It was a joy to attend the 14,438th concert of The New York Philharmonic this past weekend at Alice Tully Hall at the Lincoln Center. The all-Brahms program included the Academic Festival Overture and Symphony No. 1 in C minor. Twenty-four year old Julia Fischer performed the Concerto in D major. I now know why reviewers have described her as “not a talent, but a full-fledged phenomenal violinist”.
The other phenomenal part of the evening was watching Lorin Maazel — Music Director since 2002. He has led more than 150 orchestras in more than 5,000 opera and concert performances around the world. This truly remarkable man uses no score yet seems to know every note and passage intimately. He not only conducts but he leads — providing a queue just before notes and passages are played. (Having memorized six minutes or so of Beethoven and Mozart for my own conducting experiences, I have great respect for someone who knows countless hours of music). Maazel made his first conducting appearance at age six and I estimate he must be 77 years old. After seventy years of conducting, there are likely not many classical music pieces he doesn’t know.
The following evening we attended the UBS Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra concert at Carnegie Hall. Maxim Vengerov, Conductor and Violinist, added yet another dimension to conducting. He is less than half the age of Lorin Maazel but has the same potential. He conducted with a bow in hand and also performed the Mozart Violin Concerto No. 4. He then conducted the Shostakovich Chamber Symphony, Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 2 and the great Sinfonia concertante — all without a score.
An orchestra is only as good as the sum of it’s great musicians and the conductor. The New York Philharmonic consists of many stars, each famous in their own right. Glenn Dicterow, the concertmaster, has been winning numerous awards and competitions around the world since he was a boy. Stanley Drucker is the most famous clarinetist in the world. (See Marvelous Mozart). The list goes on but I was most impressed with Liang Wang, the twenty-six year old principal oboist. The principal oboist sits in the center of the orchestra and in many ways *is* the center of the orchestra, second only to the conductor. Liang Wang spends hours every day shaping the reeds for his instrument. As he performs he rises six inches out of his chair and provides strong leadership appreciated by all. Wang was born in in Qing Dao, China, in 1980 and comes from a musical family. He studied at the Beijing Central Conservatory, which has a thirteen acre campus, over 500,000 volumes in the Music Library, and more than 500 pianos. Needless to say, there is great appreciation for classical music in China. There are currently ten million Chinese children taking violin lessons, and 30 million are learning to play the piano.
Epilogue: On Saturday a lighter program was equally enjoyable — Mama Mia. Not as far in the past as Mozart et al but a lot of nostalgia.
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