The vast majority of the music the Philadelphia Orchestra will be playing at its eight concerts at Carnegie Hall this season is by Beethoven.
Under musical director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, this ensemble plays the master with warmth and verve. And alongside the nine classical symphonies, it presents contemporary works written in response to them, a tried-and-true technique for scooping the new with the old, spoon-of-sugar style. They have been worthy performances.
But while there are still three concerts to come—Beethoven’s First and Ninth on February 21, then “Missa Solemnis” and a John Williams Gala in April—I don’t think anything the Philadelphians are doing this season at Carnegie will be more impressive than the performance. from Tuesday.
There was not a note of Beethoven. Nor a piece that could be regarded as a standard audience pull. Samuel Barber’s 1947 soprano monologue “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” comes closest to a chestnut, blossoming in the fresh company of two new works and Florence Price’s ever-forgotten Symphony No. 1.
When the Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered the Prize 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’s all too rare for them (or for anything but a canonical piece) to have the anchor point at the end of a concert.
So it was a forward-thinking, even inspiring statement for Philadelphia—which released a recording of Price’s First and Third Symphony last year—to close with the First. And the players gave it the same vitality and subtlety that they gave to Beethoven.
The opening bassoon line here was less of a solo showpiece than a soft song that nestled modestly into the textures of the strings. In that bassoon call – along with the mingling of folk-like melodies and classical sweep, and a dancing finale – Price’s symphony bears the unmistakable influence of Dvorak’s “New World.” But it’s very much its own piece, with a captivating swing between raging power and abrupt lyrical oases in the first movement and a wind whistle echoing through the lively Juba dance in the third.
Price clearly knew she had a good tune in the slow second movement, a hymn-like chorus for copper coral that she’s milking for all it’s worth. But the many repetitions, with fine African drumming underneath, take on the radiant dignity of prayer. And the ending, with quick calligraphy in the wind that snakes around the theme, rises to ecstasy, punctuated by bubbles.
Nézet-Séguin’s orchestra sounds luscious yet focused and committed, even emphasizing a quality I didn’t really associate with Price: humor, in her dancing and in the way a clarinet suddenly squirms out of that slow hymn, like a giggle in the church.
The concert opened with a new suite by Matthew Aucoin, an adaptation of his opera Eurydice, which played at the Metropolitan Opera last fall. At the Met, Aucoin’s score engulfed an enticing narrative, but in an 18-minute instrumental summary, it was easier to appreciate the dense, raw extravagance of his music, the way he whips an orchestra out of the fog into the oceans, then thumps percussion makes it chase inside a gallop. Ricardo Morales, the principal clarinet of the Philadelphians, played his sombre solo with airy glowing tone, a letter from another world.
There was also grandeur in Valerie Coleman’s “This Is Not a Small Voice,” her new setting of a poetic ode to Sonia Sanchez’s Black pride that weaves from rumination to bold statement. The soprano Angel Blue was sharp, her tone as rich yet light as whipped cream, in a difficult solo part, requiring clear speaking-song articulation and diving into velvety depths before rising to shimmering highs. Blue was also fantastic – 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 ended with a rediscovered symphony by a black composer. When it comes to broadening the sounds that reverberate through our opera houses and concert halls, change can be frustratingly slow. But hearing two of the country’s most venerable orchestras play symphonies by Julius Eastman and Florence Price in just a few days was quite a thrill to see the tectonic plates of the repertory shift in real time.
Philadelphia Orchestra
Next up at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan, on February 21.