Press preview NJSO’s ‘eagerly anticipated’ Winter Festival

Media outlets previewed this weekend’s concerts, which open the NJSO’s 2014 “Man & Nature” Winter Festival, Earth.

Time Out New York writes:

An eagerly anticipated annual event, the NJSO’s Winter Festival finds the orchestra tackling yet another elemental theme this year: Jacques Lacombe and his players celebrate the earth with Tan Dun’s Earth Concerto (featuring percussionist David Cossin) and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde.

Watch a Star-Ledger video following the process of bringing Tan Dun’s Earth Concerto to life—from the percussionists’ trip to a garden store for the flower pots that would become instruments to a full orchestra rehearsal at NJPAC in Newark. Read the Star-Ledger feature on the instrument shopping trip and view a photo gallery.

U.S. 1 interviewed Music Director Jacques Lacombe for a preview of this season’s Winter Festival:

Pairing Tan’s Earth Concerto with Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde” makes for an achievement of tight programming for the “Earth” theme of the January festival. The appropriateness of the combination gradually registered with Lacombe. “I was researching for the 2014 festival,” he says. “We had already decided on ‘Das Lied’ because of our special focus this year on compositions by conductors. When the score arrived, I read that ‘Das Lied’ had inspired Tan Dun’s Earth Concerto. I was happy to find that Tan Dun’s Earth Concerto was written for stone and clay instruments. It is also a good fit because the four-year cycle began with Tan’s Water Concerto in 2011. Furthermore, composer Tan Dun is a conductor,” Lacombe says.

The Asbury Park Press writes:

That link of man and music to both the deep recesses and the superficial flower of nature has been at the root of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra’s Winter Festival for the last four years. In a cycle themed as “Man and Nature,” the group’s programs have found environmental awareness in the historic repertoire and in pieces of recent vintage

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[In Das Lied von der Erde, Mahler’s] exquisite textures are made more beautiful by touches of Eastern influence, to highlight the poetry. It is simply some of his best music ever. Possibly some of the best music ever.

While Mahler’s work represents a tentative, early bridge between East and West, the other work on the program, written 100 years later, makes that connection more boldly. Written by living Chinese composer Tan Dun, whose most famous works include the soundtrack for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,’’ the NJSO will be giving the U.S. premiere of the 2009 “Earth Concerto,” scored for “stone and ceramic percussion with orchestra.”

The Times of Trenton writes:

The NJSO commences its 2014 “Man and Nature” winter festival [with] Gustav Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde” (“The Song of the Earth”) and a new work by Chinese composer Tan Dun, titled “Earth Concerto.”

[The Earth Concerto] was written to celebrate the 100th anniversary of “Das Lied,” which was first performed in 1911. An example of Tan’s “organic music,” “Earth Concerto” will feature percussionist David Cossin on an assortment of clay and stone instruments. He will be joined by Zhang Meng, a performer on Chinese wind instruments. Tonight’s performance will be the work’s U.S. premiere.

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The second series will center on music with mountainous themes. Next week, the NJSO will scale Richard Strauss’ “An Alpine Symphony,” Vincent d’Indy’s “Symphony on a French Mountain Air” (with Pascal Rogé, the pianist) and the Venusberg music from Richard Wagner’s “Tannhäuser.”