Sir Simon Rattle

Conductor extraordinaire Sir Simon Rattle opened this season at the Metropolitan Opera with a new production of Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde starring the phenomenal soprano Nina Stemme; he also led the marvelous Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in a thrilling performance of Gustav Mahler's dazzling Symphony No. 6 — this was his only appearance with an American orchestra this season. New York concertgoers must be thankful that Rattle returned to Carnegie Hall on the evenings of Wednesday and Thursday, November 10th and 11th for two excellent concerts leading the sterling Berlin Philharmonic.

The first program opened with the late Pierre Boulez's curious Éclat for chamber ensemble. The highlight of the evening, however, surely was a commanding account of Mahler's rarely performed, kaleidoscopic Symphony No. 7, which the composer said was his "best work". Rattle is a great champion of this underappreciated opus and conducted it from memory.

The following night's concert featured three remarkable touchstones of the Second Viennese School played without pause, which the conductor suggested could be conceived collectively as a symphony that Mahler might have gone on to write: Arnold Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra, Anton Webern's Six Pieces for Orchestra, and Alban Berg's Three Pieces for Orchestra. These challenging works are magnificent examples of coloristic scoring and it would be difficult to imagine a more satisfying performance of these pieces than this one.

The second half of the evening was devoted to the lyrical Symphony No. 2 of Johannes Brahms. If this was not the most impressive reading of this popular work that I have heard in the concert hall, it was nonetheless gratifying to hear this estimable conductor's interpretation presented with so fine an ensemble.

The Philadelphia Orchestra returned to Carnegie Hall nearly a week later on the evening of Tuesday, the 15th, this time led by its adorable and exhilarating music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, for a fabulous concert of early modernist works, opening with a scintillating account of Maurice Ravel's exquisite Le tombeau de Couperin.The young virtuoso, Benjamin Beilman then took the stage for a gripping performance of Sergei Prokofiev remarkable Violin Concerto No. 1, one of the few of his works that the composer's elder friend and rival, Igor Stravinsky, admired. An enthusiastic ovation elicited a riveting encore, the wonderful Finale from Eugène Ysaÿe's Sonata for Solo Violin in E Minor, Op. 27, No. 4.

The second half of the program was devoted to a mesmerizing realization of Ravel's sumptuous complete score for the ballet, Daphnis et Chloé—which Stravinsky praised as "one of the most beautiful products in all of French music"—featuring the superb Westminster Symphonic Choir led by Joe Miller. A few years ago Nézet-Séguin had conducted this opus to brilliant effect with the Juilliard Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall and it was delightful to hear this work again so soon after seeing American Ballet Theater mount Benjamin Millepied's staging of the ballet at the David Koch Theater at Lincoln Center this season, as well as attending the same piece played by the New York Philharmonic a few days previously, led by Vladimir Jurowski, at David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.