The Philadelphia Orchestra is making good on some grand but unusual plans for the 250th birthday of the United States.
Earlier this season, the orchestra brought a program of well-loved Gershwin and an energetic new work by John Adams to Carnegie Hall, with a look beyond national borders in selections from Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet.” And it remained cosmopolitan on Friday afternoon at Marian Anderson Hall in Philadelphia, where it presented a truly striking bill: a world premiere by the American improvising percussionist and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Tyshawn Sorey, and the original version of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 3. As a stylistic blend, it was mesmerizing.
The Sorey piece was a new piano concerto called “For Marilyn Crispell,” and it was the latest deceptively calm entry in his catalog of tribute pieces. His dedicatees are often teachers and collaborators — as is the case with Crispell, a composer of melodic originals and a force in the world of post-Cecil Taylor piano, thanks to improvised solos that can seem dense and dancing in equal measure. (She held the piano chair in Anthony Braxton’s classic quartet in the 1980s and ’90s; this century, Sorey put out an improvised duo album with her.)
Friday’s premiere, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, solicited the talents of Aaron Diehl — a gifted pianist across genres who has also recently recorded in Sorey’s small groups — for the solo part. At first glance, Diehl’s roots-focused solo style — including excellent recitals of works by James P. Johnson — isn’t closely related to the more abstract side of Crispell’s catalog. But then, Sorey’s concerto didn’t really call for much straightforward improvisational fire.
Before the performance, Nézet-Séguin took the unusual step of directly asking audience members to silence their phones. And it was quickly clear why: This 30-minute, one-movement work, conceived in a steady and stately tempo, takes near-total refuge within quiet dynamics. Sorey’s style seems reserved, but the harmonies he plots in this score prove a consistent wonder, with an edgier orchestral sound than people may have heard when they learned of his Pulitzer win for the piece “Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith).”
In moments that were unshowy yet cadenza-like, Diehl only rarely strayed into suggestions of syncopated, two-handed momentum. Most often, he labored intensely over spare motifs, gradually bringing them into states of subtle reconfiguration. (Sorey is open to improvisation, though the program note indicated he didn’t want listeners getting too hung up on what was composed and what was not.)
In multiple passages for the soloist and the orchestra, dissonances seemed to reference the atonality of Schoenberg and Webern (whose works Sorey has interpreted, as a percussionist). Sorey brought that across not with haute-European atonal alarm, but rather through textures of intimate balladry plied by American jazz ensembles old and new.
Diehl’s playing was so intensely restrained, it helped make the Philadelphia Orchestra forces come off as the piece’s more extroverted performers. A trio of percussionists were in complete lock step with Diehl; the pitched elements in their collective tool kit had them often seeming to extend the piano’s range. And though the strings were pared back in number, all the players brought fine focus to Sorey’s steely, chromatic designs.
It was a shame when a phone did go off — loudly, during one of Diehl’s most exposed and delicate moments. But that undesirable interruption had a way of pointing out how gripping this unusually unhurried music was proving to be. And one great explosion in the orchestral part toward the end showed that the orchestra’s players had maintained their attention to Sorey’s variegated universe of surprise throughout.
After intermission came Bruckner’s Third. The work’s 1873 version includes a wealth of Wagner quotes — from “Tristan und Isolde,” “Die Walküre” and “Lohengrin” — as well as complex string parts that were simplified in subsequent editions. In recent decades, Bruckner cycles overseen by Herbert Blomstedt and Simone Young have prioritized Bruckner’s initial thoughts for the symphony; so has Nézet-Séguin.
I’ve been won over by that advocacy, and Friday’s performance was yet more confirmation of this version’s worthiness. Throughout the symphony’s 67 minutes, Nézet-Séguin’s pacing was on sure footing. The nits worth picking were pretty small: The lead-up to a deliriously bizarre orchestral chord in the first movement’s recapitulation seemed to suffer from a brief lack of coordination between sections; some hard-driven tempos in the fourth movement had a wind player or two sounding hard pressed. But since Bruckner deploys more than a few pauses — allowing instrumentalists and audiences to prepare for the next volley of invention — there was ample opportunity to reset and recommit.
And the orchestra was as audibly committed in the Bruckner as in the Sorey. String syncopations during the lengthy Adagio brought a fine element of rhythmic contrast into view, alongside supple melodic material featured elsewhere in the movement. The brasses — frequently exposed, and dealing with some of the symphony’s most memorable motifs — were in strong form.
Sorey and Bruckner may seem like a strange pairing, but the Philadelphia Orchestra’s performance pointed out the conceptual intensity they both share. A real treat, no matter the year.
Philadelphia Orchestra
Performed on Friday in Philadelphia.
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