New York Philharmonic: Renée Fleming, Ellen Reid, and Bruckner

MUSIC
THURSDAY – SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20 – 22, 2020
7:30 PM THURSDAY
8:00 PM FRIDAY & SATURDAY

David Geffen Hall
10 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side, Manhattan

$29-$99
https://nyphil.org/concerts-tickets/1920/renee-fleming-sings-bjork?clicklocation=hp_ue_2

This is a puzzler, as I can't detect any logic at all connecting the first and second parts of this concert, other than it's stuff I really am interested in hearing — and since I don't think anyone who does programming at the Phil knows me, it can't be that.  So before intermission, you get a new piece by Ellen Reid, whose award-winning opera p r i s m contained some of the best new music heard over the past few years — with vocals tonight by three of the most exciting singers on the local contemporary classical scene.  Then, you get another singer who has resided in New York, name of Renée Fleming, going all New Nordic on us with songs by Anders Hillborg and Björk.  Then, after the intermission . . . Bruckner!  Listen, I'm a Bruckner obsessive.  But what his work has to do with the first part of this program I couldn't begin to guess.  Also, I wish conductor Jaap had a temperament more attuned to this maniacal yet strangely static Viennese master, who stretches tonality to — but never beyond — the breaking point, and constructs seemingly granitic structures that, for all their evident solidity, turn out to exist only by virtue of the intensity of their creator's exultant belief.

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT:  Exceedingly pleasant pan-Mediterranean at Boulud Sud.