in the teeming finale without slipping into overdrive, as he sometimes does. And the players finally seem to be adapting to Tully, one of their temporary homes as David Geffen Hall is renovated.New York PhilharmonicPerformed on Friday at Alice Tully Hall, Manhattan. More