At the New York Philharmonic, Music Director Jaap van Zweden, left, and composer Joel Thompson, whose “To See the Sky” was given its world premiere by the Philharmonic on March 22. Photo by Chris Lee.
In Friday’s (3/22) New York Times, Zachary Woolfe writes, “On Thursday at David Geffen Hall,” the New York Philharmonic and Music Director Jaap van Zweden “offered something unusual in the orchestral field: In a mixed program … the two (two!) premieres on the first half together lasted longer than the Mendelssohn symphony [on the second half] … First came Joel Thompson’s ‘To See the Sky’ … Two years ago, the Philharmonic premiered Thompson’s sumptuously moody song cycle ‘The Places We Leave.’… ‘To See the Sky,’ heard for the first time on Thursday, is his longest instrumental work; you got the sense of a young composer trying to figure out how to fill such a substantial span…. Much of the work alternates sections of loud and bumptious rhythms … with periods of subdued lyricism. But these repetitive assertive-then-reticent cycles don’t accumulate interest or tension—though there are nice touches … Tan Dun’s 2021 trombone concerto, ‘Three Muses in Video Game,’ had its New York premiere on Thursday with Joseph Alessi, the orchestra’s principal trombone, as soloist…. Tan’s ‘muses’ are a trio of ancient Chinese instruments—the bili, xiqin and sheng—each distantly evoked in a part of the concerto. [Tan’s score] oscillates between shaded, noirish passages for strings and forceful sections for more of the orchestra.”
