Star-Ledger praises Earth Concerto performance

The NJSO garnered praise for the US premiere of Tan Dun’s Earth Concerto, performed this weekend in Princeton, Newark and Morristown.

The Star-Ledger writes:

The phrase "song of the earth" provides fertile ground for a fascinating and diverse array of sounds — just ask the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra ...

[Tan Dun’s "Earth Concerto" and Mahler’s "Das Lied von der Erde"] share common foundations, but offer vastly different approaches, and the NJSO and music director Jacques Lacombe met them gamely and with distinction.

...

Tan Dun’s piece took on a primitive quality, as though these were the first sounds heard on Earth, made by early inhabitants or the land itself. Its first movement, "Of Youth," seemed to be the very first, basic utterings of a planet in infancy.

Percussionists David Cossin, James Neglia and James Musto gave virtuoso turns on flowerpots, udu drums and more, drawing gentle patterns, dramatic pulsations, insistent rolls and rapid-fire runs.

"The Drinking Song of Earth’s Misery," a title taken directly from the Mahler, took a more lyrical approach with an otherworldly and enchanting tone from Zhang Meng, playing a ceramic horn Tan Dun had made that sounded somewhere between hum-like and breathy, almost human ...

Throughout the work, short blips, chirps and splatters of orchestral color — elephantine bursts of brass, plucks of strings, mallet against flowerpots like knuckles cracking — grew into a complex and intricate sound world.

...

Lacombe exactingly commanded the uncommon forces at hand, with an interpretation that was full of life and color. The orchestra was in top form.

Read the full review at nj.com.

Star-Ledger video followed 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 a Star-Ledger feature on the instrument shopping trip and view a photo gallery.