Celebrated cellist Yo Yo Ma gave a stunning performance to headline New York Philharmonics Opening Gala. The program honored the NY Phils’ outgoing President and CEO Deborah Borda, whom Chicago audiences well remember as the former head of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
The event was the largest of any Gala opening night for the Philharmonic.
Conductor Jaap van Zweden gave the shiny new acoustics at the newly refurbished David Geffen Hall a workout with masterful renditions of a pair of concert warhorses, Beethoven’s flashy Egmont Overture, Op. 84 (1809-10) and Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien, Op. 45 (1894-95). So familiar are the tunes, I heard nary a program notes page turned during performance!
Dvorak wrote his Cello Concerto in B minor as a showpiece for his good friend and eminent cellist Hanus Wihan, to whom the work is dedicated. Yo Yo Ma was channeling his spirit as he navigated the intricate pizzicato and double stops of the difficult piece with ferocity.
The thunderous and prolonged ovation nearly delayed the start of the sumptuous feast that awaited patrons and their guests in the Leon and Norma Hess Grand Promenade post performance. Luminaries attending included former First Lady and Democratic Presidential Candidate Hilary Rodham Clinton, actor/director Bradley Cooper and members of the Leonard Bernstein family, representing the new Netflix biofilm Maestro, on the life of famed NY Phil conductor Leonard Bernstein, which received it’s World Premiere at Geffen Hall at the 61st New York Film Festival.
The concert was performed sans intermission, with a program note thanking the musicians of the orchestra for donating their services for the evening’s performance.
Opening Night Gala in honor of Deborah Borda was a fitting celebratory start to what promises to be a stellar 2023-24 subscription season.
Among the new season’s offerings is a program of Holst’s The Planets and works by Ligetti and Perry featuring Met Opera star J’Nai Bridges in her NY Phil debut Nov. 22, Bernard Herrmann’s Vertigo Jan. 23-26, with the Alfred Hitchcock psychological thriller playing on the giant screen above the live orchestra playing the original score, and the NY Phil debut of 24 year old Black British cello sensation Sheku Kenneh-Mason, who garnered international attention when he played at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in 2018. The young prodigy from Nottingham, England, who began playing cello at age 6, will perform Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No.1 May 1-4, 2024, with the celebrated Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting. For more on the new season, visit nyphil.org.