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Cultural Diary: April 27-May 6 – Ups and Downs…

Posted on: May 7th, 2014 by Art Leonard No Comments

On April 27, I attended a performance by the extraordinary new music band, Alarm Will Sound, directed by Alan Pierson at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall as part of the series “collected stories” curated by composer David Lang. Lang’s series extended over a week of concerts, with this one come towards the end. The idea of this program was to bring together some diverse examples of music intended to illustrate a story of some sort, in some cases impressionistically and in one very directly in the form of a mini-opera. I start from the premise that the program was assembled by Mr. Lang, not by the members of Alarm Will Sound, a discerning group who put together their thematic concerts with great care and select music that they really believe in. I’m not sure how much they believed in some of the music they performed in this concert, although as always they played with a high degree of involvement and polish. But I was not as convinced as I usually am at an Alarm Will Sound concert at the value of everything I heard. Surely, Donnacha Dennehy’s moving “Gra agus Bas,” which I’ve heard before, is a powerful channeling of Irish folk tropes projected through the unusual vocalism of Iarla O Lionaird, a man of such indeterminate vocal range that he is identified in the program as “Voice” rather than assigned a “normal” range such as alto, tenor, baritone or bass. But I found Kate Moore’s “The Art of Levitation” to be an undistinguished mélange of shifting chords that failed to engage my attention. Kaki King’s “Other Education,” a three-movement work for electric guitar and chamber ensemble, seemed at times to be channeling the mid-20th century Americana stylings of Aaron Copland and Virgil Thompson, pretty but not entirely convincing as an extended piece. That said, King herself proved very assured virtuoso in her guitar solos. Finally, the second half was devoted to Richard Ayres’ nonsense opera, “No . 42 In the Alps”, with a particular story being projected above the performers through silent-film-style titles, and Jennifer Zetlan providing an exuberant rendition of a far-ranging vocal part, imitating animal sounds at times, wandering far beyond her designated range of “soprano.” They should make a DVD of this program, since the Ayres piece is enhanced by the visual elements and might seem threadbare without them.

The following night I had accepted the invitation of a friend to attend a recital by pianist Alden Gatt presented by an organization called Project142 at Unity Church, 213 58th Street in Manhattan. I had never heard of Gatt prior to my friend’s invitation, but there turns out to be plenty of information on his website. He played a very ambitious program: Prokofiev’s “The Young Juliet” from his suite of ten pieces from the ballet Romeo & Juliet arranged by the composer for piano solo; Robert Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes, Op. 13; five of the 24 Preludes, Op. 34, by Dmitri Shostakovich, and Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, generally considered to be one of the toughest tests for a virtuoso pianist in live recital. As an encore, he played Earl Wild’s Etude based on Gershwin’s song Embraceable You. I was impressed by Gatt’s technical polish and musical insight, particularly in the second half of the program (Shostakovich & Ravel). His Schumann was a bit precarious in a few spots, especially in the finale, where his finger memory seemed to falter slightly a few times, although he quickly recovered without losing any equanimity. A little woodshedding in order for the Schumann… The Ravel was mightily impressive, by contrast, comparing favorably in my recollection with other performances I’ve heard as well as some excellent recordings, including those of Martha Argerich and Vladimir Ashkenazy, generally considered the gold standard in this work. I hope Gatt has a chance to record these. I picked up his debut recital CD during the intermission and was impressed again when listening at home. I think his interpretive abilities have deepened since he made that recording a few years ago. In particularly, I suspect he would play the Bach Italian Concerto with more nuance and subtlety today, to judge by his work on April 28. I hope I encounter his playing again soon. Project142 is a concert series that began as occasional soirees in the apartment of a retired minister. Attendance expanded through word of mouth and now they are held in various larger venues. Unity Church is actually a relatively small hall, seating comfortably about 40 people in a good acoustical space for a piano recital. The concerts are not scheduled out very far in advance, and they cover an eclectic range of music. Those interested in exploring can check the website, www.Project142.org, to see what is coming up. Ticket prices are moderate and sometimes free, since the performers are provided the venue once approved by the host and are responsible for generating their own audience, as there is no budget for advertising. If the general standard of performance is reflected by Mr. Gatt, then this is a series worth following.

On May 5 I attended the NYC premiere of Christopher Rouse’s Requiem at Carnegie Hall, the opening night of this year’s (final) installment of Carnegie’s “Spring for Music” series, which has brought a diverse group of orchestras from the U.S. and Canada to Carnegie Hall to play programs notable for their unusual repertory choices. It is scandalous that Carnegie couldn’t find sponsorship to continue this series beyond this year. The combination of low ticket prices ($25 for any seat) and unusual programming has drawn a younger audience than usually patronizes classical concerts in this city, and the success of this series in drawing an audience goes to prove that high ticket prices are part of the reason why classical concert audiences at are major halls have such a very high average age. At any rate, this opening concert, presenting Alan Gilbert conducting the Westminster Symphonic Choir, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, baritone soloist Jacques Imbrailo, and the New York Philharmonic, was a major event indeed, the stage full to overflowing and the youth choir parked up in the first tier boxes. With the composer in attendance for what was only the second presentation of a piece first performed in 2007, one had a sense of being present at an important occasion, for Christopher Rouse has emerged as an important composer through numerous important commissions and premieres, not least with the NYP during his period as composer-in-residence. This ambitious piece weaves together poems in English and Italian, hymns in English and German, and the Latin requiem mass (as modified by Hector Berlioz for his own Requiem, one of the inspirations for this piece), and a large orchestra, including an extended percussion section that, in typical Rousian manner, is given its head to make lots of glorious noise. I found the piece a bit uneven and sometimes overextended, but the glorious final minutes made up for any faults. Mr. Imbrailo was terrific in his solos, although I would hope the composer would consider some selective rescoring to address balance problems, especially in the first half of No. 15 in the score, where the soloist was virtually buried under heavy orchestration. In fact, I think it would be worth Mr. Rouse’s time to review Carnegie’s house recording of this performance and think carefully about ways to improve this score, not just in orchestration but also in reducing some of the repetitive parts. What is already a very effective piece could be made more effective, and I bet about 10 minutes could be trimmed from the 90 minute score with profit. Indeed, if I were him I would also eliminate the intermission break. A piece like this — such as the Britten War Requiem or the Berlioz Requiem — works better without an intermission. It may be difficult to do that at 90 minutes, but it is more plausible to do it at 80.

On the other hand, a work that is shorter than an hour can be a real challenge to sit through, as I found to be the case with Thomas Lawrence Toscano’s “The Interview” co-presented by OperaOGGINY and St. Bart’s Episcopal Peace Fellowship at St. Bartholomew’s Church in Manhattan. This is a “cause” piece, in which an Army Public Affairs Officer sits down with two women who have lost children during the struggles of the Middle East to try to “understand their intentions” in forming an organization of Jewish and Muslim mothers to agitate for peace. The intensely dramatic events described in the program as prologue give way to an entirely static conception, an opera consisting of three people sitting at a table talking and singing. The music struck me as competent without being anything special, and did not particularly enhance the text when it was sung. Perhaps an orchestral accompaniment, by introducing some sound color, would make it more interesting, as I found a sameness of rhythm and tempo led to boredom. The three singers, Perri Sussman, Lyssandra Stephenson and Ben Spierman, seemed very devoted to the project but were not able to enliven the material much under the composer’s leadership abetted by pianist Alessandro Simone. During a Q&A with the audience afterwards, the composer revealed that this was just the first of a series of 5 one-act operas, each devoted to some particular cause. Cause-based art has a noble tradition, but it is important that the cause not outweigh the artistry with which it is presented. Nobody can contest the horror of children slain in the context of the continuing struggle between Palestinians and Israelis in Jerusalem, the cause here is admirable, but I don’t think the music and the verses (some of which struck me as awesomely simplistic) really advance it.

From Machaut to Sondheim – A NYC Weekend Cultural Diary

Posted on: November 18th, 2013 by Art Leonard No Comments

This was a very busy weekend on my concert schedule — actually, an extended weekend since it began on Thursday night — so I have much to report.  On Thursday night I was at the New York Philharmonic from a program that included the NYC premiere of Christopher Rouse’s Oboe Concerto, played by the NY Philharmonic’s excellent principal oboe player, Liang Wang.   On Friday night I attended “Armida: A Baroque Opera Celebration” presented by New Opera NYC, one of the numerous small opera companies that have sprouted up in recent seasons, performed at a venue previously unknown to me, a dance studio on West 60th Street way west towards the Hudson River.  On Saturday afternoon, I headed over to City Center for an Encores! presentation of titles “A Bed and a Chair: A New York Love Affair,” made up of music from Stephen Sondheim’s shows.  That evening, at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, I head a program of Renaissance music titled “A Love Affair,” performed by England’s Orlando Consort.  Finally, on Sunday afternoon, I found myself in Carnegie Hall for “Elliott Carter: An American Original,” presented by Leon Bostein and the American Symphony Orchestra.   So, literally from the 14th century of Machaut to the 21st century of Sondheim I covered a lot of bases this weekend.

The New York Philharmonic is playing at such a sustained level of excellence these days that it is hard to find any fault with anything they are doing.  Thursday night’s concert, conducted by Alan Gilbert, just returned from several weeks of guest-conducting in Europe, maintained that high standard.  Gilbert has championed the music of Christopher Rouse, programming, playing and recording it in Stockholm during his previous music directorship, and bringing it to New York, where the Rouse is now composer-in-residence at the Philharmonic.  (The premiere of his “Prospero’s Rooms” was one of the highlights of last season.)  Although the Oboe Concerto is almost a decade old, this was its first Philharmonic performance, as a previously scheduled debut was postponed for various reasons.  This concerto is unusual among Rouse’s compositions in being relatively “laid back.”  The composer has in many of his compositions imported influences from American pop and rock music, but this piece struck me as more indebted to the American classicists of the mid-20th century than to the pop artists of more recent years.  Perhaps this has something to do with the nature of the oboe itself, as most effectively a lyrical instrument that beautifully sustains long unfolding musical lines that can cut through a full orchestra, at least in the hands of a master virtuoso such as Wang.  I’m hoping that the partnership of Gilbert and Rouse results in some recordings, including this concerto.  They have produced a recording of music by the prior composer-in-residence, Magnus Lindberg, so we have a precedent, and the Philharmonic does have a recording contract with the Danish DaCapo label, so I’m hopeful!  * * *  The remainder of the program was made up of two tone poems by Richard Strauss, Don Juan to open the program, and Also Sprach Zarathustra to close it.  This virtuoso orchestra tossed off both pieces with aplomb, and brass especially covering themselves with glory.  One might complain that at times the music was unrelievedly loud — partly an artifact of the very lively acoustic in Avery Fisher Hall — and that the Philharmonic’s lack of an installed pipe organ, and thus necessary resort to an electric organ, slightly undercuts the effect of Zarathustra.  Not much one can do about those things, although perhaps Gilbert can work on getting a wider dynamic range at the lower end.  I  was hearing the first performance of this program, and Gilbert had only been back rehearsing the orchestra as of Tuesday, so it is possible that things got progressively more nuanced over the course of performances, and tomorrow night’s final run will probably be even more spectacular, if that is possible, with the entire program really “played in.”

New Opera NYC is the brainchild of producer Igor Konyukhov and music director Raphael Fusco.  Apparently lacking the resources to put on a full-scale Handel opera with sets and cast appropriate to such an endeavor, they made up their own Handel opera, for which Konyukhov wrote an original libretto (in Italian), extracting an overture from Faramondo, arias from Rinaldo, Agrippina, Giulio Cesare, Delirio Amoroso, Orlando, Tamerlano, Imeneo, and Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (plus some inserts areas from works by Vivaldi and Broschi).  Maestro Fusco also composed some recitatives to tie the piece together.  Konuyukhov’s story, set in an unspecified time and place, was set in a landfill/dump where members of the upper-crust go to harass the beggars and rag-pick from the junk.  At least, that was Act I.  Much of Act II took place as a Dream set in the residence of one of the upper-crust, who is pursuing one of the women from the landfill!  Figure it out.  I really couldn’t make much of it, and the person operating the projected titles seem stymied at times, finally apparently giving up during the 2nd act, leaving the same titles up without regard to what was being sung.  A kink to be worked out.  That said, the music was nicely performed, with a small orchestra of period string quintet, Oboe, guitar and harpsichord (played by Maestro Fusco).  Minimalist sets (counting heavily on rear projects that did not always make sense) but suitable costumes and some crazy wigs!!  The singers were all at least adequate, perhaps Amelia Watkins (Armida) and Dmitry Gishpling-Chernov (Almiro) more so.  One of the things they lacked as a good counter-tenor, thus necessarily omitting some of Handel’s finest works from inclusion.  I think that would have helped the show.   Certainly this company deserves encouragement.  Check out their website:  www.NONYC.org.

The Sondheim show at City Center was conceived, according to the program book, as a result of Sondheim editor Peter Gethers coming to see Wynton Marsalis’s Cotton Club Parade and asking Encores! Artistic Director Jack Viertel whether Marsalis had ever played any of Sondheim’s music.  It turned out that Marsalis, as a youngster, had been in the pit orchestra for the original Broadway production of Sweeney Todd, and was receptive to trying something new.  They put together a song and dance show in the now well-established tradition of Sondheim anthology productions, taking songs from wherever they could be found – musicals, film scores — and enlisting Marsalis and the various arrangers who work with him to recast them in a form suitable for Marsalis’s Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, which has the standard configuration of trumpets, trombones, double reads, double bass, piano and percussion.  Sondheim essentially without strings.  Forget all those delicate Jonathan Tunick orchestrations that are as much a part of Sondheim’s sound as his melodic lines and harmonies.  And it does make a difference, because Sondheim is not just a composer, he’s a lyricist as well — indeed, that was his starting point as a creative artist — and the words are as important, if not more so, to a Sondheim song as the music.  There were plenty of problems with this show, but the biggest, in my view, was to sabotage the lyrics all too often with the loud jazz band and the underamplified singers, who got buried at times.   Three of the singers were proven Broadway stars: Jeremy Jordan, Norm Lewis, and Bernadette Peters, but unaccountably the producers enlisted somebody without Broadway credentials, Cyrille Aimee, to be their second female lead.  Aimee is a jazz singer, and proved less of a presence than the others.  Bernadette Peters is always doing a star turn, and had quite a few here, although she was more restrained than one remembers from Broadway.  Lewis and Jordan were also more restrained than one remembers from their theater gigs.  Only once or twice did Jordan really cut loose.  Perhaps this was partly a problem of inadequate time to put the thing together, as they sounded tentative at times.  Four fine dancers — Meg Gillentine, Tyler Hanes, Grasan Kingsberry and Elizabeth Parkinson — were assigned roles as “shadows” in dance for the singers.  Any Sondheim anthology will have its pleasures, because his songs are wonderful, although not always suitable to excerpt or dragoon into service, since they tend to be very tied to the situations they illustrate in the original shows for which they were composed.  I can’t say that this was a failure; it seemed to engage the audience, but in the end I agree with my concert-going companion that this wasn’t a “wow.”

The Miller Theatre Early Music services presentation of the Orlando Consort came closer to being a “wow” in my estimation.  This group recently recorded songs from Guillaume de Machaut’s masterwork, “Le Voir Dit,” a compilation of poetry, letters and music intended to illuminate a lengthy “affair” (not known whether it was physically consummated) between the elderly Machaut and a young woman, and the first half of this concert was made up of eight songs that appear on the recording.  For the second half, the Orlando Consort gave us a “tasting menu” from the leading compositional lights of the 15th and 16th centuries: Dunstaple, Dufay, Ockeghem, Compere, Brumel, desPrez, Clemens non Papa and Gombert.  The first half was all in the royal, flowery French of the 14th century royal courts; the second in the church Latin of the great cathedrals and royal chapels from mid-15th to early-16h century Europe.  The contrast worked well, although I retain my reservations about the performance of secular Renaissance music in a space like St. Mary the Virgin, a resonant church space that clouds harmonies and makes most of the sung text unintelligible.  (They hand out translations, then dim the lights to make them hard to read….  Go figure!)  Most of the sacred music works better in this space, although even here the music that was primarily intended for chapel use can be a bit encumbered by the reverberation in a large church space.  The Orlando is a fine group, with a membership that has evolved over time.  The young alto (countertenor), Matthew Venner, made a strong impression as he seemed to casually float his high notes above the polyphony of the group.  The other three members of the Orlando Consort – tenors Mark Dobell and Angus Smith, and baritone Donald Greig, who wrote the excellent notes – are all performers of the highest order.  (Greig’s name is familiar from several groups, including the Tallis Scholars.)  This was an excellent program in terms of variety, but the second half lacked any really big, weighty piece as an anchor.

Finally, the American Symphony’s Carter program on Sunday.  I must admit right up front that I find much of Carter’s music quite difficult to cope with as a listener, especially – but not exclusively – when I am hearing something for the first time.  Surprisingly, however, two of my first-time experiences proved the easiest to digest, loving early compositions for high voice and orchestra.  Mary MacKenzie sang “Warble for Lilac-Time” and Teresa Buchholz “Voyage”, the former on Whitman verses, the later on Hart Crane.  Both were composed during 1943 and I suspect have not been performed much since.  They are in the composer’s early, tonal style, which owes more to Copland than to the thornier models of Schoenberg, Sessions, etc., that characterize the composer’s middle period.   I thought MacKenzie a bit more successful than Buchholz in projecting Carter’s lyrical lines through the sometimes thick orchestrations.  The Pocahontas suite, drawn from a ballet that received a theatrical presentation on Broadway during the 1930s, was also easy listening (and I have a recording of it, so was not venturing completely unprepared.)  But Sound Fields, a string orchestra piece that seemed to last much longer than its actual duration because nothing much was happening to engage the listener’s mind, struck me as forgettable.  The Clarinet Concerto brought forth Metropolitan Opera Orchestra principal clarinet Anthony McGill, and it is always a pleasure seeing and hearing him perform, even with thorny material like this that is not written to be particularly ingratiating.  The score requires the soloist to walk about the orchestra, playing each of the many movements from a different location.  I could not discern any particular spacial effect that was enhanced by this movement, which just seemed a bit silly to me.  The piece had some fine moments, but was not particularly easy to follow as a musical argument.  The grand finale was the Concerto for Orchestra that Carter wrote for Bernstein and the NY Philharmonic.  They gave it an uncomprehending premiere performance — Carter was not really Bernstein’s cup of tea.  I’ve heard several performances over the years, but this is a nut I’ve yet to crack.  My mind loses focus a few minutes in and I sort of zone out because I find it hard to find music, rather than organized noise, in this piece.  Perhaps, some day, I’ll experience a breakthrough.   The orchestra seemed well-prepared for this concert, and Leon Botstein (the conductor),  certainly showed a flair in the earlier music as well as the Clarinet Concerto.   Will Carter’s music enter the repertory and be played regularly by orchestra’s a generation from now?  Prediction is difficult, but I am dubious.  Unless there is a wide-scale revival of his earlier, more listener-friendly music, this does not strike me as the kind of stuff that conductors will voluntarily perform (pace James Levine, who’s a glutton for punishment where Carter is concerned) or that listeners will go out of their way to hear.  Attendance was pretty dreadful at Carnegie Hall yesterday, but Carter’s reputation for being difficult precedes him.

Phantasmata (Etc.) at the Philharmonic

Posted on: February 23rd, 2013 by Art Leonard No Comments

Thursday night’s performance by the New York Philharmonic included the local premiere of the complete “Phantasmata” by Christopher Rouse, followed by Ernest Bloch’s “Schelomo: A Hebraic Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra” with soloist Jan Vogler, and concluding with Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 1, Op. 68.  Music Director Alan Gilbert conducted, and Mr. Rouse, the Philharmonic’s composer-in-residence, was present for the festivities.

“Phantasmata” is a three-movement suite. The second movement, “The Infernal Machine,” was completed several years before the other movements, and received its NY Philharmonic premiere in 1984.  (The other two pieces were completed and the entire set premiered in 1985.)  I get feelings of great nostalgia for my youth whenever I hear music by Christopher Rouse, because we overlapped at Cornell University, and I remember seeing him around the music department and hearing some of his compositions in student composer concerts during my undergraduate years in the early 1970s.  He earned his doctoral degree from Cornell in 1977, after having graduated from Oberlin and pursued private studies for a few years with various significant composers. 

I always enjoy his music.  There is great inventiveness in orchestration on display, expert manipulation of the instruments, a gift for dramatic statement, and, in the faster music, infectious rhythms.  I found myself practically dancing in my seat during the last movement, titled “Bump,” which the composer characterizes as a “nightmare conga.”   All three movements (the first is titled, perhaps a bit pretentiously, “The Evestrum of Juan de la Cruz in the Sagrada Familia, 3 A.M.”) are meant to evoke dream-states, and the titles are drawn from the writings of Paracelsus, who, according to the program notes, “refers to phantasmata as ‘hallucinations created by thought.'”

Certainly that first movement has a hallucinatory atmosphere, quiet, mysterious, intense, emerging from silence and receding back again.  “Infernal Machine” is a “moto perpetuo” that makes the works of that name by Paganini and Strauss seem tame.  And “Bump,” as noted, is a wild dance that had the hall rocking. 

I suspect that a disproportionate amount of the rehearsal time for this program went into the unfamiliar new piece, especially with a much-played classic by Brahms taking up half the program.  The Philharmonic sounded assured and well-focused for the Rouse premiere, and I hope that a recording from the concert eventually makes it’s way to the orchestra’s CD label.

I was less enthusiastic about the Bloch, but not because of the performance.  The piece is described as a “rhapsody” and I find it to be a big, garrulous and overextended, formless sort of thing.  There are many wonderful moments — generations of Hollywood composers have stolen gorgeous orchestral effects from Bloch!–and the cello has lots of wonderful lyrical effusions, well played by Vogler, but I do find that the piece just meanders too much to hold my attention throughout.  Bloch needed a firm editor.

Finally, the Brahms.  I treasure each of the four Brahms symphonies. They are all masterpieces, each with its own personality but all clearly the products of the same musical genius.  But the First has a special place in my heart, especially since I conceived the idea, while listening years ago to Klaus Tennstedt’s EMI recording with the London Philharmonic, that the first movement — and in some sense the entire piece — is a huge psychodrama in which Brahms comes to terms with the looming shadow of Beethoven, struggles to free himself through the first movement (especially the “development” section), emerging triumphant in the finale.  Most people — including the program note author for the NYP — relay the anecdote about Brahms declaring in 1872 that he would not write a symphony, stating “You can’t have any idea what it’s like to hear such a giant marching behind you,” referring to Beethoven.  At the time, Brahms had already sketched out the first movement of this symphony a decade earlier, but the project had stalled and he didn’t complete the work until 1876.  And, of course, everybody notes the resemblance of the “big tune” in the finale to the Ode to Joy theme from Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.  

But I think these annotators and commentators are missing the point by focusing on the wrong Beethoven symphony.  The psychodrama plays itself out through references to the opening motif of the Beethoven 5th – the famous “da da da daaaaaaaa” that is probably the most famous symphonic opening of them all.  Listen carefully to the Brahms first movement and note that dramatic moment when the first theme of the allegro grinds to a halt and the violas suddenly play, aggressively: “da da da daaaa, da da da daaaaaa,  da da da daaaadadada, dada…”  From then on that rhythmic motif is in constant struggle with Brahms’s own material, although things calm down in the coda of the movement, where the Beethoven motif is quietly asserted by the tympani.  At the beginning of the second movement, the strings play their quiet opening phrase which ends with the horns hinting quietly at the Beethoven motif, which then pretty much disappears, and never fully emerges in the movement.  The lighter-toned third movement comes and goes without the Beethoven motif appearing in full, although I find it hinted at in the middle of the movement.  In the finale, of course, the big tune reminiscent of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy from the 9th Symphony dominates the proceedings, as if Brahms has come to terms with his Beethovenian inheritance and is now accepting his role as Beethoven’s successor.  At the end of the symphony, however, check out the rhythm of the final triumphant chords, this time in C major (not C minor as in the first movement and the Beethoven original) – Da, Da, Da, Daaaa!  Triumphantly in the major, but now fully assimilated by Brahms.  He has accepted his role as symphonic successor to Beethoven, minor has moved to major…

So when I listen to this symphony, I’m again participating as a listener in this psychodrama.  The Philharmonic’s energetic performance reliably conveyed all of this.  Gilbert selects just the right tempi.  I did feel that the symphony might have been a bit underrehearsed and not quite “played in” for the Thursday performance, as there were a few less-than-unanimous wind chords and a few solo passages were a shade insecure.  This is a great orchestra, but even the greatest orchestra can fall short of a perfect performance, which I felt to be the case on Thursday night.  I suspect things were tighter for the Friday rendition, but that’s their only other shot at this program, because the NYP did not schedule the usual Saturday night repeat.  (Are they out of town for a run-out concert?  I thought it curious that the Rouse piece would only get two performances.)   Rehearsals start imminently for next week’s run of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma.”)