Re "No More Silent Summers," by Anthony Tommasini (Critic's Notebook, June 29): The New York Philharmonic is a great public trust — sometimes even a grave responsibility, as in the orchestra's response to Sept. 11 a decade ago — one I take seriously, and one of the biggest joys of my life.
But the biggest cheers rang out for the conductor Edward Gardner and the orchestra, a response that matched mine.
His "Elegy" for string orchestra, a musical response to those events will get its local premiere on Sept. 12, conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya.
Jan Vogler has a theory: Tchaikovsky wrote his Variations on a Rococo Theme for cello and orchestra in direct response to St Petersburg's magnificent 18th-century architecture, its gilded glories reflected in the playful phrasing and pretty ornaments of the soloist's line.
This orchestra of the response to sepsis leads to perilous reduction of renal function.
Over the years, I have found that Koreans tend to cry very easily but at that moment I sensed my own orchestra's emotional response.
But the big novelty of the weekend comes next Saturday night in the London Philharmonic's concert, when Pierre-Laurent Aimard is the soloist in the UK premiere of Birtwistle's latest work for piano and orchestra, named, intriguingly, Responses: Sweet Disorder And The Carefully Careless (Royal Festival Hall, SE1, 6 Dec).
In enlightened response, the orchestra's board and management determined to turn things around.
Miklós Sebestyén's Banquo and Bruce Sledge's Macduff also make their mark, with the chorus and orchestra unstinting in their response to Andriy Yurkevych's fiery conducting.
The orchestra would reconvene in response to the foreign policies of Ronald Reagan in 1982, George Bush Sr in 1989, and, in 2004, in the wake of what Haden regarded as George W Bush's theft of the election.
