The New York Philharmonic began a concert last Friday night with an OOMP—an obligatory opening modern piece. And one designed to be an OOMP, really. The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam commissioned the piece to serve as a companion to Bernstein’s violin concerto, which he called a serenade. We are headed into an “anniversary year”: next August will mark the centennial of Bernstein’s birth.

The new piece is called Boundless (Homage to L.B.), and it was written by a Dutchman with an interesting name: Joey Roukens. In a program note, Roukens writes that he has admired Bernstein since age nine or so, when he saw the movie version of West Side Story. That’ll do it.

Boundless quotes some of Bernstein’s music, but not the Serenade, and not West Side Story. It quotes two pieces from 13 Anniversaries, a cycle of little piano pieces. Boundless is in three movements with enjoyable markings: “Manically,” “Glacially,” and “Propulsively.” There are no breaks between movements because today’s composers, for some reason, don’t do breaks.

Shortly into the first movement, I thought, “Bernsteinian.” This is an adjective I have used many times about contemporary music. What is different here is that the piece is expressly designed to be Bernsteinian, or Bernstein-companionable! This first movement is fast and jazzy, with West Side Story rhythms. It is a pleasing little piece.

The next movement—the middle and slow movement—is woozy. It begins to sound like the soundtrack to a sci-fi movie. It becomes a “bleakscape,” as I like to say: music suggesting ruination and barrenness. Roukens uses a nice harmonic progression. But in my opinion (on first hearing) the music goes on too long. It is static. Eventually, some freaky soft percussion comes along. And soon the music sounds like the soundtrack to a horror movie.

That last movement—Propulsively—is propulsive, yes. And repetitious. It is loud, fast, and noisy. It becomes a cacophony, which hurt my ears (literally). I had a hard time detecting the musical value of it. As you can tell, I think the strength of Boundless is its first movement, and about half of the second.

The Philharmonic then presented the Bernstein Serenade, whose solo part was taken by Joshua Bell, the American violinist. Regular readers will know my opinion—that, famous as he is, he is underrated. His status as a hotshot celebrity may dent the critical esteem in which he is held. My impression could be wrong. In any case, I’ll make just a few remarks about Bell’s performance on Friday night.

Slow parts were beautifully Kreislerian; fast parts were accurate and easy. In everything, Bell was musical, and when he was jazzy and bluesy, he was always tastefully so. (Tasteful is not to be confused with overly polite, I hasten to say.)

Conducting the Serenade was Alan Gilbert, who proved a superb manager of the piece. In the third movement, which is fast and playful, the orchestra was gratifyingly precise. Gilbert was on top of everything. A later movement brought a cello solo, played by the Philharmonic’s principal, Carter Brey. There is always something aristocratic about his playing. He plays like a gentleman, if you know what I mean (and if you hear him, you do).

A couple of footnotes, please. In a recent post, I spoke of applause between movements. As a rule, I think performers should acknowledge this, however modestly or briefly. Bell handles it perfectly, I think. On Friday night, he gave a quick nod and smile—as if to say, “I hear ya.”

Finally, I got a kick out of something while reading the Philharmonic’s program. For years, I’ve said that I thought the Serenade was Leonard Bernstein’s best piece of classical music (leaving aside the immortal West Side Story and other popular works). This is the piece with the chance of lasting, I think. When future generations want a mid-twentieth-century American violin concerto, they will turn to the Serenade, perhaps.

Anyway, the program booklet related a story. Late in his life, Bernstein rehearsed the Serenade (as conductor) and observed, “This is the best f***ing piece I ever wrote.”

Heh.

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