It was hot and sultry that day. However, there was a gentle breeze at the Lincoln Center by the time the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra went on stage at Damroschi Park on Tuesday night.
Pianist Conrad Tao performed an elegant and rippling Mozart concerto and the fantastic “Rhapsody in Blue”. The orchestra hasn’t been assembled since 2019, except for a small performance studded last summer, but it sounded comfortable and energetic.
In just three years, the group has become anachronistic. The festival that bears its name — the pre-pandemic Lincoln Center’s best summer event — is no longer there. The center’s summer, once a messy assortment of competing series and festivals, has finally been streamlined under a single label. “Summer in the city.”
Planned by Lincoln Center president Henry Timms and his chief artist Shanta Thake, Summer for the City holds a 10-foot disco ball in a plaza fountain for outdoor film screenings, spoken language, ballroom dancing, and comedy shows. Is being held. And the ASL version of “Sweeney Todd”.
Five New York dance companies will meet next month for a few days of performances. And from Friday, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra will move to Alice Tully Hall for five programs: 10 concerts in two weeks.
But despite the packed orchestral season, guest ensembles, intimate recitals, and new music that has flowed out of classical tradition and embodied internationally, once under Mostly Mozart’s rubric. The other musical experiences that appeared have disappeared with the name. I lived in a modern ensemble and festival for a long time, but I am absent this year.
The ultimate fate of the Mostly Mozart Orchestra is a high-quality, carefully constructed and expensive group whose music director Louis Langrée has been on the podium since 2002. In some parts of next summer, things are cloudier than that. And while her vision for the season is still developing, this first iteration seems to have deliberately moved away from the band of music and performance that has been at the heart of the Center’s identity for decades.
I’m not saying that the Lincoln Center summer was the only thing.As long-time president of The Juilliard School, Joseph W. Polisi, recently stated in “Beacon to the World: History of the Lincoln Center” Published by Yale University PressThe original idea was that the center itself would be programmed primarily in the summer so that it wouldn’t compete in the fall and spring with constituents that act as landlords, such as the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.
When the campus was envisioned, summer was imagined to be a good time for folk operas and musicals like “Oklahoma!”. Or Copeland’s “Tender Land”, or perhaps a film festival. It is in the DNA that the center’s summer offerings are ambitious yet accessible and populist yet serious.
The city’s summers are mostly held outdoors, but the early novelty was inside: Midsummer Serenade — The Mozart Festival, which began in 1966 and was renamed Mostly Mozart six years later, was the first festival in New York to be held in an air-conditioned hall.
The Campus Community / Street Theater Festival in the early 1970s transformed a few years later into the Lincoln Center for the Out-of-Door, a free outdoor eclectic melange. Helping ballroom dance with ballet hiss spanico and bluegrass, string quartet and dowop opera, and finally a midsummer night swing.
In most cases, Mozart has come to be perceived as awkward and lethargic by the company. When Jane Moss (like salmon, an adopter from external classical music) became the center’s artistic leader in the early 1990s, it was believed that part of her outline was to eliminate it. Was there. After the Lincoln Center Festival, which hosted an ambitious international tour production, was founded in the mid-’90s, Mostly Mozart, which once lasted up to nine weeks, has dropped from seven to four. The 2002 musician strike was another existential crisis.
However, instead of spiked Mostly Mozart, Moss did a lot of programming and hired Lenglet as a partner to expand its reach. In the end, it was closer to Mozart. In 2017, amid budget and financial crises, the Lincoln Center Festival was held and Mostly Mozart was scheduled to expand by up to 50% to partially compensate. The festival orchestra entered the opera pit for the first time in 2019. There was a dance theater production and the acclaimed New York premiere of the “Black Clown”. Lenglet’s contract was renewed until 2023.
However, during the 2020 center pandemic silence, Moss decided to resign. And here is: Most Mozart has been eliminated instead of being expanded.
In a joint interview with Tims, Thake said that this summer’s city should not necessarily be considered a model for everyone. “It’s definitely a unique moment,” she said. “We’re out of a two-year pandemic. This is the first complete expression of what’s possible.”
Mentioning the Center’s Restart Stages initiative from 2021, she added: What you’re seeing this year is a continuous explosion of shapes, putting everything under one umbrella. “
Summer for the City has the flashy atmosphere of Joe’s Pub, a cabaret space run by Thake before being hired by the Lincoln Center, and other public theater initiatives such as Under the Radar and Public Works. It also feels like a return to community / street theater festivals and outdoor traditions from the early ’70s.
It can generate great programming and benefit many citizens. Growing up just outside the city, I found a midsummer night swing — with a crowd of tango and salsa — an exciting and fascinating definition of a summer night in New York.
However, these products existed in an ecosystem where classical music, widely interpreted in terms of style, era and form, was not a fringe but another pillar.
In an interview, Thake claimed that classical programming found its way towards summer in a more diverse and informal way: as a blood drive and accompaniment to a large wedding, and music and meditation at David. Rubenstein Atrium in the form of a session.
Tims added: “In terms of volume, perhaps the amount of classical music presented hasn’t changed much. It’s not fundamental, but its nature has changed to some extent.”
yes.
The two leaders suggested that summer re-recognition would draw the focus to the host role, welcome as many people as possible to the campus, and the constituent organizations would process or at least share the presentation. Especially in the classical field. For example, a small set at Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Society’s Summer Evening Concert can basically handle what was once mostly Mozart’s cozy Little Night Music series, as well as other solo and chamber events. It’s an idea.
The danger, of course, is that by reducing redundancy and internal competition, there are simply fewer cities.
It’s true that the compressed season of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra begins with a week of teaching and playing with student musicians and promises to introduce talented young guest artists. On August 5th and 6th, Langre led Mozart’s Requiem a few days before the arrangement of Jarin’s work became Kyle Abraham’s recent dance score. “Requiem: Fire in the Earth’s Air” — A kind of artistic cross-pollination that should be the center of trade.
More importantly, the choice of what the orchestra’s tally concert will pay for. This is the ticket philosophy that serves as a model for the center’s year-round. It’s true populism: a series of great music that is carefully prepared and played at the highest levels at an affordable price.
Instead, classical music is cast as an elitist hegemon, even in its constantly suffering non-profit form.
However, classical programming should not be seen as a chore or a bone thrown at a diminishing audience. It’s more familiar than “new.” No, serious performance is a jewel and the Lincoln Center is one of the few best presenters left. Conrad Tao plays Mozart for free or cheaply with a great orchestra: that is the core of the center’s mission. Its job is to reach viewers and increase access. that..
I’m not saying it’s impossible to change. Is the only way to fulfill the mission of the Lincoln Center for a resident orchestra with a music director appointed? Probably not. But is there a way to program such an orchestra and make it an integral part of the diverse and adventurous summer season? yes. Can you participate in operas, recitals, new music and guest ensembles to broaden what Tims and Salmon are trying to do and promote cheap exchanges with great performances? absolutely.
“We are still stepping under us,” Thake said. “And if you look again, how can you continue to respond? How did you go this season, what worked, what didn’t, what’s next for all of us? How can I understand that? “