LINCOLN CENTER
David Geffen Hall
New York Philharmonic
Long Yu - Conductor
Yo-Yo Ma - Cello
Wu Man - Pipa
Musorgsky / Orch. Rimsky-Korsakov - Prelude to Khovanshchina
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Zhao Lin - A Happy Excursion, Concerto for Pipa and Cello (US Premiere–New York Philharmonic Co-Commission with the Beijing Music Festival and Hangzhou Philharmonic Orchestra)
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Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 6, Pathétique
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"Cello superstar Yo-Yo Ma and pipa virtuoso Wu Man (“the world’s greatest pipa player” — The Wall Street Journal) join the Philharmonic for Zhao Lin’s colorful concerto, A Happy Excursion. The concert concludes with the melancholy sonic landscape of Tchaikovsky’s powerfully haunting Pathétique, which will linger long in your memory. Long Yu conducts."
Review: Yo-Yo Ma and Wu Man Play With Cinematic Sweep
Critic’s Pick
From left, Wu Man, Yo-Yo Ma and the conductor Long Yu with the New York Philharmonic in the American premiere of Zhao Lin’s concerto “A Happy Excursion.”Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
- New York Philharmonic
- NYT Critic's Pick
Try not to smile when you watch Yo-Yo Ma and Wu Man onstage together. I dare you.
The two musicians — he’s a superstar cellist, she’s our leading pipa player — seem at first like an odd couple. Mr. Ma plays with brazen emotionality; you get the impression he couldn’t pull off a poker face if he tried. Ms. Wu, calm and unshowy, casts a quiet spell as she gracefully plucks the strings of her lutelike instrument.
But they exude amiability, with jolly glances frequently thrown back and forth, and unexpected compatibility. The cello and pipa have vastly different sounds and histories. Yet together, in the hands of Mr. Ma and Ms. Wu, they are as intimately harmonious as a cafe singer and guitarist.
At David Geffen Hall through Saturday, they’re playing Zhao Lin’s double concerto “A Happy Excursion,” which had its American premiere on Wednesday with the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Long Yu. (And how refreshing to hear a work by a Chinese composer outside the Philharmonic’s annual Lunar New Year concert.)
Mr. Lin’s crowd-pleasing concerto begins with a blossoming soundscape that gives way to increasing bustle and, eventually, a lushly cinematic swell that reaches its climax with brass fanfare and crashing cymbals. The soloists evoke characters: Ms. Wu’s pipa on a merry walk, matched by Mr. Ma’s bouncing, buoyant down-bow strokes.
The second movement retreats from the excitement with a misty opening, like quiet daybreak. Over spare orchestration, the pipa plays a slow and simple melody inspired by a 1,200-year-old Chinese tune.
But in the finale, we return to the commotion of the first movement, now less stable and more unpredictable, the way a busy city’s streets can change suddenly from block to block. All too predicable, however, is the majestic ending — but it’s easy to forgive Mr. Lin’s heavy hand while swept up in the filmic grandeur and sparkling cheer of Mr. Ma and Ms. Wu.
“A Happy Excursion” had a fitting companion in Tchaikovsky’s emotive “Pathétique” Symphony. The Philharmonic musicians can probably play this overprogrammed piece in their sleep; in the past, it has occasionally felt as if they were doing just that. But under Mr. Yu’s baton, they summoned surprising extremes, leavened occasionally with the brisk lightness of a Tchaikovsky ballet.
Like Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, which the Vienna Philharmonic was playing on Wednesday evening at Carnegie Hall, the “Pathétique” has an unusual form of four movements in slow-fast-fast-slow progression. Mr. Yu seemed to approach it as program music, finding a long arc in the work’s adagio bookends. So much so that he hampered applause — which New York audiences typically delight in — between the third and fourth movements.
He was aiming for a startling juxtaposition, of a rapid plunge from the deceptive bliss of the scherzo to the profound despair of the Adagio Lamentoso. This was a slow finale with high stakes, darkly commanding attention to the very end of a concert that had begun, two hours before, so joyously.
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