Anne-Sophie Mutter performs the New York premiere of Thomas Adès’s 2022 “Air” with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Andris Nelsons at Carnegie Hall. The work was co-commissioned by Mutter, Carnegie Hall, the BSO, and others. Photo by Fadi Kheir.
“Over two nights at Carnegie this week, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and its music director, Andris Nelsons, told their story gradually … in canonical works by Ravel, Rachmaninoff, Sibelius and Mozart,” Oussama Zahr in Wednesday’s (4/26) New York Times. In “two New York premieres—Thierry Escaich’s ‘Les Chants de l’Aube,’ with the cellist Gautier Capuçon, and Thomas Adès’s ‘Air,’ with the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter … they tapped into something special all at once. Among American orchestras, the Boston Symphony’s sound is enviably rich…. In the two New York premieres, though, Nelsons unleashed the ensemble’s astonishing range of colors to enliven the particular atmosphere of each work. In a program note, Escaich compared his cello concerto ‘Les Chants de l’Aube’ to a stained-glass window…. The orchestra navigated the shifting meters and watery textures of the second movement with conviction, and Nelsons masterfully plotted the way in which the final movement’s heavenly motif for celesta and harp melted away into a dangerous dance…. Adès’s ‘Air,’ by contrast, devotes itself to a single idea—one of fragile beauty … Mutter, who gave the world premiere of ‘Air’ at the Lucerne Festival last year, played at Carnegie with a platinum tone.”
