Brahms’ Fourth Symphony means nothing. Like many classical music repertoires, it has no text and no plot. It elicits emotion, but not in a rigidly defined way. At the concert, your neighbor’s experience and her description of its impact will almost certainly differ from yours.
Also, like much of the repertoire, it is chameleon-like. It’s a different piece if you’re heartbroken or celebrating joy. When Ukraine Freedom his orchestra played a symphony at the Lincoln Center on Thursday, the sound was the same as always. But the score, performed by dozens of Ukrainian musicians in Damrosch Park on a serene evening, took on what Rimbaud once called “fiery patience,” an air of gentle yet relentless defiance. rice field. There was no hysteria in this Brahms, just determined intensity.
The performance, with its unified focus and passion, looked like a well-rehearsed ensemble piece, but this orchestra is a tribute to Ukrainian culture and what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has done. It was first convened just a month ago in an effort to introduce the called “artistic resistance” to Russian aggression.
It is the brainchild of Ukrainian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson and her husband Peter Gelb, General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera. Wilson and Gelb rallied the sponsorship and support of Warsaw’s Polish National Opera, which hosted rehearsals and the first show of her 12-city tour. Saturday in Washington.
The musicians performing under Wilson’s baton represent various Ukrainian ensembles, as well as members of orchestras elsewhere in Europe. The Ukrainian government has made an important contribution by allowing male players to join the tour, even though men of military age are prohibited from leaving the country.
But make no mistake. The men and women of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra are fighting. As critic Jason Farago wrote in The New York Times last month, the risks to Ukrainian culture are “more than just collateral damage” in the fight. This is a true culture war, he added. Russia wants not only the land, but also the erasure of national works of art and history. Anyone who resists it is a soldier.
“I don’t have a gun,” one of the orchestra’s musicians recently told The Times, “but I have my cello.”
So it was only natural that there would be moments of national pride on this night. As Ukraine’s ambassador to the UN, Sergiy Kislitsa, took the stage and proclaimed “Glory to Ukraine,” Wilson echoed the sentiment in Ukrainian from the podium. Behind the musicians was a huge Ukrainian flag. Finally, the soloists bowed wrapped in flags, and more waved to the audience.
But this was not a performance handed over to jingoism. It liked sophistication. I got the impression that the best way to counter imperialism and authoritarianism, at least from the concert stage, is sophistication, subtlety, rigor and delicacy.In every moment of intense drama, the show was brilliantly calm and soft-spoken, the embodiment of a cultural nation. Finally, the arrangement of the Ukrainian national anthem Impressionist and elegant, it was the exact opposite of Stentorian.
No outdoor orchestra performance is perfect. An instrument made for warm indoor acoustics gives it an edge, and amplified strings overwhelm the woodwinds every time. This was not the best setting for the American premiere of the 7th Symphony (2003) by the eminent Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov. Deliberately immersed in kitsch sweetness (Shostakovich style). It then melts away slowly, ending with an eerie, silent breathing sound through the brass.
Pianist Anna Fyodorova, the sensitive and poetic soloist of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2, is a nod to Poland’s support for the Freedom Orchestra project. Soprano Lyudmila Monastirska, who replaced Anna Netrebko at the Metropolitan Museum of Art after Netrebko’s contract was revoked following the Russian invasion, but she was the rebel of Leonore from Beethoven’s Fidelio. sang the aria of
But the most impressive was the Brahms symphony. (On Friday in Damrosch, as the final night of Lincoln’s Center for the Summer for the City festival, Brahms will be replaced by Dvorak’s “New World” symphony and “Fidelio” aria by Aida’s Anthem to the Motherland.”)
Despite the outdoor acoustics, the sound in the first movement was very rich. The second was eloquent. The third was buoyant, but still substantial, and carried off with an understated panache.
The finale was less brutal than you might think, given the occasion, and even more touching because of its restraint. increase. This was the opposite. It is a declaration of continuous existence.
It is simply not true that the work is pure music and has no external connections. You have to dig a little. Brahms derived the theme for the finale from the final movement of Bach’s cantata. That opening word could have been the tenet of this concert and of this orchestra.
Ukraine Freedom Orchestra
Until Friday at Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center lincolncenter.org.