Dima Slobodeniouk leads the New York Philharmonic and mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges in the first Philharmonic performances of Julia Perry’s “Stabat Mater.” Photo by Chris Lee.
In Thursday’s (11/23) New York Times, Zachary Woolfe writes, “Played with vigor by the New York Philharmonic under Dima Slobodeniouk on Wednesday evening at David Geffen Hall,” Holst’s “The Planets” and Ligeti’s 1961 “Atmosphères” “had vibrant drama…. [The Philharmonic] is performing Julia Perry’s 1951 “Stabat Mater” this week for the first time ever. Perry’s brief ‘Study for Orchestra’ was, in 1965, the first music by a Black woman to be played on a Philharmonic subscription program. It was brought back last year, but the ‘Stabat Mater,’ scored for strings and a vocalist, is a far more powerful work. Heated yet subtle and restrained, the piece’s 10 sections on a Latin text, lasting about 20 minutes in all, chart an intimate drama whose moments of grandeur are all the more effective given the overall modesty…. In the short prelude, light yet pungent pizzicato plucks—amid brooding low strings and an elegiac solo violin—movingly evoke Jesus’s mother’s tears without feeling too obvious. Throughout, Perry gives both voice and orchestra an appealing combination of Neo-Baroque angularity and post-Romantic warmth…. The mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges sang with oracular authority.”
