Gustavo Dudamel’s reign with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra came to an end on Friday.
Appearing with the orchestra at the David Geffen Hall for the first time since being named music director-elect, the audience roared, and the superstar maestro performed Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in one of his farewell-inspired repertoires. , and finally conducted the completed symphony. From idyllic to hysterical, from tumultuous life to pianissimo death, few of his works have so thoroughly and generously explored the whole period of his life, his ups and downs.
The program had been planned long before Mr. Dudamel’s appointment, but at the moment it turned out to be ideal. At about an hour and a half long, Mahler’s Ninth completes a concert by itself. There is no overture. There are no soloists. no breaks.
Friday saw a long and intense exchange between a conductor and the players he would coach for years to come. (Dudamel’s predecessor, Jaap van Zweden, is ending next season, but the absurdly slow planning cycle for classical music means Dudamel, now with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, has officially five years until 2026. contract will not be initiated).
The orchestra has a special affection for Mahler, who was briefly but persistently chief conductor when he completed his symphony shortly before his death in 1911, so the ninth is also ideal at this point. was. Not uncommonly, the Ninth is a work commissioned primarily by the Philharmonic Orchestra to musical directors, among them Bruno Walter and Leonard, two of the most influential Mahlerists of the 20th century.・Bernstein is also included.
With this historical weight palpable, Dudamel manages to achieve a certain casualness in this expansive, complex and exhilarating score. He made this perceived as a mere work of art.
This ninth was neither a greenhouse flower nor a religious ceremony. Dudamel conducts in an easygoing manner, tending to levity, especially in the great fourth movement of the Adagio, but lacks the self-seriousness that easily bends the symphony into an exaggerated solemnity. I wasn’t interested. Rather than the brightness of autumn, bright freshness seemed to be the goal.
Dudamel, with no score in front of him, no podium fence behind him – he seemed to say there were no barriers between me, the players and the spectators – – Dudamel convincingly and naturally guided many of the score’s subtle and significant changes of pace. The deceleration to the end of the first movement was artistic and the complex transition at the end of the third movement was clear. Music was never bullied, manipulated, or artificially exaggerated.
At the beginning of the finale, the strings interrupting the bassoon’s funerary elegy sounded like a rapid flood rather than a slap in the face. These strings played the moss-covered darkness of the first movement’s passionate and strange passage of “Leidenschaftlich”.
Throughout the symphony, the trumpets had the right coppery bite. Principal harpist Nancy Allen brought the smooth, slightly eerie echoes of temple bells to her music. English horn Ryan Roberts delivered a perfect verse as usual, with a small but meaningful solo, especially near the end. Principal Viola Cynthia Phelps provided both tenderness and tingling.
Still, the night lacked a certain amount of character and depth.
Even if the opening of the first movement was clear and straightforward, it lacked mystery or poignancy, establishing an atmosphere that goes beyond mere accuracy. The dark, brooding music in the second half of the movement, a nod to Wagner’s depiction of the magically transfigured Tarnhelm in The Ring, goes by without any phosphorescent eerieness.
There was a natural celebratory mood in Friday’s packed hall, which flowed into the performance, but it’s not clear whether a celebration of love is the right mood for most of Mahler’s Ninth. In the second movement, knees bouncing up and down and smiling signals with an outstretched left hand, Dudamel led a sweeter, naive rather than eerily rough Rendler dance to his dance. And the waltz it transforms into had a breezy, circus-like feel to it, rather than something sinister. This was not the Mahler performance that foresaw Shostakovich.
A certain amount of restraint in the second movement, and even a cheery vibe, might make sense to leave somewhere for the arguably more explosive third movement. But Friday’s Rondo-Burleske’s third movement was also less intense.
The first bar was extravagantly grand, but the piece that followed didn’t feel grotesque, self-deprecating, or even slightly peppery, and suddenly plunged into a slow, comforting contrasting theme—like a roof. It was as if the door had opened to reveal the whole picture of the starry sky. The night sky did not have the desired effect. Dudamel did not take us where we needed comfort.
This wasn’t a particularly light textured performance, but it nevertheless felt almost airy, with understated undertones of the bass strings. Eighty minutes seemed to fly by—perhaps too quickly.
The position of principal horn in the orchestra is currently vacant, and Stefan Dohr, who fills that role from the Berliner Philharmoniker, joined as a guest, but the results were uneven. For the key here, Doerr was steady, but the gentle firmness of his tone, with its shades of lead, seemed to be in exactly the same sonic world as his colleagues. did not. He made the fourth movement’s wind-blown solos feel human, but like the whole performance, it’s neither elegant nor raw, just a little stuck.
Philharmonic orchestras still tend to play very soft rather than enjoy it, let alone actually achieve it. And the sound of the orchestra, not by its round, blended warmth, but by its edgy thinness when it’s fully screamed, made me think of this space since the fall opening of the refurbished Geffen Hall. Concerns about clear but harsh acoustics felt revived.
The final few minutes of the symphony, as the strings fade into silence under Dudamel’s direction, were the most logical I’ve ever heard. This was a soothing, serene lullaby, rather than a radical and tragic depiction of a dying life. The playing had calmed down, but there was still a way to go in the depths.
It was the ending. But it felt like a starting point for this conductor and this orchestra.
new york philharmonic
The program continues through Sunday at David Geffen Hall in Manhattan. Naifir.org.
