- New York Philharmonic
- NYT Critic's Pick
Returning to the podium of the New York Philharmonic last week for the first time in 11 years, Gustavo Dudamel brought a jolt of bristling vitality to an overplayed staple: Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony.
On Thursday, for the second program in this two-week engagement, Mr. Dudamel began with Schubert’s Symphony No. 4, often taken for granted. Trying to jolt this charming, if modest, 30-minute score would be counterproductive. Instead, Mr. Dudamel showed taste and sensitivity in a lovely performance that stood out, even on a program dominated by Mahler’s great symphonic song cycle “Das Lied von der Erde.”
Schubert gave his Fourth Symphony the tagline “Tragic.” But other than in the grave introduction to the first movement, the piece doesn’t seem particular dark. I’ve always felt that the title could be Schubert’s dig at his own circumstances when he wrote the work. He was 19 and struggling to get his career off the ground, and assuming his music would be ignored. (Which it more or less was.)
Those hopeless feelings seeped into the Philharmonic’s weighty, restrained and elegant performance on Thursday. The somber slow introduction began with a forceful chord, played with gnarly sound and rattling timpani, and maintained that grim cast. In the main Allegro section, the tempo was insistent but held in check, giving the music a nervous, almost panicked feel. Mr. Dudamel and the players brought glowing warmth and grace to the wistful slow movement. The scherzo had the heartiness of a rustic dance.
ADVERTISEMENT
The finale, the work’s weakest movement, needs a little juicing up. So here Mr. Dudamel went into his dynamo mode, leading a fleet, crackling account that put all tragic thoughts out of mind.
The tenor soloist in “Das Lied” was to have been Simon O’Neill, but he called in sick on Thursday morning. Luckily Andrew Staples, who had sung Andres in the Metropolitan Opera’s final performance of Berg’s “Wozzeck” on Wednesday, was still in town and came to the rescue.
Had I not known all this, I would never have suspected that Mr. Staples was performing this demanding music on less than a day’s notice: He sounded youthful and confident from the start, in the vocally punishing “Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde.” The first of six settings of Chinese poems that make up the 60-minute “Das Lied,” “Das Trinklied” is an eerily exuberant toast to the desolation of life. The soaring phrases keep taking a tenor into his high range as the orchestra blares away, and Mr. Staples mostly kept those high phrases light and clear, while bringing affecting warmth to the reflective passages that interrupt the boisterousness. The mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung, a veteran Mahler singer, gave a subdued and dusky-toned account of the pensive second song, “Der Einsame im Herbst.”
I mean it as praise that Mr. Dudamel conveyed no overarching interpretive concept in this formidable work. Instead, he showed a keen ear for colorings, details, intricate textures and brassy blasts of delirium, while giving attentive support to the singers. Whole stretches of “Das Lied” are restrained and delicate, and those qualities came through in this fresh performance. Ms. De Young was at her soaring best when it mattered most, in the sublime, wistful, 30-minute final song, “Der Abschied.”
No comments:
Post a Comment