When is the right time to say goodbye to a long, highly visible career at an institution like the New York Philharmonic?
Carter Brey, the orchestra’s principal cellist, said in an interview that his decision to retire at the end of this season wasn’t easy. When you’ve had his job at a place like the Philharmonic for 30 years, your personal identity becomes somewhat wrapped up with work.
Still, said Brey, 71, he wanted to leave while at the top of his game. “Most American orchestras don’t have a mandatory retirement age, so it’s quite possible to ignore that,” he said. “That’s the catch — you can keep going until your colleagues start thinking to themselves: ‘Is he still here? Why hasn’t he left yet?’”
So, he is bidding farewell. This week, with the conductor Elim Chan, he’s capping off his long tenure with his hometown orchestra in a series of parks concerts across New York, performing Saint-Saëns’s Cello Concerto No. 1, a work he was also featured in at David Geffen Hall at the end of May. (He will take up the concerto once more, with the Philharmonic on July 29, during the orchestra’s residency at the Bravo! Vail festival in Colorado.)
At one of the May concerts, Brey displayed the elements that make him such a magnetic performer. His Saint-Saëns had rhythmic imagination and verve, with phrasing that, in the best way possible, pulled the ensemble in his wake. Brey is a lean, highly athletic man — an accomplished sailor who holds an official yachting certification and also runs marathons — and he delivered a brilliantly kinetic performance.
For an encore, he played something he had composed in 1997: “Tango para Ilaria,” which he wrote for the author Ilaria Dagnini Brey, his wife. It’s a jewel of a showpiece, only about three minutes long but packed with harmonic complexity and blistering emotional intensity.
Brey has been married for 35 years, and his wife said his decision to turn away from a full-time career as a soloist and audition for the Philharmonic stemmed from his desire to be fully present for their two now-adult children, Ottavia and Lucas.
“When our son was born, Carter was in Kansas City,” she said. “He was due to come back after a week, but he was caught by a snowstorm. It was Christmastime, and he ended up not seeing his son for a month. When he came back, he thought, ‘There is something wrong here.’ It was a fantastic decision for all of us — for the kids, certainly, but for him, too.”
Frank Huang, the Philharmonic’s concertmaster since 2015 and Brey’s colleague in the orchestra’s touring string quartet, said that when he first arrived, he had a certain image of Brey.
“Carter had this kind of reputation of this larger-than-life personality,” Huang said. “Ultraprofessional, eloquent, maybe a little bit old-school in some ways — and very gentlemanly, very charming, very well-spoken, loves to read.” Among his peers, Brey is famously erudite: At a recent send-off, Cynthia Phelps, the Philharmonic’s principal violist, fondly called him a “living ChatGPT.”
Over the years, Huang said, he began to see more dimensions, and his young children adore Brey. “He does handstands for them!” Huang said with a laugh. “His ability to get along with super-famous conductors and soloists, and then also 6- and 7-year-olds, in an equally joyous way is pretty special.”
Huang said that he can see Brey’s mind working differently from those of many of their colleagues. “He’s very into putting things together, figuring out how things work,” Huang said. “My theory is that’s part of the reason why he loves sailing so much. You have to understand how everything works on your boat, you have to be able to repair things. He has all this brain space for a whole set of complicated knowledge that most musicians don’t venture near.”
Although a large ensemble like the Philharmonic depends on an internal hierarchy, Brey said, he has tried to use his position to break some calcified culture within the orchestra. “Through my experience as a chamber music player,” he said, “I’ve seen that you can achieve more effective and more convincing results if you can achieve a semblance of having arrived at musical decisions through mutual understanding.”
If people in his section ask a question, for example, he will name them to the conductor and say what they would like to know “so that she or he is not just a cipher to the conductor, who may be new to us and doesn’t know our names. It’s also “a reminder that the player is a person with an active musical mind,” he added. “It’s tiny, but it’s a way that I can use my position to remind everybody that we’re all essential to the process of music making.”
That sense of esprit de corps is fundamental for Brey: After his recent solo performance with the orchestra, he gracefully acknowledged the audience’s standing ovation then lithely maneuvered himself out of the spotlight to take one more bow, back with his colleagues in the cello section.
Brey’s wife said that they both look forward to the next chapter of their lives, which will undoubtedly include more sailing for him and, together, more leisurely travel than the breakneck pace demanded of working musicians. Brey has also applied for citizenship to her native Italy, in part to make extended European travel easier.
No matter what comes next for Brey, his wife said, one pillar is sure to stay in place.
“What I keep reminding myself is that he won’t be the principal of the New York Philharmonic anymore, but he won’t stop being a musician,” she said. “That’s who he really deeply is, and will be until the last day of his life.”
James Estrin is a photographer and writer who has been with The Times since 1992.
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