Santtu-Matias Rouvali conducts the NY Philharmonic. Photo by Chris Lee.

 

A strong season of orchestral music continued with three recent subscription concerts in February presented by the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall.

 

The first was the matinee on Friday, the 2nd, under the exemplary direction of Gianandrea Noseda who also admirably led the excellent National Symphony Orchestra in a superb program—reviewed here—including Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony at Stern Auditorium on Monday, February 12th, as part of Carnegie Hall’s current festival, “Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice.” The event began memorably with a very good performance of the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1786 concert aria,Ch’io mi scordi di te? ... Non temer, amato bene,sungby the wonderful soprano, Golda Schultz. The soloist Francesco Piemontesi, in his debut with the ensemble, then joined the musicians to elegantly play Mozart’s enchanting Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K.503, written the same year. According to James M. Keller, in his note on the program, “The composer Olivier Messiaen, in his essays on Mozart’s concertos, remarked [ . . . ] that ‘the first movement is without a doubt the most finely wrought, the most perfect of all the first movements of Mozart’s concertos.’”

 

The concert concluded marvelously with a superlative rendition of Gustav Mahler’s magnificent Symphony No. 4, featuring a fabulous Schultz in the closing movement, singling “Das himmlische Leben” from the famous anthology that inspired much of the composer’s early work, Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Conductor Bruno Walter had this to say about the piece:

 

Dream-like and unreal, indeed, is the atmosphere of the work — a mysterious smile and a strange humor cover the solemnity which so clearly had been manifested in the Third. In the fairy-tale of the Fourth everything is floating and unburdened which, in his former works, had been mighty and pathetic — the mellow voice of an angel confirms what, in the Second and Third, a prophet had foreseen and pronounced in loud accents. The blissful feeling of exaltation and freedom from the world communicates itself to the character of the music — but, in contrast to the Third, from afar, as it were. ... The first movement and the “Heavenly Life” are dominated by a droll humor which is in strange contrast to the beatific mood forming the keynote of the work. The scherzo is a sort of uncanny fairy-tale episode. Its demoniac violin solo and the graceful trio form an interesting counterpart to the other sections of the symphony without abandoning the character of lightness and mystery. Referring to the profound quiet and clear beauty of the andante [sic], Mahler said to me that they were caused by his vision of one of the church sepulchers showing the recumbent stone image of the deceased with the arms crossed in eternal sleep. The poem whose setting to music forms the last movement depicts in words the atmosphere out of which the music of the Fourth grew. The childlike joys which it portrays are symbolic of heavenly bliss, and only when, at the very end, music is proclaimed the sublimest of joys is the humorous character gently changed into one of exalted solemnity.

 

The second concert, on the night of Saturday, the 10th, was led with confidence by the Finnish conductor, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, beginning with an outstanding realization of Leonard Bernstein’s significant Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium) for Violin, String Orchestra, Harp, and Percussion, with the stellar Esther Yoo as soloist, also in her Philharmonic debut. (It is the basis of a powerful ballet by Alexei Ratmansky.) Especially beautiful are the fourth movement—an Adagio entitled “Agathon”—and the jazzy finale, “Socrates: Alcibiades.” The second half of the evening was even more impressive, a stunning version of Richard Strauss’s incredible An Alpine Symphony. About it, the composer recorded in his diary in 1911:

 

It is clear to me that the German nation will achieve new creative energy only by liberating itself from Christianity. ... I shall call my alpine symphony:Der Antichrist,since it represents: moral purification through one’s own strength, liberation through work, worship of eternal, magnificent nature.

 

Rouvali returned to rewardingly conduct the third concert—on the night of Saturday, the 17th—which opened with a laudable account of Louise Farrenc’s infrequently heard, classicizing, and remarkable Overture No, 2 in E-flat major, Op. 24, from 1834, and which after a slow, solemn introduction, becomes sprightly but with some suspenseful moments, finishing triumphantly. An extraordinary pianist, the winner of the 2021 International Chopin Piano Competition, Bruce Liu, who also was debuting with this orchestra—at Carnegie Hall last year on the evening of Friday, May 19th, I had the pleasure as well of attending (and reviewing here) his fine New York recital debut—entered the stage for a satisfying performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s celebrated Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. The twelfth variation was especially lovely as was the incomparable, Romantic eighteenth. Enthusiastic applause elicited two exquisite encores from the soloist: first, Frédéric Chopin’s famous Waltz No. 6, in D-flat major, Op. 61, No. 1 (“Minute” Waltz) and then Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Les Tendres Plaintes (Tender Complaints) from Suite No. 3 for Harpsichord, the latter of which he has recorded.

 

The program ended enjoyably with an accomplished reading of Antonín Dvořák’s estimable Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 7. The distinguished critic, Donald Francis Tovey, commented on it as follows:

 

I have no hesitation in setting Dvořák’s [Seventh] Symphony along with the C major Symphony of Schubert and the four symphonies of Brahms, as among the greatest and purest examples in this art-form since Beethoven. There should be no difficulty at this time of day in recognizing its greatness. It has none of the weaknesses of form which so often spoil Dvořák’s best work, except for a certain stiffness of movement in the finale, a stiffness which is not beyond concealing by means of such freedom of tempo as the composer would certainly approve. There were three obstacles to the appreciation of this symphony when it was published in 1885. First, it is powerfully tragic. Secondly, the orthodox critics and the average musician were, as always with new works, very anxious to prove that they were right and the composer was wrong, whenever the composer produced a long sentence which could not be easily phrased at sight. ... The third obstacle to the understanding of this symphony is intellectually trivial, but practically the most serious of all. The general effect of its climaxes is somewhat shrill. ... His scores are almost as full of difficult problems of balance as Beethoven’s. ... These great works of the middle of Dvořák’s career demand and repay the study one expects to give to the most difficult classical masterpieces; but the composer has acquired the reputation of being masterly only in a few popular works of a somewhat lower order. It is time that this injustice should be rectified.

 

The opening, Allegro maestosomovement begins dramatically—even portentously—with a seriousness sustained throughout, despite some exultant and pastoral passages; it closes quietly and soberly. The Poco adagio that succeeds this is largely graceful but with turbulent interludes and concludes softly. The third movement is dancelike and ebullient—with a more reflective middle section that partly has a bucolic character—finishing peacefully, and the last movement, anAllegro,begins moodily but somehow reaches an affirmative ending.