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A Trio of Rare Romantics New York
Wu Tsai Theater, David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center
05/01/2025 - & May 2, 3*, 2025
Arnold Schoenberg: Notturno
Robert Schumann: Concerto for Cello in A Minor, Opus 129
Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 6 in A Major
Steven Isserlis (Cello)
New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Simone Young (Conductor)
S. Young (© Bertold Fabricius)
“They want me to write differently. Certainly I could, but I must not. God has chosen me from thousands and given me, of all people, this talent. It is to Him that I must give account. How then would I stand there before Almighty God, if I followed the others and not Him?”
Anton Bruckner
““To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts–such is the duty of the artist.”
Robert Schumann
A mere four years passed between Arnold Schoenberg’s first placid night (Notturno) and his second transfigured night (Verklärte Nacht). But stylistically, the two nights were decades, no, centuries apart.
And for those who knew only the later string sextet, Australian conductor Simone Young allowed us to peer into his quiet and actually beautiful 1895 “Night” this week. Along with a rare Schumann concerto and a once‑rare Bruckner symphony, the New York Philharmonic gave us a trio of intense late Romantic Austrian and German works.
Notturno, though, did give us a look at Schoenberg as tone painter. He was indeed a master of the easel (some say more a painter than a composer) and this work, for harp, strings and solo violin (played with ravishing beauty by Concertmaster Frank Huang), was over too soon.
This was a Philharmonic premiere, a bijou with thick strings (often close to Transfigured Night), ending with Mr. Huang at the highest note with harp arpeggios. And capturing a word rarely used for Arnold Schoenberg: beautiful.
S. Isserlis (© Jacky Lepage)
The Schumann Cello Concerto is another rarity, for purely commercial reasons. The whole piece is less than 30 minutes, the soloist doesn’t have a single cadenza, the work seems like it has only a single moment.
(It actually has three movements, but Robert Schumann, like this unworthy scribe, loathed applaud between movements, so he strung them together.)
Stephen Isserlis has the British temperament, the ideal technique and the artistry to sail through the Concerto. Possibly not Schumann’s best, certainly inconsequential next to the Elgar or Dvorák romantic works. Yet more than simply pleasant.
Mr. Isserlis played with his usually unflappable brilliance, taking the few original sections (an unexpected duet with First Cellist Carter Brey) and ending with the fireworks missing from the other slices.
The second half showed Simone Young as one of the superb modern exponents of Anton Bruckner. All of his symphonies from the Fourth to the unfinished Ninth need conductors who are not afraid of different tempos, who never ever allow Bruckner to become trapped in swamps of sound and somehow can avoid the vulgarity of the brass calls.
As well as giving music which is part mystical, part rural (those scherzos) and above all, totally symphonic.
Ms. Young fit the bill. That gorgeous horn opening was neither lugubrious not jolting. It was rather fast, but every movement (but the second) had a gently rapid pace, pushing the whole work along, with both color and measured tempo.
Add to this, the New York Philharmonic brass section with a sound fully Brucknerian. The trumpets pierced, the trombones roared, the horns when necessary sounded like elephants trumpeting. I have heard versions of the Sixth where the brass was fully integrated with the orchestra. Ms. Young let them blare out.
Ms. Young kept the orchestra chained in, but this only made the timbres more dominant. And in the finale, which isn’t quite as militarily victorious as Bruckner’s other symphonies, Ms. Young did her absolute best to make this piece a martial and mystical masterpiece.
Harry Rolnick
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