When burgeoning young Lithuanian conductor Mirga Grazinite-Tila announced last year that she would be stepping down as music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, her statement included the euphemism for dissolution. .
“This is a very personal decision. It reflects my desire to move away from my organizational and administrative responsibilities as a music director at this particular moment in my life and focus more on my pure musical endeavors. .”
But she was honest. Her classical music maverick, the 36-year-old wanted to devote her time to her own interests and her growing family, rather than being tied up with her orchestra. . When I met her in January, she was preparing a new production of Janáček’s The Cunning Vixen in Munich, as part of her year devoted to various iterations of that opera. said kindly. If you’re only going to do ‘Vixen’ all season long, you’d be interested in hiring me.”
If Gražinytė-Tyla needed further proof of her sincerity, she said in the final part of her statement, “We will continue to make music together.” She is currently touring with an ensemble from Birmingham, England, as Principal Guest Conductor. Her one of the places they stopped was at Carnegie Hall on Saturday night. The program is like a winning lap not only for his six-season tenure with these players, but also for his 100th anniversary celebration of the group from 2020, which has been postponed due to the pandemic. did.
Among these celebrations was a series of commissions including Thomas Adès’ “Angel of Extermination” symphony, a four-movement adaptation of the 2016 opera, which premiered in New York on Saturday.
“Angels of Extinction” is one of the great operas of our time. 1962 Luis Buñuel film It inspired and inspired the overwhelming fear and instability we are going to live in today. , has become all too familiar. Ondes Martenotthe compact force of the vastness of the universe.
There was so much to accept and so little opportunity. “Angels of Extinction” is a big-ticket production, with a huge main cast and a heavy Wagner orchestra. Adès conducted his American premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in 2017, and given House’s continued unreliable support of contemporary productions, it’s hard to imagine a revival, if successful, any time soon.
Thankfully Adès created more music from the score. Perseus, a solo piano piece written for Kirill Gerstein, and this symphony that deftly echoes the opera without excerpts. Gone is the spooky Ondes Martenot, but it lives on with the swaying glissando of strings. But the excesses and horrors of the opera remained intact, made even more unnerving by Saturday’s orchestra’s sober, articulate and virtually objective delivery.
The first movement, “Entrances,” is a nod to the grotesque, layered textures of the opening scene. The March, which consists of an interlude between Acts 1 and 2, can be simply called the ‘Prelude to the Afternoon of the Firing Squad’, with a shivering shiver reminiscent of Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony. I can do it. The harsh lyricism of Adès’ love songs and lullabies returns with another Perseus, followed by the finale “Waltz”.
Had the symphony not come after the intermission, it would have been a whiplash response to the piece that opened the programme: Elgar’s understatedly orchestrated and often quiet Cello Concerto in E minor featuring Sheku Kanneh-Mason as soloist. . He is an expressive musician who by default uses a wide range of emotive vibrato. Especially in the encore, he plays Bach’s “Komm, süsser Tod” for five cellists in a harmonious arrangement. Gražinytė-Tyla succeeded him as concerto narrator, with modest accompaniment and rarely blossoming grandeur.
And he was a compelling storyteller. Kanneh-Mason deals not only with the seeming spontaneity that comes only from extreme discipline, but also with the freedom to sometimes fall into imperfect intonation. And in his work, as outspoken as Elgar, his exalted articulation was closer to Shakespeare than it should be to Chekhov. But all can be forgiven for the sheer charisma of his performance.
The most traditional showcase of the Birmingham ensemble’s sound under Gražinytė-Tyla was Debussy’s ‘La Mer’, which closed the evening with a crystalline interpretation that reveals the work’s rich and subtly maximal orchestration. rice field. Gražinytė-Tyla’s readings were the least erratic, but revealed their clarity, balancing texture by texture under gracefully buoyant melodies among brass and wind instruments.
Players in every section of the orchestra responded to her gesture. Gražinytė-Tyla is not always attached to them, but neither is she completely detached. Whatever she decides to do to reconcile her own interests with those of this orchestra, it works.
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Performing at Carnegie Hall in Manhattan on Saturday.