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New York Phil の無料メモリアル・コン「復活」 [音楽時評]

今年は,アメリカで同時多発テロが発生して10年の節目の年に当たります.そこでNew York Philharmonic は,この夏のNew York 市各区の公演でんお無料コンサートをやめて,9.11にAvery Fisher Hall で無料コンサート,マーラーの交響曲第2番「復活」演奏会を開きました.Free tickets were distributed in the afternoon. Some weeks earlier the Philharmonic had set aside 700 tickets for first responders and families of the victims of Sept. 11, and all 700 were given away.
当夜は,Lincoln Center Plaza の大スクリーンにそれを映し出して,多くの聴衆の要望にに答えたそうです.some 2,000 seats were set up in Lincoln Center Plaza for a live video relay of the performance. The concert was also recorded for broadcast on public television on Sunday night.       

9月11日というのは,アメリカでは,学校の学年と同じように,音楽界のシーズン開幕の月に当たります.
それでは,10年前にはどう対応したかといいますと,In the aftermath the city’s stunned performing arts organizations were not sure how to respond, or even whether to begin performances at all. とたいへん困惑したようです.

But life, and musical life, had to go on. Some institutions thought the strongest response was to do exactly what they had planned to do. The New York City Opera (which had been scheduled to open its season on the evening of Sept. 11), was first out of the blocks, four days later, with a new production of Wagner’s “Fliegende Holländer,” preceded by a moving ceremony with the entire company onstage. 
The New York Philharmonic, then led by Kurt Masur, chose to open the season on Sept. 20 with a memorial program, performing Brahms’s “German Requiem,” a benefit for families of first responders who had died on duty. It was a consoling and magnificent performance, one of the artistic high points of Mr. Masur’s tenure.  
it was especially appropriate that on Saturday night the New York Philharmonic commemorated the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 with another intensely moving program. In a free concert Alan Gilbert led an inspired performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony (“Resurrection”) with the New York Choral Artists (Joseph Flummerfelt, director), the soprano Dorothea Röschmann and the mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung. This 90-minute Mahler symphony, which plumbs “every aspect of life, from its agonies to its joys to its profound sense of hope,” as Mr. Gilbert said in his eloquent spoken comments to open the program, was an ideal choice to help New Yorkers reflect, heal and persevere.

日本では,今年の東日本大震災後,予定されていた外来演奏家がほとんど来日をキャンセルするなかで,耳慣れない「音楽の力」を掲げた日本人演奏家の活躍が目立ちました. 「音楽の力」という普遍的な表現には,私は異論を感じます.かつてJuliette Alvin というMusic Therapy の先駆者が来日した折,彼女はAssociation という言葉を使って,ひとつの音楽が人によって違った連想を思い起こさせることがあるから,theraphy  は個別的に行われなくてはならないと繰り返し力説していたからです.

話を戻して,  New York Phil の「復活」は,Allan Gilbert に少し気負いすぎのところが見られたそうですが,全体としてたいへんな好演だったようです.

あとはどうぞご自由にご渉猟下さい.

   
  
Music Review

New York Exhales With Mahler’s ‘Resurrection,’ Symphonic Salve

Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times

The New York Philharmonic and New York Choral Artists, led by Alan Gilbert, performed Mahler's “Resurrection” for listeners in Avery Fisher Hall and outside on the plaza.

The terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, came as the classical music season in New York was about to begin. In the aftermath the city’s stunned performing arts organizations were not sure how to respond, or even whether to begin performances at all.

Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times
The mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung.
                           

But life, and musical life, had to go on. Some institutions thought the strongest response was to do exactly what they had planned to do. The New York City Opera (which had been scheduled to open its season on the evening of Sept. 11), was first out of the blocks, four days later, with a new production of Wagner’s “Fliegende Holländer,” preceded by a moving ceremony with the entire company onstage.

The New York Philharmonic, then led by Kurt Masur, chose to open the season on Sept. 20 with a memorial program, performing Brahms’s “German Requiem,” a benefit for families of first responders who had died on duty. It was a consoling and magnificent performance, one of the artistic high points of Mr. Masur’s tenure.

So it was especially appropriate that on Saturday night the New York Philharmonic commemorated the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 with another intensely moving program. In a free concert Alan Gilbert led an inspired performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony (“Resurrection”) with the New York Choral Artists (Joseph Flummerfelt, director), the soprano Dorothea Röschmann and the mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung. This 90-minute Mahler symphony, which plumbs “every aspect of life, from its agonies to its joys to its profound sense of hope,” as Mr. Gilbert said in his eloquent spoken comments to open the program, was an ideal choice to help New Yorkers reflect, heal and persevere.

The Philharmonic did all it could to make this program “A Concert for New York,” as it was called. Free tickets were distributed in the afternoon. Some weeks earlier the Philharmonic had set aside 700 tickets for first responders and families of the victims of Sept. 11, and all 700 were given away. On Saturday night some 2,000 seats were set up in Lincoln Center Plaza for a live video relay of the performance. The concert was also recorded for broadcast on public television on Sunday night.

This was not an occasion for a detailed critical assessment of a Mahler symphony performance. Mr. Gilbert and the Philharmonic will perform the work on the first subscription series program of the season this month. Still, there was no need to hold back, because the performance was consistently impressive.

Mr. Gilbert drew gripping playing from the Philharmonic in the opening Allegro maestoso, which hovers between a fitful funeral march and an elaborate sonata-allegro movement. At the beginning, over tensely quiet tremolos, the low strings erupt with violent bursts of abrupt phrases. Mahler writes that the music should be played “ferociously.” By that standard some listeners might have found Mr. Gilbert’s approach tame.

But Mr. Gilbert is especially good at revealing the layout and structure of a symphonic movement. He made the direction of phrases (what leads to what) in this episodic Allegro uncommonly clear. By conducting with some restraint he brought out the music’s gravity and better prepared the shift of mood for the violins’ gently rising second theme, which they played with shimmering yet focused tone. And when the music turned cataclysmic, in the deafening buildup before the recapitulation, the playing had all the raw, crackling sound any diehard Mahlerite could want.

Naturalness and grace characterized the bucolic second movement. In the third movement, an expansion of Mahler’s song about St. Anthony’s sermon to the fishes from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn,” Mr. Gilbert conveyed the whimsy while shaping the churning rhythmic figures with a coolness that lent some mystery.

Ms. DeYoung, in lustrous voice, was magnificent in the sublime setting of “Urlicht” (“Primal Light”). The orchestra burst into the stormy finale, which shifts from expressions of frenzy to Mahler’s reverent settings of a resurrection poem by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, words that could not have been more appropriate: “Rise again, yes, you will rise again,/My dust, after brief rest!” The final episode, in which Mahler sets his own words, was again achingly appropriate: “You have not lived in vain, not suffered!”

Mr. Gilbert may have gone for overly extreme contrasts in the finale. The hushed choral passages were almost too hushed, and the orchestra blasts were sometimes blaring. But the point was made, and all the performers were palpably swept up in the music: the excellent chorus; Ms. De Young; Ms. Röschmann, who sang with deep expressivity; and the orchestra.

The ovation went on for 10 minutes. On this night the audience needed to let go.

The New York Philharmonic opens its season on Sept. 21 with a gala program featuring the soprano Deborah Voigt; the orchestra repeats Mahler’s Second Symphony for its first subscription series, on Sept. 22, 24 and 27


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