In a shifting live performance of Russian classics on Friday evening, conductor Manfred Honeck unified the musicians of the New York Philharmonic utilizing one thing we do not usually hear on the stage at David Geffen Corridor: a definite standpoint.
Visitor conductors arrive every week by a revolving door to carry out concert events with the Philharmonic after only a few rehearsals with the musicians. Ideally, an ensemble’s musical director – on this case, Jaap van Zweden – gives continuity, however with a repertoire that spans centuries in any season, and even in any program, the Philharmonic can generally appear faceless. Add the challenges of calibrating your sound to the acoustics of your new auditorium and also you’re left with some lackluster performances.
Enter Honeck, the music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. In a program that mixed Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony with Rachmaninoff’s beloved Second Piano Concerto, Honeck effortlessly coaxed the gamers’ vary and sweetness, breadth and refinement. The live performance had a shocking cohesion in its musical values.
A conductor recognized for its intense heat typically and your interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth particularly, Honeck introduced the consolation of certainty to works composed within the shadow of doubt. In his sketches, Tchaikovsky famous that his symphony incorporates “recriminations towards xxx,” which some interpret as struggles with rumors and anxiousness about his sexuality. The Second Piano Concerto was the primary piece Rachmaninoff wrote after the fiasco of his First Symphony; he devoted it to the physician who handled his author’s block with hypnotherapy.
For an orchestra that generally simply makes actions, this program was animated by expressive meticulousness. The Philharmonic’s strings shaded the melodies to make them actually sing, utilizing a wide range of dynamics in a single phrase. The wind devices transmitted phrases with agile coordination. The brass, which Honeck used menacingly within the Tchaikovsky, growled and shone, and the horns traced rainbow arcs throughout the stage within the Rachmaninoff.
Maybe Honeck’s coolest trick was his skill to evoke lightness and spaciousness on the identical time. The opening string melody within the Rachmaninoff had romantic grandeur and seductive translucency, overlaying however not drowning out the piano arpeggios with a clear tone. Tchaikovsky’s third motion waltz was virtually within the air, its elegantly asymmetrical melody producing an unlikely aerodynamic high quality regardless of its sumptuousness.
The live performance opened with the New York premiere of Katherine Balch’s “musica pyralis,” an evocation of an evening within the yard of the composer’s Connecticut residence. The piece was a research in shifting atmospheres, skinny, mysterious and fleeting, with the firefly glow of the piano, the ribbit-ribbit of the low brass and the hole rustle of the cellists tapping their fingers on the our bodies of their devices.
Honeck’s approach of rallying the orchestra towards an enormous thought generally simplified what’s within the rating. The falling sample of the wind devices in Tchaikovsky’s first motion – a element that provides texture and complexity – appeared as a barely audible ornament.
Likewise, Beatrice Rana’s elegant dealing with of solo piano within the Rachmaninoff didn’t at all times correspond to Honeck’s extremely romantic conception. Rana anchored the opening with darkish, robust figures, however all through the piece, she settled into a mild lightness and an nearly mischievous delicacy. Her swish, understated approach of finishing sentences was by no means lower than lovable, though working round triplets might be just a little prosaic.
The orchestra’s soloists, as at all times, had been gorgeous. Within the symphony’s sluggish second motion, Anthony McGill, the principal clarinet, carved arabesques with good definition, and Stefan Jon Bernhardsson’s horn solo was achingly dignified.
However Honeck might make a complete part sound soloistic in its unanimity. When the strings took on the well-known melody of resigned ache within the concerto’s Adagio sostenuto, their tone shone and their phrasing pulsed as they dedicated to a single, sincerely felt gesture.
