REVIEW: Haydn & Schubert, Albany Symphony

Albany Symphony, Albany, NY
www.albanysymphony.com
April 24 – May 24, 2021
by Michael J. Moran

This latest program in the Albany Symphony’s current season of livestreamed monthly concerts by smaller ensembles of their members during the Covid pandemic paired two pieces by living composers, including a world premiere, with two works by classic composers. The concert will be available for 30 days on demand at the orchestra’s web site, and the livestream added access to a pre-concert discussion and a post-concert Q&A session.

Recorded at Universal Preservation Hall in Saratoga Springs, NY, and led by the orchestra’s longtime Music Director David Alan Miller, the concert opened with the world premiere of Tanner Porter’s “A Flash of Teeth Before the Bite,” which she calls in her program note “a surreal dance for a moment of warning” that evokes “a dog lunging in slow motion.” The 28-member orchestra’s perky account of the colorful six-minute score belied its alarming title with spiky harmonies that often suggested a 21st-century Copland. 

The restless mood continued with Haydn’s “Symphony No. 46,” written in 1772 during his experimental “storm and stress” period. The Albany performance was dramatic in the opening “Vivace” movement, lilting in the “Poco adagio,” swift in the fleeting two-minute “Menuet: Allegretto,” and mercurial in a “Presto e scherzando” finale full of surprises and Haydn’s trademark humor.

Melissa White

Next came George Tsontakis’s 2003 second violin concerto, which the Greek-American composer and Bard College music professor described in the pre-concert talk as a “democratic concerto,” where the soloist blends in with the accompanying chamber orchestra. Rising African-American violinist Melissa White brilliantly captured the shifting Messiaen-like flavors of its four imaginatively titled movements: (1) “Surges (among stars);” (2) “Giocco (Games);” (3) “Cantilena (Heart);” and (4) “Just Go!” 

The concert closed in a mood of classical calm with a bouyant rendition of Schubert’s 1816 fifth symphony, which exuded Mozart’s strong influence on the nineteen-year-old composer. It featured a graceful opening “Allegro,” a flowing “Andante con moto,” a brisk “Menuetto: Allegro molto,” and a whirlwind “Allegro vivace” finale.

The musicians were masked except for woodwind and brass players, acoustics were full and clear, and videography was creative and engaging. Miller’s livestream pre-concert conversation with Porter and Tsontakis and their post-concert answers, plus White’s, to audience live chat questions were informative and entertaining.

REVIEW: Albany Symphony, Rachmaninoff’s Third

Albany Symphony, Albany, NY

www.albanysymphony.com

March 13 – April 13, 2021

by Michael J. Moran

 

Like the last program in their current season of livestreamed monthly concerts by smaller ensembles of their members during the Covid pandemic, the Albany Symphony’s latest program surrounded a world premiere commissioned for this occasion with two works by more familiar composers. While the concert will be available for 30 days on demand at the orchestra’s web site, the livestream broadcast also includes access to a pre-concert discussion and a post-concert Q&A session.

 

Led by the orchestra’s longtime Music Director David Alan Miller and recorded at Universal Preservation Hall in Saratoga Springs, NY, the concert opened with Respighi’s 1927 “Botticelli Triptych,” inspired by three Botticelli paintings at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. The 28-member ensemble were unexpectedly sumptuous in “Spring,” lush and reverent in “Adoration of the Magi” (which quotes the Advent carol “O Come, Emmanuel”), and exhilarating in “The Birth of Venus.” Each painting was helpfully projected before its movement.  

 

Carlos Bandera

Next came the world premiere of Carlos Bandera’s “Of Air and Rain,” in which “brief swells of
fragmented harmonies” against a “delicate, shimmering background” evoke the intense experience of “opening out with contentment” to nature in Wayne Dodd’s poem of the same name. The Albany musicians produced a luxuriant wash of haunting sounds that reflected Bandera’s very personal take on the influence of Arvo Part. With his music already performed to acclaim in multiple countries, this young American composer’s future looks very promising.  

 

The concert closed with a towering account by Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan of the rarely heard arrangement for chamber ensemble by Mordecai Rechtman of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto #3. While Miller and Barnatan recounted in the Q&A some difficulties in balancing the instruments, Rechtman’s proportional reductions of orchestral sections and perhaps the wider than usual spacing of the players produced a transparent yet remarkably sensuous sonority.  

Barnatan was alternately fleet and expansive in all three movements, combining technical finesse with emotional depth, in a performance for the ages.

 

All the musicians except woodwind and brass players were masked, the acoustics were rich and full, and the videography was fluid and agile throughout. They finished the weekend with a Best Classical Instrumental Solo Grammy award for their recording of Christopher Theofanidis’ Concerto for Viola and Chamber Orchestra featuring violist Richard O’Neill – bravo!

REVIEW: Albany Symphony, Romantic Brahms

Albany Symphony, Albany, NY
www.albanysymphony.com
February 13 – March 13, 2021
by Michael J. Moran

Like other orchestras in the local region, the Albany Symphony has reinvented itself during a season in which the Covid pandemic has ruled out business as usual. They are livestreaming monthly concerts by smaller ensembles of their members, with guest musicians, and recording them for 30-day availability on demand. Livestream broadcasts include access to pre-concert discussions and post-concert Q&A sessions.

Their latest concert, led by the orchestra’s longtime Music Director David Alan Miller and performed at Universal Preservation Hall in Saratoga Springs, NY, featured music by William Walton, Tyson Davis, and Johannes Brahms, all written when they were in their early twenties. It opened with 16 selections from Walton’s “Façade,” delightful 1920s settings of nonsense poems by Edith Sitwell, brilliantly declaimed by soprano/narrator Lucy Fitz Gibbon. A sextet of woodwinds, brass, cello, and percussion sounded alternately sinuous, jazzy, and hilarious (quoting Rossini in the “Jodelling Song”) under Miller’s fanciful direction.

Next came the world premiere of Davis’s “Distances,” commissioned for this event. A 20-year-
old Juilliard student, the already multiple award-winning composer cites modernist Elliott Carter as an influence on the “intense chromaticism and ambiguous harmony” of his work. Reflecting “physical and emotional” separation during the Covid pandemic, a colorful ensemble of twelve players, from bassoon to marimba, punctuates soft, brooding passages in “Distances” with eruptions of questing tension. The Albany musicians played this affecting piece from a promising new voice with conviction and finesse.

The concert closed with a novel take on a relatively unfamiliar work. Miller presented an early four-movement version for nine instruments by the 25-year-old Brahms of what would become his six-movement first orchestral serenade as a template for a first symphony. The ensemble of four woodwinds, horn, and four strings was winningly transparent, and Miller’s urgent leadership of a crisp opening Allegro, a flowing and graceful Adagio, a light and delicate Minuet I and II, and a brisk closing Rondo made a strong case for the work’s symphonic ambition.

The musicians were well spaced across the ample stage, and the conductor and string players wore masks. Sound quality was clear and full, while the videography was imaginatively varied. Insightful comments from Miller, Davis, and Fitz Gibbon added much value to the discussion and Q&A.

REVIEW: Albany Symphony, Sing Out! New York

Albany Symphony, Albany, NY

www.albanysymphony.com

May 30 – June 9, 2019

by Michael J. Moran

David Alan Miller

The Albany Symphony and their longtime (1992-) Music Director David Alan Miller have a reputation for adventurous programming of contemporary American music, making them ideal curators of the annual American Music Festival for the past 20 years. This year’s theme is “Sing Out! New York,” which celebrates the state’s “leading role in championing equal rights” by observing the centennial of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. Two June 1 programs paid notable homage to this theme.

An evening concert by the orchestra in Troy’s breathtaking EMPAC concert hall featured music by three living composers, including one world premiere and two major revivals. The world premiere opened the concert: “Knit/Purl,” in which recent Yale Music School graduate Tanner Porter declaimed a libretto by Vanessa Moody which draws on texts by leaders of the American women’s suffrage movement. Porter’s soprano voice was amplified to blend with the music she wrote for a percussion-rich ensemble, producing a dense but often diaphanous sound mix. Her vocal virtuosity and the orchestra’s fluid performance made a powerful impression.

This was extended by John Corigliano’s fiery 1968 piano concerto, whose technical difficulties were handily mastered by rising British soloist Philip Edward Fisher. The brilliantly orchestrated piece is, in the composer’s words, “basically tonal [with] many atonal sections [including] strict twelve-tone writing.” Fisher’s total commitment and the orchestra’s virtuosity brought the concerto to vivid life and earned him a standing ovation by the appreciative audience.

David Del Tredici

The concert closed after intermission with a riveting account of “Pot-Pourri,” the earliest among several major works by David Del Tredici based on Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland.” The composer calls the atonal piece, also written in 1968, “a kind of Cantata of the Sacred and Profane,” setting texts from “Alice” and Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” alongside a “Litany of the Blessed Virgin” from the Catholic liturgy of his childhood, and a Bach Chorale. In addition to the orchestra, it calls for a rock band, soprano soloist, and 16-member mixed chorus. The predictably wild-sounding result was transfixingly rendered by all forces, particularly redoubtable soprano Hila Plitman.      

The jovial Miller gave often humorous introductions to each piece and invited Del Tredici up from the audience to speak before “Pot-Pourri.” After bounding to the stage, the amiable 82-year-old composer read his droll manifesto “A Composer’s Ten Commandments.” The substantially full house showed that Miller’s enthusiasm for new music has built a loyal following. His announcement that these performances of the Corigliano and Del Tredici pieces would be recorded for commercial CD release was a tribute to his ensemble’s distinction. 

Del Tredici was also the subject of the engrossing 2018 documentary film, “Secret Music,” by New York-based pianist and music educator Daniel Beliavsky, shown in EMPAC’s theater after the concert. Examining the composer’s stated goal “to create a gay body of music,” the film included much interview and performance footage of Del Tredici, Beliavsky, and other musicians.

It was revealing for this writer, sitting by chance beside the composer, to witness his firsthand reactions to various candid scenes in the film, including a compelling performance by Beliavsky, soprano Chelsea Feltman, and baritone Michael Kelly of his incongruously gorgeous setting of Allen Ginsberg’s “S&M” poem “Please Master” (Del Tredici even cracks a small whip in the background). The filmmaker led a lively post-show discussion.

Only an hour and a half from greater Springfield, the American Music Festival is a resourceful annual destination for all lovers of contemporary American music.

PREVIEW: American Music Festival: Sing Out! New York

www.albanysymphony.com/2019festivalconcerts
May 30-June 2, 2019
Tour: June 6-9, 2019
by Michael Moran

The Albany Symphony recently announced the 2019 American Music Festival, Sing Out! New York, a two-weekend national festival and regional tour of musical performances and new art happenings, in concert venues in Troy, New York, and in public parks throughout New York State’s Capital Region. Sing Out! New York runs from May 30 - June 2, in Troy, and concludes with a four-concert tour of the greater Capital Region, from, June 6 - 9.

David Alan Miller

Two milestone anniversaries frame the festival: the centennial of the passage of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. Sing Out! New York draws inspiration from both events, and celebrates New York’s leading role in championing equal rights. Curated by GRAMMY® Award-winning conductor and Albany Symphony Music Director, David Alan Miller, the festival will present 55 new or recent works by 38 American composers, including 27 world premiere performances.

The Festival’s programs include world premieres by numerous talented composers. Performers joining the Albany Symphony and Music Director Miller include the vocalists, solo musicians and small groups. 

According to Miller, “The Albany Symphony is committed to telling the stories of our time, place, and history through the creation of compelling new music and collaborations between composers and fellow artists. The fight for women’s equality in the 19th and early 20th century, and for LGBTQ rights beginning in 1969, are great New York stories. To tell them, we paired new works by emerging composers with established ones by composers who have told related New York stories, and have designed immersive events that celebrate the things that bring us together as New Yorkers and human beings.”

Sing Out! New York includes more than 22 concerts and related events. On Friday, May 31, the orchestra’s new music chamber orchestra, Dogs of Desire, will premiere five new works on subjects ranging from the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention to Frederick Douglass’ participation in the abolitionist and suffragist movements, from the aftermath of the Stonewall Rebellion to Alice Duer Miller’s Women are People and Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman” speech. On Saturday, June 1, the full orchestra will premiere a suffragist-inspired piece by composer/performer Tanner Porter, alongside Pop-Pourri, with soprano Hila Plitmann, David Del Tredici’s first work based on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and John Corigliano’s Piano Concerto, with pianist Phillip Fisher. Committed to giving new music life beyond the concert hall, the Albany Symphony will also record both Pop-Pourri and the Piano Concerto for commercial release.

Other festival highlights include: the powerful new documentary film, “Of Rage and Remembrance,” in which composer John Corigliano tells the story of his Symphony No. 1, commemorating the friends he lost to AIDS; Del Tredici’s Bullycide, performed by the Argus Quartet in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, one of the only fully integrated Tiffany interiors in the world; and a free family-friendly concert and suffragist- themed street fair in Monument Square on Sunday. On Saturday afternoon at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Miller and a 14-member chamber orchestra will premiere four newly commissioned melodramas. 

The following weekend, the Festival will break out of the concert hall with free outdoor concerts at Hudson Crossing Park in Schuylerville (June 6), Mohawk Harbor in Schenectady (June 7), Albany’s Jennings Landing (June 8), and Basilica Hudson in Hudson (June 9), NY. Executive Director Anna Kuwabara notes, “the program in each community includes Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, sing-alongs, and summertime favorites. The centerpiece of each is one of the newly commissioned works from the Dogs of Desire concerts earlier in the Festival. Along with great music, we look forward to bringing attention and business to each site with family activities, food trucks, fireworks, and other festivities.”  

For over 20 years, the American Music Festival has served as an incubator for new American music by showcasing the diverse voices of America’s living composers with several world premiere works and dozens of composers-in-residence programs.