NY Philharmonic Performs Poulenc and Mozart

Yesterday, the NY Philharmonic gave the second concert in its Saturday matinee series.  As usual, members of the orchestra performed chamber music in the first half of the program; in the second half, the full orchestra played Mozart's final symphony.

This season, the selection of chamber works has been taken entirely from the early twentieth century French repertoire.  The two pieces played at yesterday's concert were both by Francis Poulenc - his Sextet for Wind Quintet and Piano; and the Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano.  Poulenc will always be associated with the Paris of the 1920's.  During that period, he joined with such luminaries as Milhaud and Honegger to form Les Six, a group of talented composers who reacted against both German romanticism and French impressionism and adopted in their place a neo-classical style influenced by Stravinsky and Satie.  The sextet was written somewhat after this period in 1932, when Poulenc's musical aspirations were already changing, and was revised in 1939.  I have always enjoyed its opening movement that to my ear echoes Gershwin's music and evokes the sounds of big city traffic.  The trio, written in 1926 and dedicated to Manuel de Falla, is slightly shorter but equally memorable.

I heard a performance of Mozart's Symphony #41 in C, K. 551 (1788) just last week when Iván Fischer led the Orchestra of St. Luke's in a concert at Carnegie Hall.  With the same piece scheduled to close yesterday's program, I was interested to hear how Fischer's style compared with that of the Philharmonic's Music Director Alan Gilbert.  In the end, my own preference was for Fischer's interpretation.  I felt that St. Luke's under Fischer gave a tighter and better articulated performance than did the Philharmonic under Gilbert.  Both sets of musicians were superb, but in the Philharmonic's version I heard little that was new or inspired.  This impression was only strengthened when I listened yesterday evening to a live WQXR broadcast of the Philharmonic in a performance all three of Mozart's final symphonies, again with Gilbert at the podium.