United States Various: Yo-Yo Ma (cello), New Jersey Ballet, New Jersey Symphony / Xian Zhang (conductor). New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Newark, 12.11.2022. (RP)
Marsalis – ‘Herald, Holler and Hallelujah!’
Dvořák – Cello Concerto in B minor Op.104
Ginastera – ‘Los Trabajadores agricolas’, ‘Danza del trigo’, ‘Danza final’ (from Four Dances from Estancia)
The New Jersey Symphony celebrated its hundredth birthday with a gala live performance on the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark. It wouldn’t be a celebration with out a musical star, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma greater than match the invoice. For this live performance, nonetheless, the highlight was on the symphony and its historical past.
The Montclair Arts Association Orchestra, because the group was initially recognized, performed its first live performance on 27 November 1922. Comprised of 19 string gamers, the live performance was carried out by Philip James, who led the orchestra for its first seven years. By the mid-Thirties the orchestra had expanded to over 100 gamers. A century later, the New Jersey Symphony has turn out to be the official orchestra of the State of New Jersey and performs in six venues throughout the state, in addition to being the resident orchestra of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.
Innovation has been key to the orchestra’s survival, and it once more rose to the problem in the course of the pandemic. When in-person performances had been not possible, the orchestra launched ‘New Jersey Symphony Virtual’, that includes live performance movies, musicians performing in chamber ensembles and digital teaching programs. Earlier this yr, two of the movies, EMERGE: An NJSO Concert Film and Mozart: Piano Concerto No.21, that includes pianist Terrence Wilson, obtained Mid-Atlantic Emmy Awards.
On the rostrum was Xian Zhang, who turned the orchestra’s fourteenth and first feminine music director in 2016. (Henry Lewis had damaged the race barrier in 1968 when he turned music director of New Jersey’s Symphony Orchestra, because it was then recognized, in addition to the primary African-American to guide a serious symphony orchestra within the US.) In March 2022, Zhang prolonged her contract by the 2027/28 season. Days previous to this live performance, the orchestra introduced {that a} five-year contract settlement had been sealed with the gamers.
Wynton Marsalis’s ‘Herald, Holler and Hallelujah!’ was a boisterous begin to the celebration. A co-commission of the New Jersey Symphony, the work is scored for19 brass and percussion gamers, the identical variety of musicians as had been on stage for the primary live performance in 1922. Zhang was center-stage, with the percussion in a again nook and the brass in a aspect field. The antiphonal impact was excellent for Marsalis’s six-minute fanfare which mixes marching band, huge band and jazz types.
Anton Dvořák started work on the Cello Concerto in B minor in 1894, throughout his time in America, and completed it the following yr. Besides being one of the crucial well-liked and steadily carried out cello concertos within the repertoire, it additionally has a hyperlink to the early days of the symphony which made it notably applicable for this live performance.
Dvořák was impressed to compose the concerto upon listening to Victor Herbert, greatest recognized right now for his operettas, carry out his personal cello concerto. Herbert, after listening to a younger Philip James lead the American Expeditionary Forces Headquarters Band, employed James to conduct the Victor Herbert Opera Company, a place James held from 1919 to 1922. Establishing an orchestra throughout the Hudson River in New Jersey can be his subsequent job.
Zhang led a very lyrical studying of the concerto, which permitted Ma to spin out Dvořák’s melodies along with his singular potential to fuse music with emotion. It is a piece that Ma has carried out numerous instances over his lengthy profession, however he made it contemporary and spontaneous. The hallmarks of his taking part in – beautiful tone, eloquent phrasing, expressive depth – had been current on this compelling efficiency.
Dvořák, nonetheless, made the orchestra an equal associate within the concerto, giving specific prominence to the woodwinds and horns. The New Jersey Symphony’s horns impressed all through the live performance, however by no means extra so than within the concerto’s first motion. Its woodwinds additionally performed with fashion and finesse.
Three choices from Alberto Ginastera’s Four Dances from Estancia had been the ultimate works on this system. In the ballet, Ginastera sought to depict the lifetime of the gauchos on the estancias (cattle ranches) of the Pampas, the low grasslands that cowl central Argentina. Financial difficulties prevented the ballet from being carried out till 1952, nonetheless, however the suite which Ginastera extracted from it has been well-liked because it was first carried out in Buenos Aires in 1943.
The New Jersey Symphony’s brass started the rhythmically charged ‘Los Trabajadores agricolas’ with a blaze of vitality, however the look of 4 male dancers electrified the environment within the corridor. The second piece, ‘Danza del trigo’, permitted the orchestra to indulge within the candy melodies which accompanied a sleek pas de deux. ‘Danza final’ is a dance contest between the gauchos, which introduced the viewers to its toes as the ultimate notes sounded.
The vitality degree elevated nonetheless extra with the looks of the New Jersey Symphony Youth Orchestra, vocalist Abner Bonifacio and Daniel Bernard Roumain, the New Jersey Symphony’s Resident Artistic Catalyst. Actually, solely 29 members, largely string gamers, had been on stage – a further 15 had been within the aspect bins, including quantity and vitality to the work with their energetic rhythmic clapping.
The massed forces carried out Roumain’s ‘Stand by Me & Hip-Hop Etude in C-sharp minor’, which started with Bonifacio repeatedly singing the opening traces of the Ben E. King hit track, ‘Stand by Me’. What adopted was a improbable kaleidoscope of musical sounds that had everybody within the corridor clapping their palms.
It was rather more than a energetic ending to the live performance, nonetheless, as each Roumain’s music and the younger individuals who carried out it level to the longer term. Here’s hoping that the New Jersey Symphony’s subsequent 100 years will likely be as evolutionary and revolutionary as its first century has been.
Rick Perdian