{"id":15332,"date":"2014-01-09T13:12:06","date_gmt":"2014-01-09T17:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=15332"},"modified":"2014-03-15T17:41:40","modified_gmt":"2014-03-15T21:41:40","slug":"philly-sans-yannick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=15332","title":{"rendered":"Philly sans Yannick"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Sedgwick Clark<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

The Philadelphia Orchestra had the reputation in the Ormandy days of a well-oiled machine that played in a predictably beautiful, glossy manner no matter the maestro. Ormandy\u2019s successor, Riccardo Muti, sought to change the corporate Philadelphia Sound into a \u201ccomposer\u2019s sound\u201d (and now he\u2019s saying that again about his current American orchestra, Chicago). To my ears, the result was a recognizable Muti Sound, evident in his conducting of the New York and Vienna philharmonics, as well: emphasis of high frequencies, reduction of lows, de-emphasis of strings, rather grainy textures, and, above all, strait-jacketed rhythmic control. Muti\u2019s successor, and an Ormandy admirer, Wolfgang Sawallisch, gloriously restored the old Philadelphia Sound. His successor, Christoph Eschenbach, retained his own haphazard, Germanic sound, and Charles Dutoit gave the orchestra a glistening Franco-Russian accent.<\/span><\/p>\n

The orchestra\u2019s new music director, Yannick N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin, has by all reports captured the Philly audiences\u2019 hearts, and I\u2019ve blogged approvingly twice about his Philly concerts at Carnegie Hall (10\/25\/2012 and 2\/28\/2013). He’s an exciting guy, and I was looking forward to hearing what he would do with a pair of Philadelphia specialties at Carnegie Hall on December 6. But a sinus-related illness prevented him from travelling. In his stead, the orchestra snagged Michael Tilson Thomas, who\u00a0elicited unfailingly excellent playing. H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Grimaud was scheduled for Brahms\u2019s Piano Concerto No. 2 with YN-S but switched to No. 1 with MTT. She turned in a strong, relatively straightforward interpretation\u2014far preferable to her exceedingly lethargic recording with Kurt Sanderling for Teldec several years ago. Thomas\u2019s accompaniment, like much of his work these days (see my blog, \u201cWhatever Happened to MTT<\/a>,\u201d 11\/15\/13), was overly refined for such a stern piece, especially in the turbulent opening movement. His tempos for Berlioz\u2019s Symphonie fantastique <\/i>were well chosen and the playing beautiful, but the music\u2019s delirium <\/i>was\u00a0kept on too short a leash for my taste\u00a0(and where were those deliberately vulgar blats of the lower brass in the Marche to the Scaffold?). Inclusion of the first- and fourth-movement repeats was welcome, but I missed the cornet in the second movement\u2014\u201capparently added to [the manuscript] at some point after the completion of the symphony,\u201d writes Edward T. Cone, editor of the Norton Critical Score\u2014which adds such color and vivacity to Colin Davis\u2019s recordings.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ligeti in the Lake<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Last week I tuned into the middle of a 1946 noir <\/i>film called Lady in the Lake <\/i>on TCM. Robert Montgomery stars as the detective Philip Marlowe and also directed. Interestingly, the music score is a cappella choral vocalise, composed by Maurice Goldman, who, according to IMDb.com, is credited only as \u201cChoral Director.\u201d At about 68 minutes into the film, Marlowe leaves the murdered Florence Elmore\u2019s parents\u2019 home, gets into his car, and starts driving. The background music wells up, and darned if it doesn\u2019t sound strikingly similar to the Kyrie from Ligeti\u2019s Requiem (1963-65), which Stanley Kubrick used in 2001 <\/i>to underscore the appearance of the monolith. <\/span><\/p>\n

One of my consultant film experts says that Lady in the Lake <\/i>was popular internationally. I wonder if Ligeti\u2019s yen for the macabre extended to Hollywood noir<\/i>?<\/span><\/p>\n