Simone Young Alban Gerhardt

Simone Young Encore!

January 31, 2020, Geffen Hall
NY Phil - Simone Young - Alban Gerhardt
Britten - Dean - Elgar

Viva Simone Young, who now is a favorite of mine! After her cataclysmal Mahler 6th with the NY Phil (here) last year, I was an instant convert. This program is not one I'd go for usually, but I'd go hear Simone Young conduct anything! This was an early concert (11:00 am), which suits me well, but there were a lot of empty seats.

Britten's Four Sea Interludes has never done that much for me, but Simone Young paced it well and elicited excellent playing from the orchestra and for once I enjoyed the orchestral colors.

This was followed by Australian Brett Dean's Cello Concerto, played by the excellent German Cellist Alban Gerhardt (website), who is familiar to me and the Hong Kong audience (my experience with the AYO concerts here), but this was his NY debut. The enjoyable concerto, for lack of a better word, features sort of long chant-like utterances from the soloist, unusually without too much pyrotechnical display. The orchestration is highly accessible, and the audience seemed to really like it. Gerhardt gave the premiere and it was obvious he knew it well. I personally enjoyed the Hammond Organ, kinda funky.

Although I am crazy about his two symphonies and many of the tone poems, somehow Elgar's Enigma Variations, despite the famous Nimrod, eludes me most of the time. Part of it is my own intrinsic reservation about the style of Orchestral Variations (Brahms, Hindemith, etc), so different from the sonata form. But in this performance, Simone Young paced it beautifully and got things moving, and nothing got bogged down. In Nimrod, the NY violins was still not the sweetest, but otherwise the orchestra played beautifully. The last three variations were quite eloquent and, credit to Young, there was only one climax, and it was very well done.

One thing about Simone Young. The orchestra sounded musical under her baton, whereas under the likes of Jaap or Daniel Harding (post below) it could be overdriven and coarse. This lady knows exactly what she is doing - superb control, just the right amount.

As I have said, I'd go hear her do anything!