When Deborah Borda became the New York Philharmonic’s president and CEO in September, “The framework for 2018–19 was already in place,” writes Justin Davidson in last Tuesday’s (2/13) New York magazine. She and incoming Music Director Jaap van Zweden “dismantled the season and hammered it back together with a more cogent purpose in mind…. Borda insists, …’ Millennials are hungry for experience, but they need a different context, one that’s political and social,’ she says. The result is a season in which new music, especially the made-in–New York kind, has a major presence [including David Lang’s] prisoner of the state, an updated retelling of Beethoven’s political opera Fidelio.… Julia Wolfe will revisit the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in … Fire in My Mouth,” and a new work by Ashley Fure will open the season. “Women are writing some of the most colorfully urgent music of our time, works that need no quotas or special pleading, only a chance to be heard played well and more than once…. Women are also … stepping up to the Philharmonic podium. Susanna Mälkki returned last month…. Next season, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and … Emmanuelle Haïm both make their Philharmonic debuts.”
Posted February 20, 2018
