Russian-American conductor Semyon Bychkov was supposed to be conducting Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony last week with the New York Philharmonic. Instead he got the flu—presumably as a warning to all those New Yorkers who haven’t listened to their mothers about getting a flu shot—and his concerts were taken over by Joshua Gersen.
Gersen is the assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, here making his subscription-series debut at Lincoln Center. And he did a fine job—crisp and energetic, with all the enthusiasm you’d expect from a thirty-year-old conductor standing in front of a hundred-and-seventy-five-year-old orchestra.
The program began with a confusing truncation, as the emergency conductor-switch led to the removal of Taneyev’s Overture of Oresteia, which had been intended as a pre-Tchaikovsky amuse-bouche. The cut was unannounced and there was some debate in the foyer at intermission (quickly quashed by Tchaikovskophiles) as to which piece of music we had heard. It was in fact Tchaikovsky’s Opus 32, Francesca da Rimini: Fantasy after Dante. This “symphonic poem” sets in music the story of two young lovers doing a stint in the second circle of Hell, having been murdered by an understandably jealous but unloving husband. The music is haltingly lyrical (struggles towards lyricism) and is always tragic—to the extent that the young lady next to me was moved to tears. Tchaikovsky would have been pleased. The orchestra was well-led but did not always smooth over the occasional tonal imbalances of the score: Whereas at times the blend of sound is exquisite, and the brass in particular majestic, at other times the thematic accompaniment sounded detached, and an occasional shot from the tuba came across our bows like a foghorn.
The Sixth Symphony, called “Pathétique,” has long been a favorite in New York: the Philharmonic has performed it over four-hundred times. It was premiered in Saint Petersburg under Tchaikovsky’s own baton just nine days before his death (either from cholera or a much-speculated suicide). Gersen encountered some difficulties in the earlier allegro of the first and the third movements, where the strings lacked verve and a much needed driving pulse and took some time to get up to speed. But, once they got up to speed, the effect was tremendous. The second movement, an extraordinary and utterly successful use of the unusual 5/4 time signature, came off with great charm and playfulness. When the third movement completed its exuberant charge towards the finish line—the strings having finally made their welcome contribution to the downbeat—the audience burst into applause, as the audience almost invariably does three-quarters of the way through the Sixth Symphony. The excitement is irresistible, and leaves the listener emotionally bare for the sharp downturn of the final movement: instead of a raring finale, the symphony melts into a languorous goodbye, sad and soft, which leaves us looking desperately for some assurance that there will be a happy reunion. But of course there isn’t. Gradually and at first hesitantly, applause wells up to fill the void of Tchaikovsky’s departure. (With their well-known delicacy for pathos, the Soviets often performed this symphony with its third and forth movements reversed, so it would end properly.)
The Philharmonic Hall, now David Geffen Hall after its second renaming, is soon to be rebuilt again to improve acoustics that never recovered from its excessive size—during the 1960s it was altered late in the planning stage specifically so that Carnegie Hall wouldn’t lord it over Lincoln Center. But the New York Philharmonic has adapted wonderfully to the current interior. We look forward to seeing them again under Gersen, who stepped into a difficult role and filled it to the brim.
Daniel Gelernter is CEO of the tech startup Dittach and an occasional contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
