Gemma New’s Welcome Return to Seattle

Gemma New with Seattle Symphony; photo (c) Ben VanHouten

A few weeks ago, Gemma New led the Seattle Symphony in an interestingly unusual program centered around Vaughan Williams’s Antarctic Symphony. The New Zealand-born conductor made an unexpected return visit this past week, when she agreed to take on another guest program in lieu of Elim Chan, who had been originally scheduled to make her debut with the orchestra but canceled owing to a family emergency.

New had just the week before stepped in for Marta Gardolińska at San Francisco Symphony — where, as in Seattle, she took on the program that had been announced, with no changes. That remarkable confirmation of New’s versatility and grace under pressure enhances her already impressive profile.

Thus New opened the first night of Seattle Symphony’s program (17 May) with a contemporary piece she had to learn under extra pressure: Unsuk Chin’s Subito con forza. The piece — so texture- and idea-rich that the term “concert opener” really doesn’t do it justice — was one of the many commissions around the (ill-fated) Beethoven anniversary year in 2020 for compositions reflecting in some way or other on the legacy of Beethoven.

Chin has described Beethoven as “the first consciously modern composer, in the sense that every piece asked for original solutions, even if this meant breaking through existing forms.” She adds: “What particularly appeals to me are the enormous contrasts: from volcanic eruptions to extreme serenity.” Subito con forza — meaning “suddenly, with power,” a phrase in the style of a Beethovenian musical indication such as “Allegro con brio” for the first movement of the Fifth Symphony — abounds in eruptions and contrasts. The opening gesture, for example, alludes to the Coriolan Overture and then explodes into a parallel but unfamiliar universe of chiming percussion and extended technique and quickly gutters into ghostly shiverings on the strings.

Seeming to explore untapped potential or multiple other directions Beethoven might have followed with his raw material, Chin’s approach differs in fascinating ways from Jörg Widmann’s Beethoven homage Con brio. New elicited a sense of the incandescent fire of Chin’s imagination, harnessed through the composer’s formidable orchestral technique.

It made for a wonderful companion piece to the second half of the program, the Symphony No. 1 by Beethoven himself. The audience was treated to an engrossingly fresh account that conjured a sense of the young composer bursting with ideas and the passion to stake his claim. New avoided the temptation to play up Beethoven as an eccentric flouting convention, which made his surprise moves in this work all the more effective, from the harmonic detour of the opening measures and the dam-rupturing energy of the extended coda in the first movement to the teasing, step-by-step presentation of the finale’s main theme.

The conductor’s style of sweeping, balletic gestures signaled the mellifluous, fully layered sound she elicited from the orchestra, with careful attention to dynamics and inner lines, but nothing over-polite or smoothed over. New was particularly sympathetic to the wit and humor of Beethoven’s First and — abetted by the Benaroya Hall acoustic — emphasized a somewhat brighter sonority overall, with Alexander White’s trumpet part always clearly discernible. She aligned the double basses in a curious configuration on stage left, divided into two subsections stretching to the wall. I couldn’t quite notice a difference in the sound, but I assume it supported a particular balance she was looking for. New left a vivid impression of having something to say with this familiar rep, and I’m eager to hear more Beethoven from her.

James Ehnes and Gemma New with Seattle Symphony; photo (c) Ben VanHouten

The program also offered an account of the Samuel Barber Violin Concerto featuring Jame Ehnes, one of the piece’s most eloquent advocates today. Any chance to hear Ehnes is to be cherished, but this performance struck me as particularly special, with the violinist adding a darker perspective to the work than I’ve heard before. The unwavering technique and consistently beautiful phrasing were there, but Ehnes touched on a more tragic than consoling aspect to Barber’s long-limbed lyricism.

Oboist Ben Hausmann — who also deserves kudos for his significant role in the Beethoven symphony — set the tone for the Andante with a solo of heartrending sincerity, while Ehnes countered with a melody of his own that seemed to have been generated in the moment. The Andante also allowed him to display the full richness of his 1715 “Marsick” Stradivari’s lower range. The frenzied virtuosity of the brief, perpetual-motion finale takes a drastically different turn from the preceding movements but felt like a necessary counterpart to so much lyrical effusion. New gave the orchestra a good deal of leeway, which, aside from a few issues of balance, encouraged an especially engaging rapport with the soloist.

Ehnes offered a substantial encore with his account of Eugène Ysaÿe’s single-movement Sonata No. 3 in D minor for solo violin, matching passion with flawless technique for this music clearly close to his heart.

Review (c) 2024 Thomas May