Philadelphia Orchestra at the Kennedy Center
On Sunday afternoon, Washington Performing Arts Society concluded another excellent season with the latest concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. The impressively full hall bore witness to the continued popularity of this prestigious ensemble, in spite of the turning of critical opinion against it. According to one recent assessment of American orchestras, the Philadelphians are no longer among the symphonic Big Five. The problems began when current Music Director Christoph Eschenbach was appointed, over the opposition of some of the musicians. Although the reviews since then have been getting better, Eschenbach decided not to renew his contract after the 2007-08 season. The Philadelphia leadership has taken the unusual step of not appointing a new Music Director, instead naming Charles Dutoit as chief conductor and artistic adviser. In related news, Eschenbach will also be replaced at the podium of the Orchestre de Paris by Paavo Järvi in 2010. Eschenbach's relationship with the administration of both orchestras remains troubled.
Eschenbach made a daring decision to open the concert with Arnold Schoenberg's first Kammersinfonie (op. 9). Schoenberg's name is a lightning rod for anti-modern malcontents, but this early work, premiered in Vienna in 1907, is more tonal in style than much of Schoenberg's other work. It was brilliant programming, in any case, that gave Eschenbach the chance to show off 16 of his masterful principal players, with particularly strong contributions from the flute and piccolo (performed here by separate musicians), horn, and oboe players. Schoenberg telescoped the four movements of a traditional symphony into a dense 20 minutes, with an ardent opening section, a quasi-Wagnerian slow episode, a comic scherzo section contrasting high and low sounds, and an exciting fast conclusion. The piece plays with extremes, skewing especially to the bass with prominent use of bass clarinet, bassoon and contrabassoon, cello and bass, and testing all the players by driving the instruments to the edges of their traditional ranges.
Photo of Christoph Eschenbach from christoph-eschenbach.com
German baritone Matthias Goerne then took the stage to sing a set of Schubert songs, which was fortunate since he had been forced to cancel two previous appearances on this tour because of a family illness. His voice, an instrument stronger in its higher register than its lowest notes, is a thing of velvet smoothness, capable of a crystal-clear diction that manages not to interrupt a pure legato. Schubert crafted his songs for the piano, and what orchestration of them gains in the possibility of greater tonal color, it risks in overbearing sound.
Eschenbach and the orchestra clearly relished the role of accompanying, creating almost uniformly the perfect sound tapestry for the words in Goerne's mouth, as in the opening Shakespeare translation, An Silvia (D. 891), with its animated lute-like orchestration. A substantial part of the pleasure derived from this set, between almost all of the songs of which the audience could not refrain from applauding, was in the masterful orchestrations, mostly by Brahms, Webern, and Reger. The sweeping Faustian introduction to Gruppe aus dem Tartarus, the muted brass colors in Der Wegweiser (from Winterreise), and the rippling brook variations in the strophic song Tränenregen (from Die Schöne Müllerin) were all necessary to the atmosphere.
The second half was dedicated to Brahms's first symphony (C minor, op. 68). This is the Philadelphia Orchestra's bread and butter, with its sonic boom of an opening, moments of glassy smoothness, and preference for large gesture. Eschenbach's reading seemed at odds with the orchestra at times, as in the slightly discombobulated middle section of the second movement and a third-movement Allegretto that was a bit too far to the jaunty side. Even if it was not as polished as one could have hoped, which we could attribute as much to fatigue at the end of a long tour as to discord between the orchestra and Eschenbach, this Brahms was smoldering, emotional playing, with solid brass and lush strings. For a single encore, it was more Brahms, the fifth Hungarian dance, played with abandon and yet almost grudgingly given.
Photo of baritone Matthias Goerne from matthiasgoerne.de
Orchestras on next season's WPAS series include the La Scala Philharmonic (October 10), the Cleveland Orchestra (October 15), the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra playing Schoenberg's first Kammersinfonie again (!) (October 18), Yuri Temirkanov and Julia Fischer with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic (October 23), the Philadelphia Orchestra but this time with James Conlon (December 6), the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from Amsterdam (February 3), and the Orchestre National de France (April 28).