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      Michael Tilson Thomas Leads Mahler at the New York Phil

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      The conductor led the New York Philharmonic in Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, an inspiring opening night for a season starting off unsettled.Back in 1996, when he was just beginning his landmark tenure on the podium of the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas conducted the New York Philharmonic in Mahler’s Fifth. In the mold of his mentor, Leonard Bernstein, he was already renowned as a specialist in that composer.“Some people can conduct Mahler and some cannot,” Alex Ross wrote of the performance in The New York Times. “Mr. Thomas certainly can.”As he proved again on Thursday, when he led the Philharmonic in the same symphony at David Geffen Hall. Thomas, at 79, still has both the patience and the passion to take us through Mahler’s sprawling, sometimes shaggy structures.That is even more impressive now. It has been more than three years since Thomas was first treated for glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, and he is still relishing his work. In April, he even took on a new teaching role at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.Concerned eyes are always on him, of course, especially after reports in May that he appeared confused during a performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony in London. But on Thursday, other than some slow paging through his score between the second and third movements, and some stiffness getting on and off the podium, Thomas seemed alert and ardent, even hopping a few inches into the air at one full-hearted moment.It was an inspiring opening night for a Philharmonic season that is starting off with some of the unsettled quality of a Mahler symphony.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New York Philharmonic Chief Abruptly Steps Down Amid Tensions

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      Gary Ginstling, the orchestra’s president and chief executive, is leaving after just a year on the job.Gary Ginstling, the New York Philharmonic’s president and chief executive, abruptly resigned on Thursday after just a year on the job, leaving the orchestra in limbo as it grapples with challenges including heated labor talks and an investigation into its workplace culture after two players were accused of misconduct.Behind the scenes, there were rising tensions between Ginstling and the Philharmonic’s board, staff and musicians, according to someone familiar with the situation who was granted anonymity to describe private conversations. The person said Ginstling also had disagreements with the star conductor Gustavo Dudamel, who, in a major coup, was tapped to become the Philharmonic’s next music and artistic director.Some Philharmonic employees found Ginstling to be opaque, the individual said, and they complained that he was away from New York during critical moments, including at times when the administration was dealing with an outcry among musicians over the players accused of misconduct. Ginstling, 58, the former executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, maintained a home near the capital, where his family lives, and had been shuttling between there and New York, where he rented an apartment. (A friend said that he only spent weekends away from New York, and worked long hours for the orchestra.)A final flare-up occurred during an orchestra tour in China this summer, the individual said, with some players blaming Ginstling for several logistical problems. The orchestra had trouble fitting all of its musicians onstage at an opera house in Guangzhou. A planned speech from the stage by the American ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, was unexpectedly scrapped. (He later spoke at a reception for the orchestra.) In the end, large swaths of the opera house, which seats more than 1,800 people, were empty, an embarrassment for an ensemble of the Philharmonic’s caliber.In a statement released by the Philharmonic, Ginstling said: “The New York Philharmonic is an extraordinary institution, and it has been an honor to be a part of it. However, it has become clear to me that the institution needs a different type of leadership, and I have tendered my resignation.”He declined to comment further in a message on Thursday.The Philharmonic said that it would convene a “transition leadership team” that includes the chairmen of the Philharmonic’s board, Peter W. May and Oscar L. Tang, and Ginstling’s predecessor, Deborah Borda, who had held the post from 2017 until last year.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gone in a Six-Year Flash: Farewell to the New York Phil’s Maestro

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      The pandemic-derailed tenure of Jaap van Zweden, the orchestra’s music director, was too short to give us a full sense of him, as man or maestro.Jaap, we hardly knew ye.On Thursday at David Geffen Hall, Jaap van Zweden, the music director of the New York Philharmonic, conducted a lean, driven rendition of Mahler’s sprawling Second Symphony. After two more performances through Saturday, he will leave his Lincoln Center podium, a mere six years after stepping onto it.No Philharmonic artistic leader has been less present in front of its players and audience since Mahler himself, who died two years into his tenure, in 1911. There was barely enough time to meet van Zweden, let alone get a full sense of him, as man or maestro.He had no signature initiatives, and his choice of works revealed little personal stamp. His interpretations of the classics only occasionally relaxed from a tense punchiness. And though I wasn’t always displeased after hearing him lead a program, I was never inspired to return and hear it again.The period of van Zweden’s tenure has been hugely consequential for the Philharmonic. There was the orchestra’s survival through the extended pandemic lockdown, the renovation of its home at Geffen Hall and a flood of music by composers beyond the usual roster of white men of the distant past.But van Zweden, 63, has seemed more a participant in all this than a leader. When he was preparing to start in New York, he expressed enthusiasm about bringing back Deborah Borda, an industry legend, as chief executive. Having such a strong, visionary administrative partner, though, ended up making this feel more like Borda’s era than van Zweden’s.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The End of a Maestro’s Era Approaches at the Philharmonic

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      Jaap van Zweden returned to the New York Philharmonic to lead some of his final programs as the orchestra’s music director.When the conductor Jaap van Zweden was hired for his short-lived tenure as the music director of the New York Philharmonic, he was seen as someone who could bring some punch to heavyweight symphonies by Beethoven and Mahler.As if to hold on to that idea, Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony will be performed at van Zweden’s farewell next week. But when I look back on his six seasons with the Philharmonic, the shortest stay for a maestro since that of Pierre Boulez in the 1970s, what I’ll remember most, and most fondly, is not any 19th-century warhorse but Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion.”Performed last season, van Zweden’s “Passion” was one of the great surprises of his time in New York. Gone was his tendency to bulldoze and flatten a score; instead, he gave shape to nearly three hours of music, sensitively making room for reflection amid drama in an interpretation that was exquisitely clear and genuinely moving.That night felt like a glimpse of what van Zweden’s tenure might have looked like if he had been able to truly settle in — if his second season with the Philharmonic hadn’t been cut short by the pandemic; if the orchestra hadn’t returned with a nomadic season as its hall was being renovated; if, when he got back inside David Geffen Hall, he didn’t have just two years left.Unfortunately, van Zweden’s time with the Philharmonic will probably be remembered less for his conducting than for those disruptions and milestones, as well as for the overshadowing coup of the starry, charismatic Gustavo Dudamel being poached from the Los Angeles Philharmonic to succeed him.That move looked like a pendulum-swinging reaction to van Zweden’s personality as a reserved technician, which hasn’t paid off: The orchestra sounds more or less the same as when he started, evidence of a relationship that never deepened. It can be difficult to explain why musicians and conductors aren’t compatible; a maestro might thrive with one group and flop with another. For whatever reason, the Philharmonic never developed a clear identity as his ensemble.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jaap van Zweden’s Brief, Fraught Time Atop the New York Philharmonic

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      On a balmy spring morning, after a breakfast of coffee and plain yogurt at a luxury Manhattan hotel, Jaap van Zweden grabbed his bag of conducting batons and scores by Mozart and Gubaidulina and set out for Lincoln Center through the wilds of Central Park.“I love the air, I love the trees,” he said. “Everybody can do whatever they want here. This is freedom, absolute freedom.”Van Zweden, 63, will leave the New York Philharmonic this summer after six seasons as its music director, the shortest tenure of any maestro since Pierre Boulez, the eminent French composer and conductor who led the Philharmonic in the 1970s. Van Zweden helped the orchestra emerge from the turbulence of the pandemic; shepherded it through a trying, nomadic season when its home, David Geffen Hall, was undergoing a $550 million renovation; and led the orchestra when it reopened the sparkling, reimagined hall ahead of schedule, to the delight of musicians and audiences.But throughout his tenure, van Zweden, an intense, exacting maestro from Amsterdam, faced persistent questions about whether he had the star power, creative drive and strong connection to New York needed to lead the Philharmonic.During the pandemic, he spent more than a year at home in the Netherlands, which fractured his nascent relationship with the ensemble. And in 2021, he announced that he would step down from his post, far earlier than many people expected.Van Zweden said he felt no other Philharmonic music director had faced such profound challenges.“We had to start all over again,” he said. “I feel like we are still in the process of getting to know each other.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: An Absent Player in the Spotlight at the Philharmonic

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      This week’s program was supposed to feature the orchestra’s principal oboe, but he and another player have been suspended amid misconduct allegations.It’s rare that the most significant music in a concert is a piece that isn’t played. But this week’s program at the New York Philharmonic may end up being remembered for what was omitted.The performance on Wednesday, conducted by Jane Glover, was supposed to include Mozart’s Oboe Concerto, with the solo part taken by the orchestra’s principal oboe, Liang Wang. But he and the associate principal trumpet, Matthew Muckey, have been benched by the Philharmonic since allegations of misconduct and assault against them resurfaced last month.In 2018, those accusations prompted the orchestra to fire the two men; the players’ union then appealed to an arbitrator, who reinstated them in 2020. Now, as another investigation has begun and Wang and Muckey have sued the orchestra, saying they’ve been wrongfully suspended, it is unclear when — and whether — either will play on the stage of David Geffen Hall again.Rather than replace Wang, the Philharmonic swapped out Mozart’s Oboe Concerto with his Symphony No. 13 in F (K. 112). Written in 1771, when its composer was 15 and on a tour of Italy with his father, the symphony — just 13 minutes long — has that easygoing, tossed-off eloquence that’s evident even in Mozart’s teenage works. The first movement is sprightly; the second, gentle, scored for strings alone; the third, graceful. Best of all is the lively triple-time finale, which evokes the long history of courtly hunting music, with an alluring short section in minor key.The Philharmonic had never performed the symphony before Wednesday, and under Glover’s baton it flowed with the same nimble, unaffected naturalness as the rest of the program: four pieces, including three Mozart symphonies, from the final three decades of the 18th century. Glover’s tempos throughout the concert were sensible and unexaggerated, with ample room to breathe but no dragging, and the playing was lovely — though the violins sometimes took on a slightly thin, wiry edge, highlighted by the cool clarity of Geffen Hall’s acoustics.In the work not by Mozart — Beethoven’s “Ah! perfido,” a concert scene from five years after Mozart’s death but still very much within the world of his opera arias — the orchestra provided sensitive accompaniment for the soprano Karen Slack. Making her Philharmonic debut, she inhabited the piece’s shifting moods, from anger at a treacherous lover to vulnerability to proud resolution, with strikingly clear high notes by the end.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Frank Wakefield, Who Expanded the Mandolin’s Range, Dies at 89

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      A bluegrass innovator, he recorded numerous albums as a leader, and his list of collaborators included both Leonard Bernstein and Jerry Garcia.Frank Wakefield, an innovative bluegrass mandolinist whose sweeping musicality led to collaborations with the New York Philharmonic and Jerry Garcia, and whose unique voicings and technique expanded the parameters of his instrument, died on Friday at his home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He was 89.Marsha Sprintz, his companion of 47 years, said the cause was complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.In a career that spanned seven decades, Mr. Wakefield played with a host of bluegrass luminaries, including Jimmy Martin and the Stanley Brothers.He first made his mark in the early 1950s after joining a band led by the singer and guitarist Red Allen as a vocalist and mandolin player. Working in Ohio and the Upper Midwest and, by 1960, the Baltimore-Washington area, the band developed a hard-driving, harmony-rich brand of bluegrass that inspired not only other musicians in the genre, but also bluegrass-inclined rock bands like New Riders of the Purple Sage.While still a teenager, Mr. Wakefield mastered the heavily syncopated “chop” chord of the bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe, whom he met in 1961 and who immediately recognized Mr. Wakefield’s prowess as a mandolinist.Mr. Wakefield in 2010. Despite suffering from emphysema for years, he toured and recorded well into the 2000s.Michael G. Stewart“You can play like me as good — or near as good — as I can,” Mr. Wakefield, in a 2022 interview with the Hudson Valley Bluegrass Association, recalled Mr. Monroe saying at their initial meeting. “Now you’ve got to go out and find your own style.”Heeding Mr. Monroe’s advice, Mr. Wakefield did exactly that. He devised his own sound by alternating up and down strokes on his instrument with equal force to produce a clear, ringing tone and sustained rhythm, which he likened to a sledgehammer striking a steel rail in a 1998 interview with the bluegrass website Candlewater.com.At other times, plucking the strings with multiple fingers, he produced a richly textured effect suggestive of two or three mandolins playing together.David Grisman, a student of Mr. Wakefield’s and a mandolin virtuoso in his own right, said in an often quoted passage from Frets magazine that Mr. Wakefield had “split the bluegrass mandolin atom” by taking the instrument beyond where Mr. Monroe had.The 1964 album “Bluegrass,” which Mr. Wakefield recorded with the singer and guitarist Red Allen, pushed the boundaries of the genre.Folkways Records“Bluegrass,” the album that Mr. Wakefield made with Mr. Allen for Folkways Records in 1964 (and that a 19-year-old Mr. Grisman produced), proved ample confirmation of that claim: It featured versions of two of Mr. Wakefield’s most enduring originals, “New Camptown Races” and “Catnip,” both of which, with their developments in melody, tunings and chord changes, pushed the limits of what then constituted bluegrass.Mr. Wakefield’s innovations didn’t stop there, though. By the mid-1960s he had begun composing sonatas for the mandolin and arranging classical pieces for traditional bluegrass ensembles. He performed with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in 1967 and made a guest appearance with the Boston Pops orchestra the next year.The Greenbriar Boys (from left, Bob Yellin, Mr. Wakefield and John Herald) in performance at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival. David Gahr/Getty ImagesMr. Wakefield’s forays outside bluegrass extended into pop territory as well, including a mid-1960s stint with the Greenbriar Boys, an urban folk revivalist group. During this period, he also performed with country bluesmen like Lightnin’ Hopkins and Son House and, later, rock acts like the Grateful Dead.Franklin Delano Roosevelt Wakefield was born on June 26, 1934, in the Emory Gap enclave of Harriman, Tenn., the 10th of 12 children of Simpson and Bertie (Isham) Wakefield. Growing up poor, he was forced to leave school after second grade to help work on the family farm.Enthralled by DeFord Bailey’s performances on “The Grand Ole Opry,” young Frank took up the harmonica at an early age and soon also became adept at playing the guitar.His father, who worked as a brakeman to supplement the family income, froze to death in a local railyard when Frank was 13. Several of his sisters moved 300 miles north to Dayton, Ohio, as part of a Depression-era migration. Frank and his brother, Ralph, were left to move between orphanages until Frank finally ran away to join his sisters in Dayton, where a brother-in-law introduced him to the mandolin.Billing themselves as the Wakefield Brothers, Frank and Ralph, who played guitar, made their first public appearances at house parties and on local radio in 1960. Two years later, Frank joined Red Allen’s band, and his path as a musician was set.However, his tenure with Mr. Allen was fraught with conflict, much of it brought on by Mr. Allen’s abusive behavior, especially when he was drinking. Nevertheless, apart from a period with the Detroit-based Chain Mountain Boys in the mid-1950s, Mr. Wakefield persevered with him until 1965, when he joined the Greenbriar Boys to replace Ralph Rinzler, who had left the band to become Bill Monroe’s manager.Mr. Wakefield in a New York recording studio in 1966, at around the time he embarked on a solo career.David Gahr/Getty ImagesAfter recovering from a near-fatal automobile accident in the late 1960s, Mr. Wakefield moved to Saratoga Springs and embarked on a solo career. Over the next five decades, he released albums for a variety of bluegrass-aligned record labels, including Takoma, Flying Fish and Patuxent Music. His 1972 Rounder album, called simply “Frank Wakefield” and featuring the New York bluegrass band Country Cooking, is widely regarded as a touchstone of the movement known as newgrass, which incorporated elements of rock, jazz and classical music into traditional bluegrass.Despite suffering from emphysema for years, Mr. Wakefield continued to tour nationally and to record well into the 2000s.Besides Ms. Sprintz, Mr. Wakefield’s survivors include a sister, Susie Norton; a son, Greg Wakefield; and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.Despite his musically omnivorous appetites, Mr. Wakefield was unfamiliar with Mr. Garcia, who would later produce the 1976 album “Pistol Packin’ Mama,” a string-band collaboration between Mr. Wakefield and others, when they started playing shows together.“Whenever Garcia played with me and David,” Mr. Wakefield explained, referring to David Nelson of New Riders of the Purple Sage in a 2006 interview with candlewater.com, “we would always have a full house. I thought it was because of me.”“It took me a while,” he added, “to realize that people were coming to the shows because Jerry was playing with us.” More

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      Review: A Conductor Surprises by Embracing the Ordinary

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      Esa-Pekka Salonen is known for unusual, ambitious projects. But at the New York Philharmonic this week, he succeeded with standard repertory works.The conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen tends to get noticed for his ambitious, even outlandish projects.Perfume cannons puffing out scent alongside the music. A rare performance of one of the piano’s most gargantuan concertos. Contemporary opera in the concert hall. A roboticist being included among his artistic collaborators. Ample helpings of his own works. (Salonen is the rare maestro who is also a successful composer.)But once all the perfume has dissipated, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Salonen, who led the New York Philharmonic on Wednesday at David Geffen Hall, is, at core, simply an excellent conductor.The Philharmonic program was unusual for him in that it was so, well, uncreative. No premieres, no stagings, no intriguing juxtapositions. Just two classic pieces — Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 and Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique” — that, in the style of old-fashioned orchestra programming, seemed to have been thrown together arbitrarily. And yet it was a terrific concert, overseen by Salonen with his characteristic fiery clarity.Fiery clarity is a good way of describing his most recent career move, too. Classical music is, outwardly at least, meticulously polite. Few musicians leave positions amid publicly verbalized anger.But in March, when Salonen announced he wouldn’t renew his contract as the music director of the San Francisco Symphony, he told the truth — or at least his truth. He had made his decision, he said, “because I do not share the same goals for the future of the institution as the Board of Governors does.”By the industry’s standards, this was an expletive-ridden rant. It quickly became clear that the problem was money. The San Francisco Symphony has hobbled out of the pandemic even more deficit-laden than it was before; its expensive promises to Salonen — like that team of artistic collaborators, roboticist and all — were going to need to be curtailed.The funny thing about Wednesday’s concert in New York is that it was exactly the kind of program that would be his future had Salonen chosen to remain in San Francisco: meat and potatoes repertoire, without the fancy trimmings.But even without them, the Philharmonic played beautifully for him on Wednesday. The Shostakovich concerto was dotted with eerily mellow rips of brass near the start, a hushed dusk in the strings at the start of the second movement and characterful pierces from the winds in the final Allegro. Sheku Kanneh-Mason, the soloist, played with a rich yet focused tone, and he didn’t indulge in excessive emotion. This resulted in a performance that was modest, straight-faced and fundamentally serene — but also a little cool, a little efficient. The piece seemed to sail by briskly.It was hard to remember the concerto at all after the monster that is Berlioz’s “Symphonie.” Last year, I wrote that the Philharmonic’s rendition of this score under Herbert Blomstedt was “leisurely, mellow, thoroughly pastoral.” That could hardly have been further from Salonen’s neurotically unsettled, icy-hot take, which grabbed every opportunity to emphasize off-kilter rhythms and changeable textures.The opening “Reveries, Passions” section had a dewy freshness to the sound that could shift, in a moment, to intense fullness, and then back again. Salonen couldn’t keep the long central “Scene in the Fields” section from feeling like it lingers. But it had quietly been building tension, with an undercurrent of anxiety — an anticipation of the trembling violas a little later on — even in Ryan Roberts’s quiet, plangent English horn shepherd calls.Salonen embraced the sudden swerves and floodlit brashness of the “March to the Scaffold,” which was, as it is too rarely, genuinely scary. And the finale, “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath,” was raucous but never messy — a ferocious, fantastic party.New York PhilharmonicThis program continues through Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More