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Some Apocalyptic Evening New York
David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center
01/22/2026 - January 23,24,25,2026
Charles Ives: Orchestral Set Number 2; Einojuhani Rautavaara: Piano Concerto Number 1; Kaija Saariaho: Oltro Mar: Seven Preludes for the New Millennium; Thomas Adès: America (A Prophecy)
Yuja Wang (Pianist); Anna Dennis (Soprano); Eugene Rogers (Choral conductor), University of Michigan Chamber Choir and Exigence Vocal Ensemble; Thomas Adès (Conductor)
T. Adès(©Holt Askonas)
”It is my belief that music is great if, at some moment, the listener catches ‘a glimpse of eternity through the window of time’ ... This, to my mind, is the only true justification for art. All else is of secondary importance.”
Einojuhani Rautavaara
”Don't try to make things nice! All the wrong notes are right. Stand up and take your dissonance like a man”
Charles Ives
When Thomas Adès raised his baton last night, the New York Philharmonic did not play its usual tonic-dominant standards, it did not essay the easy-listening 19th-Century potboilers, it did not make music jaunty or sad or emotionally appealing.
Then again, with a quartet of almost exclusively unknown composers, with four works accentuating bells, gongs, fierce kettledrums, choral music on and off stage, and a soprano who sung 21 minutes almost entirely in the highest range, one’s attendance had to be either horrifying or ecstatic. Nothing in between.
It was ecstatic, sometimes creatively hysterical. All except finding the words to describe conductor-composer Adès’ choices.
We start with the familiar. And never over-familiar. Yuja Wang, in her usual outrageous clothes (off-the-shoulder mini-dress eye-blindingly red). This time with the first New York performance of Einojuhani Rautauvaara’s First Piano Concerto. With her usual insouciant fingerwork, Ms. Wang sailed through the most intense choral clusters, endless arpeggios and–at the right moment–in total sync with the first movement punctuated orchestral notes.
Not describing the opening a humble. Allegro, Rautauvaara titled this Con grandezza! And, except for a weird gentle final cadence, grand it was.
The Andante, with two or three feverish cadenzas, was a bit of a respite, though the finale jumped and writhed with colossal difficulties.
A sensational piece, moderately undone with some Rachmaninoff slush, but always played sensationally (what other adjective can be used?) by Ms. Wang.
A.Dennis/Y.Wang(©Early Opera Company/Yuja Wang Facebook)
Preceding that was the often orphic Ives Second Orchestral Set, familiar to reviewers, but a premiere (after a mere 115-odd years) for Philharmonic audiences. The three works were caviar for Mr. Adès, whose control of those mysterious pianissimos in the opening, to the shattering chords and offstage choral sounds (the chamber voices of Exigence Vocal Ensemble) for From Hanover Square North, at the End of a Tragic Day, the Voice of the People Again Arose.
After the Rautavaara Concerto, I feared the sometimes glossy textures of the late Kaija Saariaho, with the title Across The Sea. Far from a harp-glissandoe seascape, Ms. Saariaho had give us a work of brassy sudden chords, of Sufi poetry from Abu Sa'id Abu'l-Khayr, and finally a short obsequey from the Forest People (not the pejorative printed “Pigmies).
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That harp did enter in the second-movement “Love”, but the opening was repeatedly percussive over the wordless University of Michigan Chamber Choir. Otherwise, the composer gave us choir and vibraphones, and unsettling dissonance, a memorial for Spectralist composer Gérard Grisey
The finale brought us back to those opening brass puncta. Here, though, they were evaporating into space.
The piece, commissioned by the Phil (as was the following America) was premiered here by Kurt Masur, again a memory of Titans past.
Since Mr. Adès’ conducting was well-cued, dynamic, translucent for the first three works, one had to extol his own America: A Prophecy, a title not Whitmanesque but by William Blake. Like the preceding work, this was written for the 21st Century, with an added five minute verse, all from Mayan poetry and pseudo-Mayan tropes.
This was not “our” America, but prophetic Mayan poetry about their own destruction. The last added verse, starting “In Every Birth A Death, In Every Death A Birth”, echoed Ecclesiastes. But the words, and the music were always original, challenging, filled with shaping images.
The solo singer was Anna Dennis. I am certain her operatic range is wondrous, her high, clear soprano faultless . But her Cassandra-like “Burn”, her duets with the powerful chorus and the mighty leadership of composer-conductor Adès added a moderate “Amen” for a ceaselessly Apocalyptic evening.
Harry Rolnick
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