Tuesday, October 7, 2025
Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall, New York City
Starting fifteen minutes late, audience members standing around, mobile phones remaining central to their users’ wellbeing, first up a “selection” (!) from the West Side ‘Dances’, just seven minutes!!! See below for something much better as a performance, anyway, and complete. The NYO-USA All-Stars is, we are told, “an extraordinary Carnegie Hall alumni orchestra of young professionals”, mostly true (except for a moment in ‘Mambo’) and collectively, doing well with Yuja Wang directing (sort of) Tchaikovsky except when playing the piano, which she did with virtuosity and commendable musicianship if somewhat anonymously. No encore(s) from her, surprisingly. I like to think that Daniel Harding was now in his dressing room on his knees seeking forgiveness for the ruined opener, and with a crass ‘concert ending’, too, nowhere found in the brilliant, composer-supervised Ramin & Kostal compilation, which ends desolately, as befits the tragic Romeo and Juliet story transferred to another time and place: an insult to the arrangers and to Bernstein. (No interval.) Harding was more attuned to the Firebird music (the 1919 Suite), tempos well-judged, played with sensitivity, bravura and personality, the closing section majestic, with a very together final chord. A standing ovation followed (Wang got one, too) except by those rushing out.