{"id":11645,"date":"2023-04-03T17:42:27","date_gmt":"2023-04-03T21:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/?p=11645"},"modified":"2023-04-05T17:47:29","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T21:47:29","slug":"review-guest-conductor-makes-debut-with-n-j-symphony-leads-rich-spring-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/review-guest-conductor-makes-debut-with-n-j-symphony-leads-rich-spring-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Guest conductor makes debut with N.J. Symphony, leads rich spring program"},"content":{"rendered":"

From NJ.com<\/a><\/p>\n

By James C. Taylor<\/p>\n

This past weekend rested on the cusp of March and April as the weather in Newark likewise seemed split between winter and spring. The New Jersey Symphony played along with a program that balanced wintery remorse with the bloom of spring.<\/p>\n

The guest conductor on hand Thursday at New Jersey Performing Arts Center contributed to this dichotomy too, sporting an old-fashioned coat with tails (calling to mind a Victorian-era undertaker) but also rocking hot-pink socks. Eric Jacobsen was making his New Jersey debut with these concerts and his conducting bridged this divide of dark and light with grace and insight.<\/p>\n

The concert began appropriately with Ravel\u2019s \u201cLe Tombeau de Couperin,\u201d … Written for piano during the Great War, and then orchestrated in 1920, \u201cLe Tombeau\u201d is also a remembrance of Couperin (a celebrated French composer from the Baroque era) and other great musicians of the past. Jacobsen truly evoked those past styles in the rich, rhythmic fourth movement \u201cRigaudon.\u201d<\/p>\n

A more piercing piece of remembrance closed the program: Faure\u2019s \u201cRequiem.\u201d … Most impressive was the third movement \u201cSanctus,\u201d where the voices, harp and strings created a celestial sound, setting the stage for some epic horn blasts.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

But the highlight of this program was the hint of spring, evoked in George Walker\u2019s Pulitzer Prize for Music-winning composition, \u201cLilacs.\u201d This 15-minute work for voice and orchestra won that prize in 1996 (making the longtime Montclair, NJ resident the first African American composer to win that award) and the piece still delights. It\u2019s written in a decidedly 20t Century idiom, but unlike much of the American classical music from that time, it doesn\u2019t feel overly formal or stiff. Walker set four stanzas of Walt Whitman\u2019s elegiac 1865 poem, \u201cWhen Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom\u2019d,\u201d to a score that feels urgent, but not forced.<\/p>\n

Much of the credit for this goes to Jacobsen for playing up the brightness in Walker\u2019s orchestrations and soloist Townsend connecting with the composer\u2019s vocal lines. When the soprano sang\u2014and held\u2014the notes of the word \u201cbloom\u2019d\u201d in the first section, it felt as if the first rays of Spring were pouring right from the sun into NJPAC.<\/p>\n

Read the full review.<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From NJ.com By James C. Taylor This past weekend rested on the cusp of March and April as the weather in Newark likewise seemed split between winter and spring. The New Jersey Symphony played along with a program that balanced wintery remorse with the bloom of spring. The guest conductor on hand Thursday at New … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3613,3824,3686,3612],"class_list":["post-11645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-conductor","tag-eric-jacobsen","tag-orchestra","tag-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11646,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11645\/revisions\/11646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/1051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}