In Friday’s (4/19) New York Times, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim writes, “There were moments during Wednesday evening’s New York Philharmonic performance of Charles Ives’s ‘Symphony No. 4’ at Avery Fischer Hall when I felt like a spectator at a Quidditch match. It’s true that neither the Philharmonic players nor their conductor, Alan Gilbert, were riding on broomsticks. But with 14 airborne players, four balls, six goals, and a winged target, Quidditch, the sport central to the Harry Potter novels, is a lot like Ives’s music. Things come hurtling at you from unexpected places. Players are chasing a zigzagging target. The laws of physics don’t seem to apply. … Yet even under these daunting circumstances, Mr. Gilbert appeared relaxed, bringing discipline to the work’s wilder moments and a poetic introspection to its quiet passages. … The first half of the program offered more American fare, beginning with the world premiere of Christopher Rouse’s gothic ‘Prospero’s Rooms’ followed by Bernstein’s Apollonian ‘Serenade,’ with Joshua Bell as solo violinist. Mr. Rouse, the Philharmonic’s current composer in residence, drew inspiration from Edgar Allen Poe’s short story ‘The Masque of the Red Death.’ … In Mr. Rouse’s atmospheric work, the story is told with dreamlike speed—10 minutes from the cadaverous contrabassoon line that opens over quiet string rumblings to the final terrifying crash.” Also on the concert, “the orchestra performed a moving rendition of ‘Nimrod’ from Elgar’s ‘Enigma Variations’ in tribute to both the conductor Colin Davis, who died on Sunday at 85, and to the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing.”
Posted April 19, 2013
