In mid-September, after 556 days, Jaap van Zweden and the New York Philharmonic returned to performing for our audience, live. The 2021–22 season opened with a concert titled From Silence to Celebration, which is available to stream on NYPhil+ today.
The New York Times wrote of the performance: “The concert on Friday also showed a major institution attempting to address issues of racial and gender representation in classical music that have grown only more gnawing over the past year and a half. … The program was thoughtfully conceived and finely performed.”
Maestro van Zweden conducted Anna Clyne’s Within Her Arms, a meditation on the death of the composer’s mother; Copland’s Quiet City, with Philharmonic Principal Trumpet Christopher Martin and English horn / oboe Ryan Roberts as soloists; Antifonys by Walker, the first Black American to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Music; and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, with Daniil Trifonov as soloist, itself tracing a journey from stillness to joy. Poet Mahogany L. Browne opened the concert by reciting the verse that gave Clyne’s work its title, and returned to the stage to declaim the World Premiere of her own poem Country of Water.
You can relive the program — captured on September 18, 2021, at Alice Tully Hall — on NYPhil+, now through December 15.
