In Sunday’s (4/17) New York Times, James Oestreich writes about three orchestras that performed Mahler in New York City during the past week. “At Carnegie Hall on Thursday evening … Michael Tilson Thomas conducted the San Francisco Symphony in ‘Das Lied.’ … At David Geffen Hall on Wednesday … Alan Gilbert leads the New York Philharmonic in the same work…. The Philharmonic, in its current program, is performing Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, conducted by Bernard Haitink; and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra played Mahler’s Fifth Symphony on Saturday evening at Carnegie, led by Marin Alsop. Not that Mahler was the sole concern in every case. The agenda of the Baltimore Symphony concert was especially full, with the New York premiere of ‘The City,’ an ambitious 25-minute work by Kevin Puts with film by James Bartolomeo…. Puts’s music stops on a single note, long sustained and shifting in harrowing colors, as images of the 2015 riots after the arrest and death in police custody of a young black man, Freddie Gray, take over the screen…. Mr. Haitink’s Philharmonic concert offered only Mahler, and it was ample.… The individual woodwinds have seldom sounded so eloquent, the massed strings warmer and more mellow.”
Posted April 20, 2016
