{"id":9677,"date":"2013-02-13T20:04:08","date_gmt":"2013-02-14T00:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=9677"},"modified":"2013-03-04T20:59:42","modified_gmt":"2013-03-05T00:59:42","slug":"the-philharmonic-spans-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=9677","title":{"rendered":"The Philharmonic Spans the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Sedgwick Clark<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Warm European Touch<\/strong><\/p>\n

Andris Nelsons is one of the hottest young conductors around. Hailing from Riga, Latvia, he has been music director of the Birmingham Symphony since 2008 and made a splash in March 2011 at Carnegie Hall, substituting on a day\u2019s notice for James Levine in a Boston Symphony performance of Mahler\u2019s Ninth Symphony. He has conducted Turandot <\/em>and Queen of Spades <\/em>at the Met in recent years, but he only made his New York Philharmonic debut last season. The orchestra wasted no time in re-engaging him, and last week he led a comfortable program of works by Dvor\u00e1k, Brahms, and Bart\u00f3k. There wasn\u2019t a harsh sound to be heard from an orchestra renowned for its assertive style in the not always felicitous acoustic of Avery Fisher Hall. The results, to my ears, were soothing but understated.<\/p>\n

Dvor\u00e1k\u2019s symphonic poem The Noon Witch<\/em> tells of a mother\u2019s backfiring attempts to calm her child\u2019s noontime tantrums by invoking the reprisal of an evil spirit. The work\u2019s tedious structure is a drawback, but unleashing the New Yorkers\u2019 inherent sense of drama might have driven the narrative ahead to greater effect.<\/p>\n

Brahms\u2019s Violin Concerto seemed a mismatch, with Nelsons leading a warm, idiomatic accompaniment to Christian Tetzlaff\u2019s astringent solo. This superb violinist\u2019s sound has troubled me in recent years. Never exactly a cuddly player, his beauty of tone seemed to recede at the same time he traded in his horn rims for contacts. His unappealing, tight-lipped publicity photo in the program all but shouts, \u201cI\u2019d rather be playing Lutoslawski.\u201d Certainly not Brahms.<\/p>\n

Bart\u00f3k\u2019s Concerto for Orchestra is meat and potatoes for a virtuoso band like the Philharmonic, and they played magnificently. Still, while savoring the score\u2019s pungent beauty, I wished for more emphasis of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s pointed Hungarian rhythms and accents \u2013 especially the sharp punctuation of timpani throughout.<\/p>\n

The Year of the Snake<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Philharmonic\u2019s \u201cnew tradition of celebrating the Chinese New Year,\u201d inaugurated on Tuesday (2\/12), was a pleasure from first note to last. Conducted by Long Yu, China\u2019s apparent general music director, the orchestra was in flawless fettle, with the strings displaying some of the loveliest legato I\u2019ve heard from them in some time and ideally blended brass.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll leave in-depth comments to those more informed, except to say that Li Huanzhi\u2019s Spring Festival Overture <\/em>(1955-56) was played to the hilt, with the New Yorkers making the most of the work\u2019s indebtedness to Glinka\u2019s Russlan and Ludmilla Overture<\/em>. Chen Qigang\u2019s quietly expressive Er Huang <\/em>for Piano and Orchestra (2009) was played with self-effacing affection by Herbie Hancock. Selections from the Beijing opera The Drunken Concubine<\/em>, sung by the spectacularly costumed Yan Wang, received perhaps the most warmly committed playing from the Philharmonic. The effervescent Snow Lotus Trio sang three songs to conclude a delightful concert.<\/p>\n