9:27PM …  Schae­fer and Gilbert are speak­ing prior to this last piece, with text in Hebrew from the Megillah … the great Thomas Hamp­son singing for the pre­mier, Pintscher must be ecsta­tic … I would be; man-crush on Hamp­son is totally accept­able … Hamp­son even taller than Gilbert, okay no more gos­sip, time for music … opens a capella … the music is quiet, brac­ing, astrin­gent, a bit spec­tral in it’s idiom … mys­te­ri­ous, evoca­tive tim­bres, clouds of sound … apolo­gies I can’t fol­low text and com­ment on what Pintscher says about the words with his music, too many things to do! … lan­gor­ous feel­ing has now become agi­tated and intense as the text sings of the objects of desire; this desire is fer­vid, aggres­sive, even angry, per­haps self-consuming … chat­ter­ing oboe brings us back to a point of exha­la­tion, but not relax­ation … Pintscher has estab­lished an under­ly­ing ten­sion that is quite pow­er­ful, I am quite actively inter­ested in hear­ing how he resolves it, or even if he both­ers to … Hamp­son really com­mit­ted to the music, it’s new so clearly can­not be totally incor­po­rated, but his con­cen­tra­tion on the part is bal­anced with real ideas about expres­sion and inter­pre­ta­tion, such an impres­sive musi­cian … the instru­ments, espe­cially wood­winds, are now com­ment­ing more actively on the singing, the idea seems to be tak­ing place very much in an inter­nal, men­tal space, this is very much like an extended oper­atic mono­logue, with the char­ac­ter search­ing him­self, it’s dra­matic and grad­u­ally becom­ing ever more grip­ping … a short, echt–Roman­tic string line there, and the uncanny sound of a wah-ing trum­pet, I’m think­ing of Berio now … this is music where the ear, and lis­ten­ing, must take some moments to adapt, but now it sounds nat­ural, log­i­cal and is devel­op­ing real power … quiet yet intense, Hamp­son in falsetto, string har­mon­ics and a whis­per­ing growl from the con­tra­bas­soon, don’t want to breath and miss any moment … wow, this part is so good it could go on for­ever … and what a way to end!  An allur­ing, entranc­ing work, full of secrets, really needs to be heard again and again.

Quite a con­cert, dif­fer­ent and as impres­sive as the first one in the series, prob­a­bly tighter and freer play­ing with Gilbert con­duct­ing, a great range of music and deter­mined focus. You can still hear these pieces in con­cert, Sat­ur­day night at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Museum, and you can tune in next week to Q2 for the rebroad­cast.  Now, time for a beer …