{"id":16069,"date":"2014-02-28T06:51:53","date_gmt":"2014-02-28T10:51:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=16069"},"modified":"2014-03-15T17:37:12","modified_gmt":"2014-03-15T21:37:12","slug":"vienna-phil-in-carnegie-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=16069","title":{"rendered":"Vienna Phil in Carnegie Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The Vienna Philharmonic is in town for Carnegie Hall\u2019s \u201cVienna: City of Dreams\u201d Festival. Undoubtedly, music critics ranging from the Times <\/i>to cub bloggers will swallow the orchestra\u2019s p.r. bandwagon of tradition and aver how its magnificent sonority has remained the same over the years. I first heard the Vienna Philharmonic on April 3, 1976, at Carnegie Hall. The late Claudio Abbado led Bruckner\u2019s Seventh Symphony, and I thought I\u2019d died and gone to heaven (as opposed to the second level of hell that Gennady Rozhdestvensky and the Leningrad Phil had taken me three years before in Tchaikovsky\u2019s Francesca da Rimini<\/i>, discussed in last week\u2019s blog). The Viennese string players attacked their instruments with a vengeance, but without the scrunching that the New York Phil had accustomed me to, and the brass players\u2019 faces flushed brightly as sheer warmth and resplendent sound enveloped the audience.<\/span><\/p>\n

That Abbado performance came to mind as the VPO cellos entered quietly in the second bar of Bruckner\u2019s Sixth Symphony on Wednesday, the 26th. The illusion, under conductor Franz Welser-M\u00f6st, didn\u2019t last. The fortissimo tutti, when it burst out, was shrill. The Vienna Philharmonic, shrill? Yes, believe it or not, from parquet T1, anyway. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Sixth doesn\u2019t deserve to be Bruckner\u2019s least performed mature symphony. The first movement strides forward with majestic confidence. The British Bruckner-Mahler scholar Deryck Cooke thought the Adagio the composer\u2019s finest; its eloquent solemnity might have profited from a broader tempo. The Scherzo is uniquely weird\u2014nightmarish, even\u2014among Bruckner scherzos, with the plink-plonk pizzicati of the Trio bringing to mind Franz Waxman\u2019s scoring of the scene in The Bride of Frankenstein <\/i>(1935) where mad Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) toasts a human skull in a crypt. The finale drives ahead with unclouded jollity, the only instance of such abandon in his mature symphonies.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Sixth is not one of the Austrian composer\u2019s complicated symphonies, and Welser-M\u00f6st\u2019s straightforward musicianship is not the place to find Brucknerian mystery or magic. His well-chosen tempos, care over the characteristic Bruckner pauses, and refusal to litter the score with unnecessary unmarked ritards\u00a0would make\u00a0for a good introduction to the piece. But not the VPO’s\u00a0infelicitous strings and crass brass.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first half of the Vienna Philharmonic\u2019s Wednesday night concert at Carnegie Hall was the essence of elegance and tonal beauty. Mozart\u2019s Symphony No. 28 zipped along with grace and transparency. Authentic practitioners would find the number of players rather largish, but I would gladly hear all of Mozart\u2019s 41 with these artists.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bravo to Welser-M\u00f6st for inserting a contemporary work between Mozart and Bruckner. Austrian composer Johannes Maria Staud\u2019s On Comparative Meteorology <\/i>(2008-2009; rev. 2010), dedicated to the conductor, was fabulously played. Beginning with echoes of Berg and continuing with Var\u00e8se, \u201ca large orchestra is disassembled and re-combined into a continually evolving kaleidoscope of changing instrumental colors, ranging from ethereal delicacy to violent intensity,\u201d writes annotator Janet E. Bedell. Given a performance of this caliber, I wouldn\u2019t mind hearing it again. Whatever happened to the stodgy, old Vienna Philharmonic?<\/span><\/p>\n

Looking Forward<\/strong><\/p>\n

My week\u2019s scheduled concerts (8:00 p.m. unless otherwise noted):<\/p>\n

2\/28 Carnegie Hall. Berg: Wozzeck<\/i>, Op. 7 (concert performance). Vienna State Opera, Vienna Philharmonic\/Franz Welser-M\u00f6st, cond. Matthias Goerne (Wozzeck), Evelyn Herilitzius (Marie), Herbert Lippert (Drum Major), Norbert Ernst (Andres), Wolfgang Bankl (Doctor), Herwig Pecoraro (Captain).<\/p>\n

3\/1 Carnegie Hall. R. Strauss: Salome<\/i>, Op. 54 (concert performance). Vienna State Opera, Vienna Philharmonic\/Andris Nelsons, cond. Gun-Brit Barkmin (Salome), Falk Struckmann (Jochanaan), Gerhard A. Siegel (Herodes), Jane Henschel (Herodias), Carlos Osuna (Narraboth).<\/p>\n