After throwing a big party, there’s usually a little bit of a hangover.
Last weekend, the New Jersey Symphony held a monster blowout—and made some sublime music—while celebrating the orchestra’s 100th season. It would be a tough act for anyone to follow.
Only five days later, the orchestra was back on stage Thursday at New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, but their music director Xian Zhang (who led Nov. 12th’s gala concert) was out west, guest conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Enter maestro George Manahan.
Manahan was an associate conductor — and then interim music director — for the New Jersey Symphony back in the 1980s. Like many other past music directors of the orchestra, he’s returning to conduct during this centennial season. Manahan’s been a maestro who has stepped in when the band needed him most, and he graciously took the podium this past weekend, probably knowing he would be compared to the grand concert given only days before.
His program opened with Mozart’s Symphony No. 38. It’s a dependable masterpiece, easy to enjoy, hard to mess up. Still, the NJS played with little zest and Manahan’s stately tempi in the first movement felt slow. By the third movement finale, things picked up and they played with a little more gusto, but the program listed the running time at 26 minutes (and my favorite recording by Karl Bohm and the Berlin Philharmonic clocks in just under 25) whereas this performance ran close to 30 minutes.
The concert ended after intermission with an odd piece, Richard Strauss’s orchestral suite based on incidental music he wrote for a Moliere play called “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.” It should be mentioned here that Manahan, besides leading the New Jersey Symphony in the past, also is well known for conducting operas. No doubt the theatricality of this 35-minute suite appeals to Manahan as does its history—the premiere was staged by legendary stage director Max Reinhardt back in 1912. And there is good music in the piece, the fourth section “The Entrance and Dance of the Tailors” prompted some zesty violin playing by concertmaster Eric Wyrick. But it’s a weird pastiche of 17th and 18th Century styles written in the 20th Century and doesn’t really command one’s attention in a concert hall setting. Manahan conducted attentively and the orchestra responded with lithe, refined playing; but this quirky choice of music also lent to the sort of morning-after feeling of the concert.
Luckily, there was one new piece on the program, serving as the centerpiece of the concert: Jessie Montgomery’s “Rounds” for piano and string orchestra. If the other two pieces didn’t seem to have much fizz in them, this 15-minute piece — which premiered only a few months ago — felt crisp, fresh and invigorating.
“Rounds” opens with ambling piano arpeggios but quickly becomes intense and chromatic. Throughout there are gentle, Debussy-esque moments which contrast with intense, driving rhythms. The strings provide pulsing throbs of music along with prickly pizzicato passages. It’s a lively, energetic piece — one can see why it is being played by so many American orchestras this season.
One main reason for its success elsewhere — and here in New Jersey this weekend — is the soloist who premiered the work back in March, pianist Awadagin Pratt. In his debut with the New Jersey Symphony, Pratt sauntered on to the Prudential Hall stage sporting long dreadlocks and a stylish paisley shirt. He played with a lucid, clear tone, dispatching Montgomery’s big, chunky piano chords with considerable force.
At the heart of “Rounds” is the piano cadenza about halfway through. Here Pratt played the keys of the piano in a more flowing way, calling to mind Rachmaninoff’s concertos, and then at one point stood up to pluck the inner strings of the Steinway grand. This extended, partially improvised, four-minute cadenza grew more kaleidoscopic and jazzy as it progressed, until the string section came shrieking in and the piece barreled to its assertive finale. The NJPAC crowd heartily applauded the piece — and Pratt — at curtain call. Maestro Manahan deserved the applause, too. He had a tough job, but with his conducting of “Rounds,” Manahan proved that one of the things the New Jersey Symphony does best — regardless of the circumstances — is giving new American music a steadfast place to be heard.
James C. Taylor can be reached writejamesctaylor@gmail.com. Find NJ.com/Entertainment on Facebook.
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