A decade had handed because the Vienna Philharmonic got here to remind us how, for this legendary ensemble of comparable musicians, the automobile will be magically the message AND The therapeutic massage. The orchestra produces each intangible and tactile sound butter.
The orchestra live performance pair this week at Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa had been, as at all times, linked to custom. The adhesion to the ensemble might have develop into barely extra worldwide from the final time right here. Some different girls have been welcomed in his beforehand misogynist ranks. The fears of the previous folks of range of dilution of the unique affection of Vienna-the combination of instruments being a marvel of the orchestral world-is demonstrated surprisingly unfounded.
The normal repertoire additionally barely strikes. Beethoven, Schubert, Dvorák and Richard Strauss had been on the tour doc – nothing written within the final 125 years.
A approach to keep his grip on an excellent previous is that musicians handle the present. The orchestra has no musical director to push him on this or that path. Each director is, in truth, a visitor of the manor invited by the musicians. Do not break China. Each piece of Mozart or Beethoven, each Viennese waltz, stays a commemorated relic.
Yet being Viennese should be intrinsically open to a spear or three occasional. And the orchestra had necessary enterprise with the inconceivable caliber of Leonard Bernstein and Pierre Boulez. In nowadays he exhibits affection and respect for the Salonen Esa-pekka and the real love for Gustavo Dudamel. The Philharmonic Sound of Vienna is so luxurious that it takes a uncommon conductor to withstand his progress. A salonen or Dudamel is similar chance of convincing the Viennese to attempt one thing new.
Yannick Nézet-Séquin, who guided the live shows in Segerstrom, is one other who enjoys a long-term relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic. The French Canadian director, simply turned 50, is a pillar on the japanese coast as musical director of the Metropolitan Opera of New York and the Philadelphia Orchestra. It is necessary all through Europe and really registered.
But he had little publicity on the western coast. Nézet-Séquin performed Los Angeles Philharmonic as soon as, 16 years in the past. It isn’t, nonetheless, to say that he doesn’t care about Los Angeles, he dropped the whole lot (i.e. a chamber music live performance with the musicians of his Met Opera orchestra Opera in Carnegie Hall) to current himself to the Hollywood premiere of “Maestro”, having contributed to the inherent soundtrack of the biopic by Leonard Berntein.
The reputation of nézet-Séquin, nonetheless, hardly derives from the balancia. The Viennese ardour for him may very well be that, in his exuberance, it permits them to reside, even when this might imply chiping somewhat the porcelain in its yearning for the splashing present. Then once more, the lust of music, artwork and literature is likely one of the nice items of Vienna on the earth.
In Segerstrom, Nézet-Séquin had an attention-grabbing benefit. The room was opened shortly after the Philadelphia room Marian Anderson (beforehand Verizon) with an analogous however improved acoustic design of Russell Johnson. He got here to his fourteenth season with the Philadelphia Orchestra, a nézet-Séquin is aware of how you can exploit Johnson’s variable enchancment units.
He has achieved outstanding outcomes. Rather than the nice and cozy noise refinement of the well-known Musikverein, the home of Vienna Philharmonic, every orchestral expression has jumped out of the general public as a particular 3D impact. It may very well be the total orchestra climax stronger than you ever thought doable with out amplification. Viola, the cello and really quiet bass that open the “New World” symphony of Dvorák had a robustness that fill the soul that even one of the best headphones couldn’t match. At each extremes, it may very well be troublesome, as a listener, to renew breath.
Each of the 2 applications contained a traditional work of the early nineteenth century and ended with a romantic interval of the top of the nineteenth century. On Sunday afternoon the open was the third live performance for Piano by Beethoven with Yefim Bronfman because the eloquent soloist with daring tones, rhythmically exact. Where allowed, nézet-Séquin has preventively added orchestral punctuation however for in any other case it has let the orchestra declare with out complicated a commander pianist.
This was adopted, within the second half, by Strauss’s “Ein Heldenleben” as Sonic Spectular. There is nothing new on this. Decades in the past, a younger Zubin Mehta detonated Angelenos’ minds with “Heldenleben” and his Philharmonic Registration of Los Angeles once more. Daniel Barenboim has guided a big “Heldenleben” within the oldest and acoustically troubled room of the Segerstrom Center in a earlier go to to the Vienna Philharmonic.
In the efficiency of Nézet-Séquin, Strauss’s hero proved to be even greater than life. Brass slapped himself, the twenty creak, Timpani thundered as if this hero who conquered musical critics and makes love together with his spouse was Captain Marvel. The actual marvel, on this case, is the avoidance of vulgarity. It would not matter how prompted the orchestra, it by no means appeared tense.
The similar as the identical may very well be stated for the second program, Tuesday night, with the fourth Schubert symphony and the omnipresent “New World”. Nello Schubert, Nézet-Séquin went to the daring results of Beethovenian who tended Schubert’s soundtrack. In Dvorak, Nézet-Séquin appeared to need to overcome all of the others, making this “new world” a stronger, softer, slower and sooner place. He had the means. He had acoustics. He had the persuasive energy to persuade the orchestra to provide all his incomparable.
The viewers jumped up, electrified by his talent. But it was exactly this, an hour of talent, not a brand new world.
