Saturday March 15th, 2014 - The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra performing Schubert and Mahler (above) at Carnegie Hall tonight. This was a concert that Dmitry and I had been anticipating for weeks, since we both greatly admire the conducting of Daniele Gatti. In the event, Maestro Gatti was forced to withdraw from the Orchestra's New York performances this year. Tonight he was replaced by Christoph Eschenbach. It goes without saying that the orchestra played magnificently all evening; but for me it was a case of "what might have been" had Mr. Gatti been wielding the baton.
The concert was billed as 'sold out' though there were empty seats to be seen. This great ensemble have one very annoying practice: they make an 'entrance' at the start of the concert and again after the intermission. There's no question that they deserve our warmest welcome, but does an obligatory round of applause really mean that much to such accomplished players? And twice in an evening?
Schubert's Unfinished Symphony - the 8th - opened the evening. Schubert, it seems, was notoriously absent-minded, and over the years he seems to have lost track of some individual movements and shorter pieces. He may have intended to finish the 8th (there is an almost complete draft of a scherzo) but instead the two completed movements languished in a drawer. They went on to become one of the supreme masterpieces in musical history.
Mr. Eschenbach and the musicians gave an amply radiant reading of the opening Allegro moderato in B minor, with its familiar and ever-heartening main theme. But in the Andante con moto in E major which followed, I curiously found my attention wandering somewhat. At the end, Dmitry - who knows this rep far better than I do - confirmed that Eschenbach's leisurely tempos extended the second movement well beyond its usual span and that the music seemed to lose its internal compass. That it was all beautifully played is without question, but it did start to seem endless after a bit.
Mahler's 4th Symphony is probably my favorite of all symphonies, or perhaps it's tied with Mahler's 2nd for the top spot. I'd only heard the 4th performed live once, years ago, by the student orchestra at Hartt College when I was living in West Hartford CT. So tonight's was my first live professional performance.
The sound of flutes and sleigh bells which mark the beginning of Mahler’s 4th are surely unique. In the symphony's two inner movements, we experienced some purely gorgeous playing, most notably from the VPO's remarkable principal horn, Ronald Janezic. Mr. Eschenbach showed a fine feel for the ebb and flow of the music and its graceful transitions of one sonic element to the next. For the synphony's final movement, Mahler brings in a solo voice: a soprano who describes a child’s naïve vision of heaven. Juliane Banse certainly knows the music and has a nice way of bending the phrases, yet the sound of her voice seemed to lack freshness and a sense of bloom. Maybe I am spoiled by my recording of the 4th, which features the incomparable Judith Raskin.
Overall the evening had an elegant yet ever-so-slightly pretentious feeling, amplified by the conductor's overly-sustained holding of the baton to prohibit applause for what seemed an eternity at the end of the Mahler.