The New York Times
By James B. Oestreich
By staid current standards, this week’s subscription program of the New York Philharmonic should perhaps be seen as a mild adventure. It includes a suite from Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh,” of 1904, which the orchestra programmed only once before, in 1994; and Rachmaninoff’s Third Symphony, of 1935-38, which the Philharmonic last performed in 2003.
As an added attraction, Frank Huang, the orchestra’s popular concertmaster, is playing a major violin concerto, Saint-Saëns’s Third. Still, most listeners at the first performance, on Wednesday evening, probably focused more on the Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda, returning to the orchestra after more than a decade away.
The Philharmonic is in a period of multiple transitions, with Jaap van Zweden, still relatively little known, in the wings to succeed Alan Gilbert as music director next season; with the vaunted Deborah Borda having just returned to manage it, this time as president and chief executive officer; and with the daunting prospect of yet another renovation of its hall in the coming years.
And Mr. Noseda — at 53, a maestro of considerable achievement who seems for whatever reason not to have been seriously considered to direct the Philharmonic — is himself in transition, newly installed as the music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, in what must be considered a major coup for that perennially second-tier ensemble.
Mr. Noseda, evidently still recovering from back surgery in June and using a high stool part of the time, lacked nothing in vigor and elicited ready responses from the orchestra throughout in what seemed something of a lovefest. The players joined the audience acclaim at the end and gave Mr. Noseda a solo bow, ignoring his indication for them to stand and share a curtain call.