EGN NEWS DESK
I at all times wince when folks say they like classical music, “however not the brand new stuff.”
Comments like that aren’t solely shortsighted — the outdated stuff was, in its time, after all new and sometimes radical — however in addition they don’t take into consideration how diversified modern music is, and the way a lot of it’s really fairly simple to like.
Take Anders Hillborg’s second piano concerto, “The MAX Concerto,” which had its native premiere with the New York Philharmonic on Thursday. Programmed considerably arbitrarily between works by Sibelius and Rachmaninoff, it was extra entertaining than both of them, and simply as properly crafted.
First carried out in October in San Francisco, the concerto acknowledges the lineage of its style with playfulness and reverence, and showcases Emanuel Ax, the soloist for whom it was written, by matching and pushing his model of modest, underrated virtuosity. Likable with out being wanting to please, thrilling with out shameless dazzle, it’s, like Ax, pleasant just because it’s glorious.
And, crucially, Hillborg’s concerto works no matter how acquainted a listener is along with his music, or any classical music for that matter. You might pay attention to the piece’s kind — its 9 evocatively titled sections, carried out as a single, 21-minute motion — or smile at “MAX,” a contraction of “Manny Ax.” You might choose up on the opening passage’s nod to Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto, or a later suggestion of Bach. Or you might simply sit again and sense, intuitively, the genial majesty and pleasure coursing by all of it.
One of the nice good guys in music, Ax is a pianist who, over his five-decade profession, appears to have made no enemies whereas sitting quietly, comfortably close to the highest of his discipline, whether or not as chamber accomplice to Yo-Yo Ma or as a champion of latest works premiering a brand new concerto by John Adams — “Century Rolls,” whose part “Manny’s Gym” is likely one of the single most lovely actions written in our time.
Ax’s model can simply be taken as a right, and a few have present in his enjoying a sort of boring affability, although that could be one thing nearer to knowledge; not for nothing is he a outstanding Brahms interpreter. Hillborg, brilliantly, has composed a mirror of Ax’s pianism that resists grandiosity and theatrical gesture. While “The MAX Concerto” is troublesome — the solo half makes use of practically all the keyboard and calls for cool precision — it additionally unfurls with swish restraint.
The strings, as an example, most frequently seem as glassy basis, delicately suspended and lustrous. At instances, they align with the winds to tackle the full-bodied heat of an organ, with droning tones that slowly morph into flaring, mighty radiance. The piano joins them, however later has the ultimate phrase with a strong chord that requires all of Ax’s 10 fingers, but, true to his sound, comes off with unshowy tenderness.
Pity the conductor Eun Sun Kim, who on Thursday was making her Philharmonic debut main the Hillborg, which was written with a distinct conductor in thoughts: Esa-Pekka Salonen, the music director of the San Francisco Symphony and her across-the-street neighbor in California. (She has been on the podium of San Francisco Opera since 2021.) Awkwardly, the Philharmonic’s program word even makes a degree of Salonen’s relationship with the composer, as if he had been the one main the New York premiere.
Salonen’s friendship with Hillborg, which fits again greater than 40 years, paid off within the San Francisco performances: In October, the concerto had an easygoing, natural circulation, however in Kim’s account on Thursday, it felt at instances slack and extra explicitly episodic.
She had extra of a possibility to correctly introduce herself elsewhere in this system. The night opened with Sibelius’s “Finlandia,” briskly said with brasses that had been aggressive as a substitute of noble — the piece’s nationalism a present of pressure somewhat than a declaration of delight. More persuasive was Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 3, which adopted the Hillborg after an intermission.
Kim’s expertise within the opera home, and her background studying from opera masters like Daniel Barenboim and Kirill Petrenko, served her in lending form to Rachmaninoff’s looking rating. And she made a case for a piece that’s hardly ever heard on the Philharmonic; earlier than this week’s performances, the symphony had appeared on only a half-dozen subscription packages since its premiere in 1936.
Throughout, Kim maintained a lush dreaminess, made even dreamier as she freely interpreted each deviation from the tempo — each ritardando, rubato and rallentando — written into the rating. And, with winking readability however resisting overstatement, she teased out the music’s rapidly passing references to, for instance, the “Dies Irae” chant and jazzy idioms.
A late work, in model and in Rachmaninoff’s life, the Third Symphony has by no means been one among his most well-known items, and sometimes falls between the cracks of what got here earlier than (“Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini”) and after (“Symphonic Dances”). When the Philadelphia Orchestra introduced the symphony to New York a number of days after its premiere, the critic Olin Downes wrote that it mentioned nothing new and left the impression “of a sure diffuseness.”
Nearly a century later, we all know that the Third Symphony did have one thing new to say, even when it reveals itself extra slowly, and extra subtly, than a few of Rachmaninoff’s warhorses. True to itself and hardly apparent — much like Ax’s pianism — it encourages us, like the very best of music, to simply hold listening.
New York Philharmonic
This program repeats by Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org.
