New Jersey Symphony Orchestra - Bernstein & Mahler - at NJPAC

Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No. 2 The Age of Anxiety is a piece for orchestra and solo piano. It is titled and echoes thematically W. H. Auden's Pulitzer winning poem of the same name.  The poem is about man's quest to find substance, faith, connection and identity in a shifting and increasingly industrialized world. Bernstein creates a frantic and confused musical tapestry. One notable element of this work is Bernstein’s use of the piano throughout the score, both in the manner of a solo instrument and as a prominent orchestral member.

The composer, like the poet, breaks the symphony’s structure into six movements. Overall, if you’re unfamiliar with the piece, it does feel like a conversation in a bar one is overhearing.  There are snippets of Bernstein’s themes (Was that West Side Story?) but largely this is a unique, eclectic composition that allows flourishes from across the orchestra and piano soloist Kirill Gerstein who embraces the many moods of the piece with relish.

Conductor Jacques Lacombe led a taut performance at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark on Friday, March 13th, and the orchestra played this multi-hued music vividly. The piano line is jazz-tinged, poetic, and robust.  The orchestra builds Bernstein's climaxes with a palatable sense of relief.

Friday’s program concluded with Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D Major “Titan.”  The piece is lush and allows for flourishes from throughout the orchestra notably the violins, cellos, timpani, and brass. The most beautiful spun-out melodies are shared between the cellos and violins, with trumpet fanfares. Following Mahler's instructions, the seven horn players rise to their feet and play "as if to drown out the entire orchestra" in one of the most thrilling endings in the symphonic repertoire. Mahler gave the premise of the symphony broken down as: the first three movements with spring, happy dreams, and a wedding procession, the fourth is a funeral march representing the burial of illusions.

These pieces are dramatic and challenging.  Both the orchestra and audience embraced Mahler gloriously filling the hall with sweeping musicality and comfort. 

Performances continue in New Brunswick (March 14) and Morristown (March 15).