live from lincoln center

Tonight occurred the annual rite of passage that heralds the beginning of a new classical concert season in this country: Live from Lincoln Center’s live telecast of the Opening Night Gala of the New York Philharmonic. It was hardly a ground-breaking tv event: Yo-yo Ma played the Dvorak Cello Concerto for the 80,000th time, and this was followed up by…wait for it…Dvorak’s Seventh Symphony. My spine hardly tingled when I read that information, so we missed the cello concerto due to a marathon viewing of the first five episodes of “Heroes” on DVD. We did catch the last three movements of the symphony, so I can (and will) comment on what I saw of that.

First of all, Lorin Maazel has passed from “arm-flapping old dude” to “partially-animated corpse” in terms of his stage demeanor. He obviously can still terrify the orchestra, seeing as they play for him in a clean and tidy manner that has often eluded them in the past (there have been some Mehta and Masur performances that should not have been even kept in the archives, never mind broadcast nationally). The symphony seemed to have one setting on the dial: the “slow and turgid” setting (that’s about 14 notches below “pureé” on the orchestral blender guide).

As for the relative enthusiasm of the musicians, the NYPhil is great to listen to on CD, or if you are at the hall or watching them on tv, with your eyes closed. They sound fantastic – the wind playing in particular was of a very high and refined standard for this performance, and the strings and brass did their usual great work – but boy, they look bored when they play! The violin section looked more like 4:00 p.m. in the unemployment line, not like one of the top orchestral string sections in the world – there was scarcely a movement of body, never mind a facial expression (other than ennui) in evidence. The violas managed to put a little body english into their performance, perhaps egged on by principal Cynthia Phelps’ hair tossing and eye twinkling. The cellos were stoic, noble perhaps, but many of them seemed to be held up by their instruments rather than the other way around.

It was in the front row of woodwinds that the excitement was to be found, particularly in the body of the principal oboist – he looked like he’d been plucked from out of the ranks of the Berlin Philharmonic, brought in to show the rest of the orchestra how to play like you mean it – and to look the part, too.

The be fair, the whole enterprise was not well-served by the prosaic camera angles and predictable shots. Would it have been too difficult to watch some rehearsals and see which pairs of musicians had some chemistry going on, and to clue the audience in to their interactions? I don’t think so!

In the end, it’s hard to make a boring looking product look exciting on television, no matter who is at the helm. If it looks exciting and interesting, a director will project that to his audience – if not, she’ll try her darnedest, but more than likely fail. If I were to gauge the worthiness of seeing a live orchestral performance from this broadcast, I more than likely wouldn’t go buy a ticket. And isn’t that the point?