LINCOLN CENTER

Avery Fisher Hall
New York Philharmonic

Alan Gilbert - Conductor
Lisa Batiashvili - Violin

Christopher Rouse - Thunderstuck (World Premier - New York Philharmonic Commission)
Haydn - Symphony No. 103, Drumroll
Brahms - Violin Concerto


Here's a video by the violinist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4jHpRyUQ-k


Here's a video by the composer of Thunderstuck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCSs5mLtZ8s

MUSIC | MUSIC REVIEW

The Rock Beat of His Youth, Echoing Again in August Precincts

Rouse’s World Premiere and Batiashvili Plays Brahms

By DAVID ALLENOCT. 10, 2014

Few composers are lucky enough to have an advocate like the New York Philharmonic’s music director, Alan Gilbert. According to the Philharmonic archives, Thursday’s premiere of Christopher Rouse’s new homage to soft rock, “Thunderstruck,” at Avery Fisher Hall, was the 36th performance Mr. Gilbert has given of his composer-in-residence’s work since February 2010.

“Thunderstuck” is not Mr. Rouse’s first attempt to combine the rock music of his youth with his compositional skills.  “Bonham” (1988), for eight percussionists, was a tribute to the great Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham. “Thunderstuck” wears its influences less strongly, its brassy riffs and drum-kit interruptions paying tribute to the likes of Jefferson Airplane, and specifically to Jay Ferguson’s “Thunder Island” (1978). It’s designed to be a fun concert opener, and it is.

But “Thunderstuck” and the rest of this Philharmonic program are the perfect illustration of why I — like others — am becoming frustrated by Mr. Gilbert. His commitment to new work, and especially to Mr. Rouse, is vital and laudable. It’s one way he’s changing “the template for what an American orchestra can be,” as Anthony Tommasini wrote in The New York Times. Yet even in contemporary music, let alone older repertory (bar Carl Nielsen), I have rarely heard Mr. Gilbert achieve special insight. “Thunderstuck” itched to thrum along more quickly, and its syncopations deserved greater rhythmic incision and textural clarity.

Mr. Gilbert often programs Mr. Rouse with Haydn or Brahms, and they made up the bulk of this concert. Lisa Batiashvili, the Philharmonic’s new artist-in-residence, began her tenure with Brahms’s Violin Concerto. Ms. Batiashvili charmed with this work in New York, as recently as last year, and the concerto has appeared in four of the Philharmonic’s past six seasons. Every violinist has things to say about this overfamiliar piece, and Ms. Batiashvili played it bracingly, without any sense of routine. She pushed the tonal envelope but never to breaking point, and sang with ravishingly long lines in the slow movement.

Her choice of Ferruccio Busoni’s cadenza, which began with a thunderous timpani roll, provided a clever link to Haydn’s Symphony No. 103. It opens with a similar crash, lending the symphony its nickname, the “Drumroll.” Mr. Gilbert’s Haydn was clean and tidy, and the Philharmonic’s strings sounded agreeably chirpy. But where was the joyous development, the poetry of phrasing, the wit and wonder that make Haydn Haydn? Just as with the Brahms, I listened in vain for a distinctive vision from the podium.