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Ms. Kamensek’s (Almost) Summery Executions New York
Wu Tsai Theater, David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center
08/01/2025 -
Jacques Ibert: Divertissement
Benjamin Britten: Les Illuminations, Opus 18
Osvaldo Golijov: Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra
Georges Bizet: Symphony in C
Gabriella Reyes (Soprano)
Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, Karen Kamensek (Conductor)
K. Kamensek (© Yossi Zwecker)
“I had in mind one of those seconds in life that is frozen in the memory, forever - a sudden death, a single instant in which life turns upside down, different from the experience of death after a long agony.”
Osvaldo Golijov, on the song “How Slow the Wind”
“As a musician, I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note.”
Georges Bizet
Had Karen Kamensek led the Summer for the City Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center only the first and last works last night, the concert might have indeed be a summery execution. But the enthusiastic audience (who applauded wildly after each fermata or movement) may well have had a more inner experience for the two works in between.
The audience–-probably residing around Chicago’s abbatoirs or the noxious Palm Beach swamps–would have felt comfortable with the opening Ibert Divertissment, especially after a lengthy introduction by Ms. Kamensek. And what was there not to like?
After all, Jacques Ibert led a charmed life in Paris, as virtuoso orchestrator, pianist and composer. Outside of Poulenc’s liturgical works, both composers were fluent, imaginative and not averse to using other music.
Thus the Summer Orchestra happily plagiarized Mendelssohn, Johann Strauss (with blatant hints of Ravel’s La Valse written a decade before), and enough blatant burps and beeps and circus music to make anybody happy.
Ditto for the final work, Bizet’s very early C Major Symphony, the jaunty classical symphony, written when he was 17, two decades before Carmen. Perhaps a student work, but one with leaping inspiration. Plus a second-movement Oriental oboe solo by Ryan Roberts, which could have been used in Pearl Fishers.
In between was Benjamin Britten’s wondrous setting of Rimbaud poems, Les Illuminations, written for “high voice”. The singer was the Nicaraguan-born Gabriella Reyes. I had a personal affection for the work last night, since I usually have to slough through the Surrealistic poetry in French. Here, the glorious metaphors, the images, the pictures of a beautiful boy, were translated well and sung quite beautifully.
This was the young Benjamin Britten, unafraid to write sensuously gorgeous, richly scored large orchestral canvases. Perhaps the smallish orchestra (about 60) didn’t envelop us with colors. At times, Ms. Reyes used her volume more than her sensitivity. But the orchestra and orchestration were both luscious
O. Golijov/G. Reyes (© Yoni Golijov/Dario Acosta)
The surprise (which shouldn’t have been) was Osvaldo Golijov’s Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra. Why shouldn’t it have been surprising? Because from the very first time I heard his music (Dreams and Prayers of Isaac The Blind), I have been astonished in two ways. First for his international foundations–Sephardic, Arab, Argentinian, Central American, medieval-European. Second, for how he transforms these eclectic musical tropes into the most effective originality.
Here, he started with a song both Yiddish and Romi. Yet the lyrics, about a Gypsy-Jewish love affair made that fitting. The last two songs, based on Emily Dickinson poem and the composer losing a friend in an accident, was like an extended lament, the orchestra sometimes sobbing, sometimes using bells and solos to express the unbearable sadness.
Ms. Reyes had a real challenge here, since the songs were expressly written for the composer’s favorite, Dawn Upshaw. Nobody can imitate her dream‑like enunciation, the effortless high registers, the sentience of everything she sings. Ms. Reyes certainly has an operatically dramatic persona. If not ideal, her soprano was a splendid background for Mr. Golijov’s mesmeric orchestration.
Harry Rolnick
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