“I have spent a lot of time watching [Alan] Gilbert rehearse, teach, and coach, and what has struck me is the way he travels through a musical landscape with a naturalist’s vigilance, alert to moments of drama even before they happen,” writes Justin Davidson in this week’s (6/30) New York magazine. “In May…Gilbert and the Philharmonic musicians donned white lab coats and fanned out through the Glaserne Manufaktur…in Dresden [Germany]…Players beat on fenders, mufflers, and oil pans [performing Magnus Lindberg’s Kraft]. Gilbert has a reputation as an effective salesman of the avant-garde … There was not a perfunctory second in Luigi Dallapiccola’s 1949 Il Prigioniero. … The NY Phil Biennial, which launches next spring, will be the music world’s answer to the Whitney’s regular roundups of recent art. With a dozen concerts over eleven days, ranging from big orchestral blowouts to tiny chamber works and from famous sages to composers not even Gilbert had ever heard of, the festival promises to focus scattered glints of new music into a bright beam. And the name Biennial suggests that it won’t just be a one-off.”
Posted July 3, 2013
