Today in NYP history

Today in 1969, Philharmonic fans had the Bernstein blues as Lenny conducted his final concert as Music Director. On the program: Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, D minor.

You can browse through the evening’s program and photos from his farewell party at the St. Regis Hotel courtesy of the New York Philharmonic Digital Archives.

“The refined beauty of ambiguity.”

— Note by former New York Philharmonic Music Director Leonard Bernstein on his copy of the score for Mahler’s Symphony No. 9.

Current Music Director Alan Gilbert will lead the Mahler Nine in a FREE Memorial Day concert at The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine on Monday, May 28.

A tip: If you don’t arrive early enough to get a seat inside the Cathedral, bring a blanket so you can catch this refined beauty as the music is piped out onto the Pulpit Green (weather permitting).

Resurrection Replay

Tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. EDT (8:00 p.m. CEST), France Musique will rebroadcast A Concert for New York — the New York Philharmonic’s performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Resurrection in remembrance and renewal on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Tune in at francemusique.fr tomorrow to relive the powerful performance as broadcast from Paris.

“What makes this current thing fizzy is that it’s a battery of the two: the orchestra with Alan, and Alan with them. That’s what people are excited about.”

— Alec Baldwin on Alan Gilbert, as told to the Los Angeles Times’ Culture Monster blog, following the Philharmonic’s performance of Mahler’s Sixth at Carnegie Hall last week. Alan and the New York Philharmonic perform in Los Angeles’s Walt Disney Concert Hall tomorrow night, as part of the CALIFORNIA 2012 tour. Stay tuned for photos and video from the tour, this week.

Two Programs, One Rave

Last week Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic triumphed in back-to-back feats of daring: Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday, and a full program including the world premiere of Magnus Lindberg’s Piano Concerto No. 2.

The New York Times said Lindberg’s final work as The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence has “great stylistic diversity.… Yet for all the shifts in language and style, the concerto comes across as organic and inevitable.”

And about the Carnegie concert: “There was still plenty of energy, vigor and, in the finale, terror in this Mahler Sixth. The orchestra’s sound was sumptuous and grand in the great hall.”

Music Director, Orchestra, and soloist (the indomitable Yefim Bronfman, at center in photo, flanked by Alan Gilbert and Magnus Lindberg) will reprise the Concerto this week on the CALIFORNIA 2012 tour.

Recording Recognition

David Denby of The New Yorker writes in his latest contribution, “Ten Perfect Orchestral Recordings”: “I don’t know that perfection is of the greatest importance in music-making. Spirit, power, phrasing, tempo, expressiveness — all these things matter more than note-perfect execution.”

Apparently the Philharmonic has those elements down to a science, as Mr. Denby ranked a 1985 recording ofMahler’s Symphony No. 7, led by none other than Leonard Bernstein, as one of the top recordings of all time. To experience this for yourself, you can purchase the recording on ArkivMusic or Amazon and follow along on Lenny’s score, courtesy of our Digital Archives.

Then, and Now

Tonight Alan Gilbert will conduct the New York Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall, its one-time home, for Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, which he has described as being gorgeous but as leaving you with a sense of total despair, adding: “Throughout the work you can feel the desperate search for relief and happiness — and there are many opulent, lush passages in the symphony that are incredibly beautiful and seemingly optimistic — but, for me, there’s always the sense that it is on the verge of collapse.”

He will be leading this powerful but personal work in the hall that was the Orchestra’s home during Mahler’s tenure as the Philharmonic’s Music Director (1909–11). It was at Carnegie Hall that the Philharmonic gave the work’s U.S. premiere in 1947, led by then Music Director Dimitri Mitropoulos.

Hammer Time

This Wednesday, May 2, the Philharmonic returns to Carnegie Hall for a concert featuring Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, conducted by Alan Gilbert. For the famous “hammer blows” at the end of the first movement, which Mahler describes in the score as “short, mighty, but dull in resonance, with a non-metallic character, like the stroke of an axe,” the Philharmonic uses a “Mahler Box,” aka “The Hammer,” designed by Principal Percussionist Christopher S. Lamb with acoustical engineer Sam Berkow in 2005. Trapezoidal in shape, the wooden box is open in back and measures about 4’ wide and 2’ deep. A 1’ by 1½” disk of hard plastic on the front marks the spot (the “pitch center”) that must be struck. This season Associate Principal Percussion Daniel Druckman will again swing the hammer, with a handle that is 4’ long and a cylindrical head about 6” wide. “Striking the box at precisely the right time is the real challenge,” says Lamb. But most important, does it work? Chris Lamb replies emphatically, “Yes! It is appropriate to the context of the symphony. And yes, it is loud.”

Check out what Philharmonic news had Twitter buzzing this week: