NEW YORK — Gustavo Dudamel doesn’t officially become New York Philharmonic music and artistic director until 2026, but his season-opening concert with the orchestra on Sept. 11 at David Geffen Hall was exactly the sort of non-standard repertoire program I’d hoped for. With his well-established specialty in Charles Ives, Dudamel anchored the program in the composer’s Symphony No. 2. The first half included a commissioned world premiere by Leilehua Lanzilotti that turned out to be a near-ideal companion piece to Ives. In between was Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3 played by the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition winner Yunchan Lim, whom the audience loved (though I did not).
Were the parallels between Lanzilotti and Ives accidental? Certainly, they were unexpected from this Philadelphia-born but Hawaii-raised composer. To my mind, she has established herself as a 21st-century Impressionist, titling her pieces with phrases descended from French Symbolist poets and composing with an atmospheric abstraction with Debussy at its foundation and influence from George Crumb. But her new piece, of light and stone, suggested an intriguing evolution to come. Though her descriptive works have been less concerned with representing anything extra-musical, this piece has a highly specific underpinning, so much that parsing the readable program notes took almost as long as the four-movement piece.
True Hawaiian music isn’t widely known, but of light and stone draws from all manner of sources in reference to the royal family of Hawaii and the culture that existed before the islands were annexed in 1898 by the United States. This alone put the piece in Ivesian territory, considering how that New England composer memorialized the sounds around him. Also, Lanzilotti took the kind of collage-approach that Ives pioneered in his Symphony No. 2, using the Hawaiian element as a source of unexpected turns.
The brass writing that opened the piece suggested a traditional chorale in the making but instead went its own way. The wind machine and other percussion effects that followed initially evoked weather but evolved into the sound of breath, namely exhalation. Much of the rest of the piece, whose four movements flowed together, was full of incidental wind-instrument solos that gracefully intertwined against various sonic backdrops. By the end, her collages had become Lanzilotti’s own form of counterpoint.
Similarly, the Ives Symphony No. 2 had a continuous flow under Dudamel in washes of sound that enveloped non-sequitur quotations of tunes such as “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean” and “Bringing in the Sheaves.” Dudamel’s sense of clarity showed that these tunes weren’t just cameo appearances but sources of thematic development. Discord and surprise were more evident in early performances under Leonard Bernstein, who premiered the piece with the New York Philharmonic in 1951, nearly 50 years after its completion. Bernstein continued to champion the piece with the Philharmonic in performances of increasing monumentality.
The question posed by Dudamel’s faster, lighter approach was whether Ives’ much-discussed interruptive qualities are essential to his aesthetic. Well, Ives is no longer heard as an aberration but as one of many symphonic collage-based composers. Certainly, the string sheen and polish of the Sept. 11 concert was far above the scrappier performances the symphony received in decades past. It’s also possible that the disruptive qualities were less a priority with the younger Ives of 1902 than the older Ives, who was seen — by Elliott Carter, no less — adding dissonances to his works to make himself look more innovative. So what we heard, perhaps, was Ives closer to the original source. Yet one can’t describe Dudamel’s performance as sweet-tempered. The final chord’s dissonance was punched much harder than I’ve ever heard it. Was Ives joking? Assaulting? Both at the same time? It’s good that we can still wonder about such matters.
The Bartók piano concerto was more radically revised. Pianist Lim seemed bent on showing that the predominantly lyrical Third Concerto had much in common with the predominantly percussive Piano Concerto No. 2. Or was Lim just banging his way through the piece and playing to the gallery? The audience roared in approval, but that’s to be expected. Philharmonic-goers are increasingly inclined to give an A for effort, rewarding loudness in particular even when used to anti-musical ends.
Dudamel had some wonderful ideas, often emphasizing the underlying counterpoint in this great concerto, while also attempting to follow Lim with rhythmically piquant interactions. Yet the pianist often rushed ahead, which is one of the oldest tricks in the book for creating false tension. But Lim seems to know better — whether rushing or banging. Every so often, one heard a brilliant flash of true insight, such as in the last notes of the first movement or in Debussy-like coloristic effects in the second. Lim probably has great Bartók concerto performances in him, but he seems unwilling to deliver them just yet. In the meantime, he’s getting career-making ovations.
