Stern Honors Students Attend New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center
Mar 22, 2023 By: yunews
Students at the Philharmonic
On Feb. 16, students from the S. Daniel Abraham Honors Program at Stern College for Women attended the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center, which was recently renovated and re-opened. Leading the orchestra was the dynamic conductor, Ruth Reinhardt.
The concert started with a moving tribute to the victims of the recent earthquake in Turkey and Syria, with a performance of Bach鈥檚 Air on the G String. After a moment of silence, the audience applauded enthusiastically.
The next performance was Gra偶yna Bacewicz鈥檚 Overture for Orchestra. Bacewicz, one of the first female Polish composers, crafted the piece during World War ll. The students took note that the exciting energy of her short piece was a stark contrast to the darkness of that era.
The orchestra then played Thomas Ad茅s鈥 piano concerto, In Seven Days, a musical interpretation of Creation, as told in Genesis. Accompanying the performance was a video created by Ad茅s鈥 wife, Tal Rosner, to help viewers visualize what the music was conveying. While the video started with images of waves from the ocean depicting the beginning of Creation, the remaining part mostly contained abstract shapes. As the tone of the music changed, the color and shapes changed as well. Following multiple rounds of applause, pianist Kiril Gerstein rejoined the orchestra to play an additional piece by Ad茅s, from his opera, The Exterminating Angel, as an encore. Then, the evening concluded with the orchestra playing Dvorak鈥檚 infrequently performed 5th Symphony, which Ruth Reinhardt has described as a 鈥渉idden gem.鈥
鈥淚 chose this performance because it featured the works of woman artists and marked Ruth Reinhardt鈥檚 Philharmonic debut as conductor,鈥 explained Dr. Cynthia Wachtell, director of the Honors Program. 鈥淎lso, the collaborative work by Ad茅s and Rosner, In Seven Days, offers an astounding, sensory evocation of Genesis and was especially well received by the students.鈥
Thank you to Vered Gottlieb 鈥26S for her contribution to the writing of this article.
Students at the Philharmonic
