In Friday’s (6/22) New York Times, Steve Smith writes about the New York Philharmonic’s upcoming performances in the Park Avenue Armory’s 55,000-square-foot Drill Hall for a “program of pieces that feature spatially dispersed players and multiple ensembles. Built around ‘Gruppen,’ a work for three orchestras completed in 1957 by the visionary German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, the program is characteristic of the extravagant projects with which the Philharmonic’s music director, Alan Gilbert, has concluded recent seasons…. For the armory performance, Mr. Gilbert will lead one of three orchestras deployed in a circular pattern on the Drill Hall floor, with the other two conducted by the composers Magnus Lindberg and Matthias Pintscher. Some audience members will sit in bleachers among the three orchestral sections; others will sit on the floor, surrounded on all sides, or on the galleries overlooking the space…. Building outward from the Stockhausen piece Mr. Gilbert assembled a program of complementary works” including Pierre Boulez’s “Rituel,” Ives’s “Unanswered Question,” and “a striking scene from ‘Don Giovanni’ in which three orchestras play independent themes simultaneously.…‘In some clubs there’ll be different rooms with different music playing, and you can stand in one place and hear all the different things playing,’ Mr. Gilbert said. ‘But in Mozart’s big dance party they actually fit together.’ ”
Posted June 26, 2012
