The New York Times - 06.08.2019

THE NEW YORK TIMES, TUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 2019 N C5

LOUIS LANGRÉE,the music director of the
Mostly Mozart Festival — now through
2023, Lincoln Center recently announced —
has, during his nearly two-decade tenure,
revitalized the festival’s orchestra impres-
sively.
Bringing in top-notch guest conductors
has been central to his vision, and this year
has been no exception. The eminent An-
drew Manze led the festival’s first orchestra
concert last month, and on Saturday, the
formidable Gianandrea Noseda was at the
podium at David Geffen Hall, leading distin-
guished performances of Beethoven’s
Fourth Piano Concerto and Schubert’s
“Great” Symphony.
Mr. Noseda, fresh off his triumphant sec-
ond season as music director of the National
Symphony Orchestra, may be best known
to New Yorkers for his regular perform-
ances with the Metropolitan Opera. Pierre-
Laurent Aimard, the soloist in the Beetho-
ven, first came to attention for his fearless
advocacy of challenging contemporary mu-
sic. (Three weeks ago at the Caramoor Fes-
tival, he played a brilliant and scintillating
account of Messiaen’s “Catalog of Birds.”)
But Mr. Aimard has a wide repertory and
was a penetrating soloist in the Beethoven
concerto. Though the first movement is
generally majestic, the music is propelled
by stretches of fleet, restless runs. Mr.
Aimard conveyed both the Apollonian
breadth and the rippling animation of the
movement in his crisp, radiant playing.
The solemn slow movement in this per-
formance was like a poignant dialogue be-
tween stern strings and a pleading piano.
The dancing finale had buoyancy and glee,
though Mr. Aimard and Mr. Noseda made
the most of the moments when the music
turns mystical.
The “Great” nickname has stuck to Schu-
bert’s Ninth (and last) Symphony. But Mr.
Noseda led such a lean, clear-textured and
impetuously spirited account that the sym-
phony seemed more like Schubert’s most
adventurous piece.
Even the slow movement, which unfolded
with elegance and grace, had a touch of
mystery, as Mr. Noseda drew out inner
voices and emphasized the sudden shifts of
mood.
That the playing of the orchestra was so
strong and articulate on this night can be
credited, in part, to Mr. Langrée’s nurtur-
ing.
And the orchestra was again excellent
last Wednesday, in a program he led that be-
gan with the overture to Mozart’s “Don Gio-
vanni,” followed by a gripping account of
that composer’s dark, elusive Piano Con-
certo No. 20 in D minor, with the thoughtful
German pianist Martin Helmchen. (In a Lit-
tle Night Music concert later, he played an
arresting recital of solo works by Bach,
Liszt and Franck.) The second half of the
program featured a surging, glowing ac-
count of Brahms’s Third Symphony.
Before the concert, Mr. Langrée had spo-
ken to the audience about the program. He’s
a charming talker and should do this more
often, though he oversold his main point by
inviting everyone on a great “journey,” from
an 18th-century Classical piece to a 19th-
century Romantic one. This standard-rep-
ertory juxtaposition seemed hardly an “ad-
venture,” as Mr. Langrée had described it.
He was on firmer ground pointing out
that several festival programs that week
were linked by a thread to Clara Schumann.
(This year is the bicentennial of her birth.)
Most pianists play Mozart D minor con-
certo with the cadenzas that Beethoven lat-
er composed for the first and third move-
ments; Mr. Helmchen played cadenzas by
Schumann, improvisatory-sounding music
that shifted from stormy outbursts and im-
petuous harmonic wanderings to moments
of tenderness.
During a preconcert program, the refined

pianist Ko-Eun Yi played Schumann’s

lovely, lapping Nocturne in F, along with

works by her husband, Robert Schumann,

and Brahms, her lifelong friend.

And in a wonderful Little Night Music

program, the superb soprano Susanna

Phillips the pianist Myra Huang offered a

“soiree,” as they put it, performing ravish-

ing songs by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel,

Alma Mahler and, yes, Clara Schumann.

These pieces are heard only rarely, which

is shameful. I was especially excited by

Schumann’s “Lorelei,” a turbulent setting of

a Heine poem with a fiercely difficult piano

part — clearly written by this composer to

highlight her pianistic virtuosity, for which

she was internationally renowned in her

day. Ms. Huang dispatched it with seeming

ease.

Mr. Langrée hasn’t enlivened Mostly Mo-

zart with only guest conductors; he has also

brought in major orchestras. On Sunday af-

ternoon, Ivan Fischer led the justly ac-

claimed Budapest Festival Orchestra in vi-

brant, insightful accounts of Haydn’s Sym-

phony No. 88; three Handel arias (with the

dazzling Trinidadian coloratura soprano

Jeanine De Bique, in her festival debut);

and Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony.

Mr. Langrée was in the audience for Mr.

Noseda’s and Mr. Fischer’s concerts — an

encouraging, and telling, gesture of public

support.

ANTHONY TOMMASINI CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK

Guest Artists Enliven the Mostly Mozart Festival

A music director revitalizes

the orchestra, as well as

the event’s programming.

Above, Gianandrea Noseda

leads the Mostly Mozart

Festival Orchestra in a program

of Beethoven and Brahms at

David Geffen Hall. Left,

Jeanine De Bique made her

festival debut with Ivan Fischer

and the Budapest Festival

Orchestra.

JEENAH MOON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

KEVIN YATAROLA, VIA LINCOLN CENTER

THE KITCHEN OF THE HOUSEwhere Rachel
grew up is one of those luxuriously capa-
cious rooms that look so alluring in the
pages of glossy magazines. Airy and taste-
ful, with lots of white and lots of light, it has
plenty of counter space for preparing meals
and an abundance of spots to sit, eat, talk.

A kitchen like this can put food at the cen-
ter of affluent family life, and in Domenica
Feraud’s potent, layered new drama “Rinse,
Repeat,” that’s absolutely where it is for Ra-
chel and her mother, Joan — just not in any
remotely healthy, happy way.
Directed by Kate Hopkins at the Pershing
Square Signature Center, the play opens
with Rachel (Ms. Feraud) arriving home to
Greenwich, Conn., for the first time in four
months. She’s an undergraduate at Yale
with a 4.0 G.P.A., but she hasn’t been away
in New Haven. She’s been an inpatient at a
treatment center, clawing her way back to-
ward health from the anorexia that almost
killed her.

Her parents, alas, were too consumed

with work to pick her up for a trial weekend

to see if she’s ready to be released. So she’s

taken an Uber — the first of many signs that

Joan (Florencia Lozano) and Peter (Mi-

chael Hayden), for all their love of their

daughter, have failed to grasp the fragility

of her recovery.

They surely also have no idea, and maybe

Rachel doesn’t fully understand either, how

toxic the dynamics around food are in their

family. Joan, a lawyer with a thriving prac-

tice who has always aimed to mold Rachel

in her image, seems to survive mainly on

coffee — an attempt to starve her Latina

body into a no-hipped white ideal.

Peter, the sandy-haired trust-fund son of

a weight-obsessed mother, dutifully loads

butter and cream into the food he cooks to

boost Rachel’s calorie count, yet seems un-

perturbed that his wife barely eats. Ex-

treme thinness is a female beauty norm that

Rachel learned best at home.

That’s where she was schooled in perfec-

tionism, too, and at 21 the thing she fears

most — more than food, even — is disap-

pointing her mother, who has a bulldozer

ambition on Rachel’s behalf. But what Ra-

chel wants is not the law-school future that

Joan keeps pushing. Rachel yearns to be a

poet.

“You could write in some park in like

Paris,” her teenage brother, Brody (Jake

Ryan Lozano), says mildly. Angry though

he is at his sister for having nearly killed

herself, he is the only one — aside from her

calm, firm therapist, Brenda (Portia) —

paying attention to Rachel’s own desires.

The passages of Rachel’s poetry that we

hear aren’t as powerful, emotionally or ar-

tistically, as they need to be, and Brittany

Vasta’s set is ingenious yet frustrating; we

don’t always get a clear view of what Rachel

and Joan are doing, or not doing, with their

food. But in a play that’s smart, compassion-

ate and angry, the cast is excellent, the char-

acters fully dimensional.

As the title suggests, “Rinse, Repeat” is

about a cycle — a tradition of harm handed

down from one generation of women to the

next, nurtured by the men in their lives. Ra-

chel is trying to break free.

LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES THEATER REVIEW

The Women Are Too Thin. But Not This Drama’s Plot.

Too-driven parents fail to

understand the fragility of a

daughter who has anorexia.

Florencia Lozano, far left,

portrays a powerhouse lawyer

and Domenica Feraud her

deeply troubled daughter in

“Rinse, Repeat.”

JENNY ANDERSON

Rinse, Repeat

Through Aug. 17 at the Pershing Square

Signature Center, Manhattan;

212-279-4200, rinserepeatplay.com.

Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes.

Mom wants a lawyer.

She wants to be a poet.

Mom doesn’t care.