New York Philharmonic
Chris Lee
Music Director Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic perform at Spring for Music on May 5.
by Donald Rosenberg
The Spring for Music Festival at Carnegie Hall has showcased a groundswell of creative ideas at orchestras across North America. What does such programming say about orchestras today?
Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra Cincinnati Symphony and May Festival Chorus
Phil Groshong
Spectrum
Sonic
Courtesy of Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra
Tayna Tagaq performs 13 Inuit Throat Song Games with the Winnipeg Symphony on May 8.
James Conlon leads the Cincinnati Symphony and May Festival Chorus at Spring for Music on May 9.
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here’s rarely been a time in the recent annals of orchestras when the transcendent likes of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and friends didn’t dominate concert programs. Long may these masters wave. Yet the desire to go beyond conservative and even routine mixes of works has prompted curious conductors and ensembles to let their imaginations soar. Spring for Music, the festival of North American orchestras at Carnegie Hall that presents the finale of its four-year experiment this May 5-10, has succeeded in promoting the momentary liberation of musicians and listeners from the predictable—and from the need to fill every seat in the house. By the end of the fourth weeklong marathon, the festival will have presented—big breath—23 professional orchestras with their music directors or guest conductors in 25 varied, colorful, and compelling programs featuring a total of nearly 100 works by some 70 composers, many of whom couldn’t be termed household names. Although a fair share of these composers
remain alive, Spring for Music hasn’t necessarily aimed to stress the new. “An interesting program is not code for contemporary music,” said Thomas W. Morris, the festival’s artistic director. “It’s really thinking about programming and being thoughtful about it.” S4M is about putting a handful of beloved music alongside a torrent of unfamiliar works with the aim of making fresh connections between those pieces and with audiences. Being invited to Spring for Music has nothing to do with reputation or budget size, and it’s been no snap. The 23 invited orchestras—out of 65 applications— had to submit a statement of artistic philosophy and affirm that what they intended to perform at Carnegie reflected their strategy at home. As things have turned out, most of the music has hailed from the 20th century, followed generously by the young 21st. Only four works (by Beethoven, Bruckner, and Rachmaninoff ) have come from the 19th century, and a mere trio of 18thcentury titans (Bach, Haydn, and Mozart) symphony
SPRING 2014