REVIEW: Resounding NY Philharmonic Welcomes Trifonov
Above: Daniil Trifonov with the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Jaap van Zweden. Photo by Chris Lee.
December 4, 2019
By Brian Taylor
Everything is temporary. Change is inevitable. Audiences and critics have long complained about the design and acoustics of the Philharmonic’s Lincoln Center home. This week, Deborah Borda, President and CEO of the Philharmonic, and Henry Timms, head of Lincoln Center, announced a “this is finally happening” plan for a “reimagined” David Geffen Hall.
Artist Rendering of the Reimagined David Geffen Hall. Photo credit: Courtesy of Lincoln Center and the New York Philharmonic.
The lobby will receive more than a nip/tuck. Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects will double the size of the lobby, add a central media streaming wall, “reenergize” the Grand Promenade, and add a “destination eatery” by Union Square Hospitality Group.
All exciting. Alas, the iconic Richard Lippold sculpture Orpheus and Apollo, removed for “conservation” in 2014, will not be resuscitated.
The stated goal is to “create one of the world’s finest concert halls.” Diamond Schmitt Architects have been tasked with the concert hall design, reducing seating capacity from 2738 to 2200, and resurfacing the side walls to “improve reverberation, bass and sound differentiation.” Most intriguingly, the stage ceiling will be elevated, and “replaced by an adjustable canopy over the musicians to allow for fine tuning of the Hall’s sound.” Also, the audience will surround the orchestra, while at the same time, the theatrical possibilities of the hall for the Philharmonic’s operatic and multi-media presentations will be modernized.
Cheers at impending change doesn’t mean things are currently so dreadful that the Philharmonic should be avoided in the meantime. Perhaps the new hall, to open in March 2024 (after the orchestra does some performing in Carnegie Hall, NY City Center, and elsewhere), will improve the audience’s experience.
But, concerts like the past week’s Russian double-bill will be hard to top. New artist-in-residence, pianist Daniil Trifonov, in Scriabin’s early Piano Concerto, and Jaap van Zweden leading Tchaikovsky’s fatalistic Fifth Symphony, exhibit a New York Philharmonic that is a high-performing, energetic juggernaut.
Scriabin composed his sole concerto in 1896 at the age of 24. On first hearing, it more resembles Chopin than his contemporary Rachmaninoff. But, the piano part is a dense thicket of reaching ideas — a minefield of deceptively tricky pianism — that Trifonov makes look effortless. He’s a magician at the keyboard, seemingly not breaking a sweat, while rendering Scriabin’s panoply of contrapuntal, decorative textures with the ease of a seasoned expert. He makes it look and sound easy, when it is not. His single encore of a Scriabin Etude was a humble, musically logical addendum to his residency debut.
Photo by Chris Lee
Following intermission, Maestro van Zweden then led the orchestra in Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 in E Minor, from 1888, with copious energy and a driven agenda on the podium. Busily hurtling gestures toward every corner of the stage, van Zweden is insistently one step ahead of his players. He kept the pace and thrust of Tchaikovsky’s crowd-pleasing showdown with fate — represented in a pedantic motif that appears cyclicly — traveling with the force of an avalanche.
It’s a great piece, with a third movement waltz that bears familial resemblance to some seasonal ballet music being performed across Lincoln Square. The finale is exuberant. The Philharmonic’s horn section — principal Richard Deane making art of the second movement’s dolce con molto espressivo solo — were in flawless form. The brass section, as a whole, takes Tchaikovsky’s building blocks and forms them into architecture. Bold, gleaming, New York-style.
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Upcoming at the NY Phil:
And the buried lede: a Steve Reich New York premiere, and NY Phil co-commission, Music for Ensemble and Orchestra, an homage to Baroque concerto grosso.
