A Fresh Philharmonic Sound

After much ado about the New York Philharmonic’s recently-renovated home at David Geffen Hall’s Wu Tsai Theater, the January 6th matinee—led by Santtu-Matias Rouvali and featuring Yuja Wang on piano—shows an orchestra settling into its new sound. The most recent series was the first after a very quick holiday break and proved a showcase for the orchestra’s horns. With two vacancies and a rotating list of Guest Principals on each subscription concert, the section’s recent anemia was cured by the leadership of Catherine Turner (currently serving as Principal Horn with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal).

The program began with Rossini’s Overture to Semiramide. Energetic yet insubstantial, it felt a bit like grabbing the zuppa toscana instead of chicken & gnocchi during a Soup, Salad, and Breadsticks feast at the Times Square Olive Garden. Despite delicate moments for woodwinds and lots of action for the strings, little but the gorgeous horn section playing stuck out. Until the end, that is, when the final percussion strike deafeningly covered the orchestra’s already-loud fortissimo chord.

It’s not first complaint of an overeager percussion section in the new hall. The finale of Resphigi’s Pines of Rome (on the Phil’s first subscription series) also rang inappropriately high on the decibel scale, albeit accompanied in that performance by a brass section clearly used to overblowing in the room’s previous acoustics and not yet comfortable with their new digs.

However, that performance did not deliver the acute tinnitus developed at the end of the Rossini overture. I suspect an overzealous crash cymbal is at fault and wondered in the moment whether protective sound barriers should enclose the stage’s upper platform (would the horns or bassoons care to comment?). Thankfully the percussion section blended much better in the following piece (no crash cymbal, but two suspended!), so we may reserve final judgement.

Magnus Lindberg’s Piano Concerto No. 3 showed off Wang’s renowned fiery dynamism and was overall characterized by harmonies which desire resolution in the “traditional” manner but foiled time and again through one sequence of material similar in shape yet harmonically distant. This clouds the perceived tonal center while slyly dialing up the tension; even so, it is still the most accessible of Lindberg’s three strikes at the genre to this listener’s ears. 

Though James M. Keller’s program notes name-drop Ravel, Stravinsky, and Rachmaninoff as reference points for the work, the most impressive moments are more to the French iconoclast Claude Debussy. Recalling La Mer in both orchestration and rhythm, the horn section intoned gloriously over shimmering strings towards the end of the first movement. A little further on, Yuja Wang brought melancholic grace reminiscent of Debussy’s preludes to an extended cadential coda: nine of Wang’s fingers danced a spidery crawl across the keyboard while the tenth reached out to stroke a resounding bass tone. There was a beautiful moment during the second movement where Wang handed off an ascending line to tubist Alan Baer—a difficult task to perform at delicate pianissimo as Baer did in his instrument’s upper range.

Quite brief compared to its predecessors, the third movement had material of little discernible interest and left a lopsided feeling. It’s possible that the length or content of movements one and two had simply taxed my brain to its limit. But while the tempo was indeed faster, an audience is trained to expect the most interesting and virtuosic material in the last section (akin to the “finale problem” in Classical and Romantic symphonies, where the fourth must be better than the first, even after one or two more movements of supposedly “lighter” fare); in this, our composer-audience contract was left unfulfilled.

While I couldn’t pick out any repeated melodies or themes on first listen, the opening and final movements give the soloist a four-chord motif that bookend the solo material: a musical equivalent of an introduction and conclusion paragraph in expository writing. 

After intermission, conductor and baton were on display and a delight to witness. Rouvali’s take Beethoven’s Second Symphony was a highly articulated string section and emphasis on the piece’s unexpected exclamations. While this sometimes came at the expense of inner voices, it holds the modern audience’s attention in a way that more traditional interpretations do not. Beethoven’s audience may have been surprised by a few harmonies or orchestrations, but ears need something more.

The transition from the opening slow introduction—a traditional bellwether for conductors—was precise and forceful. The orchestra quickly locked in to Rouvali’s strident new tempo; despite waiting for this moment intently, it somehow felt both inevitable and surprising. Perhaps the most reliable of the Philharmonic’s sections of late, principal woodwinds delivered several beautiful moments that left a smile on my face (a special shoutout to the bassoon and oboe quartet in movement three is deserved). Deep, sonorous basses led the string section sound with a strength previously evaded.

Whether Rouvali’s insistence, a glimpse of inspiration, or something else is responsible for this performance’s luster is hard to say; in reality, it’s likely a combination of several factors. But my previous experience with his conducting—the same tried-and-true program of overture, [brand new] concerto, symphony (Finnish compatriot Sibelius’s First, in that instance)—left an impression like this series but few in-between have. Luckily my seat for Rouvali’s series with the New York Philharmonic next week is already secure.

Santtu-Matias Rouvali conducts the next New York Philharmonic subscription series, featuring Stravinky’s Rite of Spring, Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 (with Nemanja Radulović), and the US Premiere of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Catamorphosis. More information and tickets here.