New York Philharmonic: pleasant but staid

(Lorin Maazel and the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall in New York.)

Fri, Sept 21, 8pm -- Catching up on the New York trip blogging here, this post has sat unfinished for awhile... Anyway, while in Manhattan, I made a point to try and see the New York Philharmonic to compare the fuss about the various major American city orchestras. They're saying that the LA Phil is playing so spectacularly well right now - New Yorker, NY Times have both recently flipped out over visits to and from the Los Angeles Philhramonic - and I've been particularly spoiled by getting to hear the LA Phil so often. So I've been trying to see performances by other "Big Five" orchestras when I get the chance (traditionally they've been Chicago, New York, Boston, Cleveland and Philadelphia). I saw the Chicago Symphony at Ravinia in July and loved it, so I was curious if New York would produce a similar kind of euphoria.

Well, I didn't quite feel the same way after Friday's concert in New York, although to be fair, there also wasn't much to be pulled from this particular program, which included Beethoven's Violin Concerto and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 2, and some new versions of Boccherini's La ritirata notturna di Madrid, transcribed by Luciano Berrio. Lorin Maazel conducted. All of it was pretty standard orchestral programming, and it was played very well, but the sound didn't quite pop off the stage at me the way that I've experienced elsewhere. I love the Beethoven Violin Concerto and it was lovingly played by Lisa Batiashvili, but again, not particularly memorably - I remember hearing it really sing off bad loudspeakers at the Hollywood Bowl only a few years ago, and this performance live didn't match with the same musicality. The acoustics in Avery Fisher Hall have been complained about frequently in the media - that they are dry and not so great - and I'm no acoustician so I couldn't really tell much of a difference, but I did feel a bit far away sitting towards the back of the main orchestra section. At a similar location in LA's Disney Hall, the sound is warm and bright.

Mostly though, I felt that the programming was considerably more conservative than what I'm used to getting in LA, and also more conservative also than what was played by the Chicago Symphony in July - there we had a new modern piece as well as Ravel, all music written in the last century. The New York Philharmonic played Berrio on this program, its true, but it was Berrio's take on musical themes from the 18th century... Taking a look at the rest of the NY Phil's fall season, the focus will be on Tchaikovsky symphonies. Comparatively, the fall season at the LA Phil is focused on Sibelius symphonies, music that is less often heard. We trust Esa-Pekka Salonen as an engaging and solid music director, our curiosity as an audience is constantly renewed when he regularly programs music that we haven't heard before. Not that they don't play Beethoven's Violin Concerto and Tchaikovsky as well, but when they do, it's placed in a context that isn't staid and it doesn't feel quite so "done before".

So all in all I can't say that I was blown away by the New York Philharmonic, even as pleasant as the concert was. Pleasant is all fine and good, but there is plenty of excitement back home in LA.

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From the Avery Fisher Hall lobby you can also see the renovations happening on the Lincoln Center Plaza and Alice Tully Hall at Julliard:

They've ripped up the plaza in front of Lincoln Center Theatre. There used to be a stone bridge connecting Lincoln Center and Julliard, which made it kind of gloomy on the street below, so that has now gone away.

Alice Tully Hall at Julliard, where Lincoln Center often presents chamber music, is getting a dramatic new facade that is supposed to be more alluring from the street - you can see it taking shape here, with the dramatic slope that they are building into the bottom side of the building.