Yes, it happened again. That was my very thought when this occurred. The previous weekend, as reported by Dobrin, during the serene third movement of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, Yannick had stopped the music not once but twice because of cell phone interruptions. The second time, the clearly peeved music director turned to the audience and said, “Can we live without the damn phone for just one hour?” The maestro’s plea became so instantly popular that the Philadelphia Orchestra will be offering T-shirts, tote bags and cell phone covers with that phrase.It happened again.
Thursday night, the Philadelphia Orchestra was just a few bars into the quiet, glassine opening of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique when a cell phone ring shattered the moment.
Once again, music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin stopped the music.
Once again, he lectured the audience.
Once again, he restarted the piece from the beginning.
This time, however, there were no “damns” or scolding looks, as there were for last Saturday night’s cell phone interruptions in Verizon Hall. Rather, the conductor seemed to accept his newfound, accidental role as Yannick, the Cell Phone Vanquisher, with good-humored resignation.
After he stopped, he turned, read the room, and said the only thing he was going to say was to ask that they now turn off phones.
“The world can wait,” he said.
He then teased the audience with a P.S., inviting them to visit the orchestra’s website for some very apt merchandise.
No doubt this incident will make this concert memorable for me and other audience members. But I’m happy to report that there was memorable music as well.
The opening work on the program was a 2016 composition by Gabriela Lena Frank entitled, Walkabout: Concerto for Orchestra. In her own program notes, Frank, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s composer-in-residence, described the piece as drawing on the Peruvian part of her ancestry. The other parts of her “motley crew of forbearers” (her words) are Chinese and Lithuanian Jewish—quite an interesting combination.
I have heard the Philadelphians perform other works by this composer and liked what I heard. Those previous works were undoubtedly contemporary, but at the same time approachable and with a Latin ethnic flavor. The flavor of this four movement, 30-minute work is more reflective of the indigenous people of the Andean region. The fourth movement, in particular, is a lively and at times raucous portrayal of a parade of up to a hundred flutists who also blow whistles and pound on a variety of drums.
The orchestra’s performance of this complex and brilliantly scored work was thrilling. The composer was seated in the audience, and when Yannick pointed to her, she was able to share in the audience’s enthusiastic ovation.
Every composer who produces a work which highlights orchestral color owes a debt of gratitude to one of the great masters of orchestration—Hector Berlioz. I’ve heard Symphonie Fantastique several times in performance (according to one survey, it is the most frequently performed piece by symphony orchestras) and I never fail to marvel at the genius of Berlioz in illuminating the resources of the orchestra. Moreover, this work was composed in 1830, only a handful of years after the passing of Beethoven and Schubert, but miles away from their concept of orchestration.
By the time the orchestra reached the incredible fifth and final movement, Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath, the spectacular performance had almost erased the memory of the first movement’s cell phone interruption.