Alan Gilbert Leads New York Philharmonic in Britten Celebration
by Robert Leeper
Photo credit: Karstan Moran, The New York Times
On Thursday the New York Philharmonic, led by the intrepid Alan Gilbert, paid homage to the centenary of Benjamin Britten with the first of three concerts devoted to his music. Before the performance, Mr. Gilbert regaled the audience with the dramatic tale of the Philharmonic's attempt to find two new tenors after Paul Appleby, who recently appeared in Two Boys at the Met, took ill the day before. Fortunately, the Phil had a game plan, and it paid off.
Beginning with the Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, replacement Michael Slattery gave a strong, if slightly timid, reading. His voice is perhaps not quite as powerful as is befitting this part, yet the light texture of his voice brought merits of its own. Philip Myers, now in his 33rd season as the orchestra's principal horn player, gave a rather rough reading to the natural horn part that opens the work, but made up for it at the end of the piece when the offstage horn part rings out from the distance as John Keats' poem "To Sleep" is softly sung.
Britten's Spring Symphony represents "the progress of Winter to Spring and the reawakening of the Earth and life which that means." The piece, divided into four movements comparable to a standard symphony, begins with reflective slowness and progresses until the wordless chorus of the last movement, reflecting the lack of words available to describe the joys of May and beyond as revelers eat and drink their fill after a long winter.
Britten takes the pastoral themes that are longtime staples of English composition and re-examines them from every angle. Many of his songs have distinct sounds, such as "The Merry Cuckoo," backed by off-kilter trumpet fanfares and Edmund Spenser's words, offering a man-child balance of innocence and masculinity—a very Brittenesque trait. "Spring, the Sweet Spring," from a Nashe poem, has quirky woodwind figures supporting the singers in a contrapuntal impersonation of birds: "Cuckoo, jug-jug, puwe, to-witta-woo!"
Brightly voiced tenor Dominic Armstrong excelled in his unexpected Philharmonic debut, despite seeing the score for the first time on the morning of the performance, handling the leaping tenor parts with apparent ease and elegance. He was joined on stage by mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and soprano Kate Royal, whose dense duet with Armstrong, "Fair and Fair," was spectacular.
Alan Gilbert brought all of the moving pieces together marvelously in a way that kept the monolithic piece airy and spring-like. The Brooklyn Youth Chorus drove the themes of rebirth and youth home with confident voices to match the equally impressive New York Choral Artists.
At tonight's third and final performance, American tenor Anthony Dean Griffey, who blew the roof of Carnegie Hall last night as Peter Grimes, will sing both pieces. If you don't already have other plans, go: There is no one on the planet who sings Britten better. Tickets available online or at the box office.