Friday evening was labeled "the Night of Too Many Concerts" by Alex Ross in The New Yorker (November 21): conductor Reinbert de Leeuw presenting the Alan Berg Chamber Concerto at the Miller Theatre; Leon Botstein and the American Symphony performing Witold Lutoslawksi's Symphony No. 3 at Avery Fisher Hall; David Robertson and the SLSO performing Seeing Debussy, Hearing Monet at Carnegie Hall; and, reports Concertmaster David Halen, Alanis Morissette was singing just across the street. "Nothing but New York style concerts," Halen joked, "not a New World Symphony to be found."
For our purposes, we'll stick to events surrounding the St. Louisans.
Tina Ward (clarinet) called me last night from the hotel. She was entertaining her sister Pat, who had come down from Maine for the weekend. Pat told me of Debussy/Monet : "It was a very interesting pairing. It gave me much more of an appreciation of Monet than I had previously. I was impressed with David Robertson being able to project himself and those ideas to that whole audience. I felt people were really thrilled."
Tina's view from the stage: "Being back at Carnegie is always wonderful. We can hear things on the stage we can't hear anywhere else, which includes the distant rumble of the subway that runs beneath the hall."
Tina also provided a Manhattan vignette. A recent NY phenomenon is that of bicycle cabbies who operate around the traffic with a kind of grace and flair that can only be found in the city that doesn't sleep. Tina says her colleagues Gerry Pagano and Barbara Lieberman took one such cabbette from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to Carnegie -- their escort an Elvis impersonator dressed in satin. Apparently they got an expert ride. "The bicyclist could maneuver through traffic in such a way that when they got to stop lights they were always at the front of the traffic," says Tina.
David Halen called this morning, taking a break from practicing the Mahler (Das Lied van der Erde) and before the orchestra's afternoon rehearsal for tonight's program (Mozart Magic Flute Overture and Feldman Coptic Light).
"It was extraordinary," David said of last night's performance. "There is no conductor that I have worked with that can facilitate so much presentation. I had the feeling that we were in the midst of a genius at work.
"The really exciting thing was that there was such interest in New York. There were extraordinarily important people at the concert from the music world."
Who? Who? I asked. "I don't want to drop names," said the diplomatic Halen.
Oh well.
"I think the orchestra played extrordinarily beautifully," David added. "Mark Sparks (who plays the flute solo in Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun) was magnificent, which is saying something since I may not want to hear that theme again for a long, long time."
Although Halen took time yesterday to do some teaching at the Manhattan School, he's storing up his energies for the performance tonight. "This is a very tiring city," he offered as understatement, "and if you are not careful you'll be worn out before the concert starts."
Many thanks to Diana Haskell, Tina Ward and David Halen for taking the time out from their Carnegie tour to provide these "postcards."
