Met Orchestra, Feb 4 2026

I heard the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Feb 4, 2026, conducted by their music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin. It was an all-American program, part of a Carnegie Hall festival, United In Sound: America at 250.

I'm surprised to say that the first piece was the highlight of the program. I had no expectations of the William Dawson Negro Folk Symphony, I was only aware of his choral arrangements. I'd sung or heard his spectacular arrangement of "Ezekiel Saw the Wheel" about a hundred times. That piece is a charming little trifle compared to the Negro Folk Symphony.

It's music of richness and vitality, sure of its intention and how to put it across. There's a sense of seriousness but not a lot of subtlety. The second movement was more gratifying, it had more changes in texture and more elaborate counterpoint. One high point had solos for violin, cello, and winds, also lots of standout moments for harp (love that) and chimes (clang clang clang). The second movement ended with three long phrases, each a crescendo and decrescendo, each lasting longer than the one before, all on the same chord with the drums walking along not seeming to notice. It was unsettling and unlike anything I'd heard before.

The third movement didn't feel as inspired as the other two. The audience was enthusiastic. Nézet-Séguin came back for a second bow and walked all the way to the back of the orchestra to give solo bows to musicians playing trumpet, trombone, especially the French horn, the winds, the harp, etc. It was very touching, I'd never seen a conductor walk around the orchestra like that.

Here's a performance by The Orchestra Now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRZ6etvdsUc

My reason for buying a ticket for this concert was the Samuel Barber Knoxville, Summer of 1915, a piece for soprano and orchestra. I've loved this piece for 35 years, it's exceptionally beautiful and meaningful.

The soloist was Isabel Leonard, a singer I've heard many times and like a lot. She was the problem with this performance and in order to explain I need to go into the concepts of Fach and Zwischenfach. Fach (rhymes with Bach, with the phlegmy sound at the end) is a German system of classifying singers. The true Fach system splits hairs in a delicious way but I'm going to speak about really broad voice types - - soprano (the highest for women) and mezzo-soprano (a slightly lower voice). The difference in these voice types is not so much the range as the tessitura, where the voice sits. I heard it described as the difference between two roles in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas: Dido is a mezzo and her handmaiden Belinda is a soprano. Both roles have the same range, from middle C to high A, but Dido's music lies in the lower two thirds of that range and Belinda's in the upper two thirds.

Leonard is a mezzo. She branches into a bit of soprano rep now and then, like Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni. This makes her what we can call a Zwischenfach, a voice that lies between two Fachs. You could think of Zwischenfach as a classification of roles as much as a classification of voices - - Isabel sings classic Zwischen roles of the Composer in Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, Mélisande in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, and Blanche in Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites. I've heard her at the Met in all three of these roles and she was extraordinary. All three roles have been sung by sopranos and mezzos throughout the history of the Met. You need a soprano with a good low voice or a mezzo with a good high voice.

The problem is that while Leonard is a Zwischen, Knoxville is not a Zwischen piece, it's written for a soprano. Yes, it spends a lot of time in the middle of the voice but it has quite a few exposed moments in the high voice. A few of these are not just high but high and quiet - - Leonard needed to swoop to get up to them. These notes should be plucked effortlessly out of the air, you shouldn't need a springboard to get up there. She was also often a little flat in the top of her voice, about five cents short of the pitch.

I have the feeling that Leonard decided she was going to to this piece and then was determined to make it work. She was going to use a shoe horn and some Wesson oil and she was going to get her foot into that size five shoe. I'll use another sartorial analogy: let's say I bought a bottle green suit. I suspected that it was a stretch but I thought I'd expand my brand and mix it up a little. It's not that it necessarily looked bad on me, it just didn't really look right. I would be better served in a dark grey suit. The bottle green suit would look fantastic on someone else, but not so much on me.

She was seriously redeemed in the last minutes of the piece. The phrase, "Sleep, soft-smiling, draws me unto her" and the final phrase, "but will not ever tell me who I am," are high and quiet and Leonard nailed them, she sounded lovely.

Here's a recent performance of the piece by soprano Golda Schultz:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZqQNFOv0Ag

The second half was all Leonard Bernstein. Leonard sang "Somewhere" from West Side Story. Again she was a little under the pitch in a few notes and seemed a little short of breath in a few long phrases. Should I be concerned about her or was this just an off night?

The concert ended with Bernstein's ballet score for Fancy Free. I hadn't heard it before and didn't really care for it. It was unfocussed at times, going from show biz pizzazz to thorny modernity. The modern moments had an aura of, "Look at me being modern" which is coy and annoys me. The orchestra played it very well, especially the pianist and the trumpet player. The orchestra played gloriously all night long. It's clear that they have a great romance going on with Nézet-Séguin.