by James Rosenfield
Photo credit: Ruby Washington, The New York Times
Friday night at Carnegie Hall saw the brilliant young conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin lead the Philadelphia Orchestra in an unusual combination of three B's: Barber, Bartók, and Bruckner. Starting with perhaps the most iconic (and ubiquitous) of 20th-century American pieces, Barber's Adagio for Strings, the program then transitioned to Bartók's early Violin Concerto No. 1, and ended with Bruckner's titanic Ninth Symphony.
The earliest piece chronologically, the Bruckner was far more radical than its program mates, abetted by Nézet-Séguin's clear technical mastery and love for the music. I have seldom seen a piece more literally embodied in a conductor: The music moved through him and with him, but the conductorial histrionics were kept to a minimum.
Excised from his only string quartet, Barber's Adagio has long since become the go-to piece for somber occasions (FDR's funeral, the television announcement of JFK's death), and has become somewhat of a Hollywood cliche (The Elephant Man, Platoon). But has anyone ever heard a more supple version of it than tonight, with Nézet-Séguin shaping the music sans baton, seemingly pulling the music out of the air? The Philadelphia strings performing alone approached aural ecstasy, tapping into a rich tradition of great string playing that began with former music director Eugene Ormandy.
The early Bartók, played by the brilliant Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili (who exhibited the most lovely and carefully controlled harmonics I have heard in a long time), was a sort of hybrid score—living in a late Romantic world with occasional bursts of modernism. Still, the embedded use of modal folk music made the work truly Bartókian. It's always refreshing to hear something unfamiliar by a well-known composer, and there are germs of the mature Bartók in this long-unplayed work, written in 1908, yet not premiered until 1958.
Bruckner's Ninth was compelling enough to keep the cough-ridden Carnegie audience silent. There was an unusual scattering of applause after the first movement, which, thankfully, was not especally troubling since the conductor took a long pause before launching into the scherzo. (I recently heard Manfred Honeck conduct the same work with the New York Philharmonic recently, in another great performance. The big difference between the two performances was the hall. Bruckner wrote with the abbey of St. Florian in his mind's ear, with its long decay. Carnegie was better suited as its sound decays more than Avery Fisher Hall, where the music sometimes splashes against the walls and remains stuck there.)
Nézet-Séguin conducted the Bruckner from memory, and with total conviction. From the opening tremolo (echoing the Beethoven Ninth) to the ending chorale, this was a wonderful performance. Nézet-Séguin took the scherzo at a fast clip, including the trios, which minimized (alas!) the Schubertian aspects of the ländler rhythms. The long, valedictory arc of the third and final movement was conducted and played to perfection, save for a very minor horn accident or two. As is well known, Bruckner left sketches—and perhaps more—for a fourth movement, and there have been several attempts at completion. But the third movement is a perfect farewell as is, not so much truncated as having said all it had to say.
The Philadelphia Orchestra had its financial and personnel troubles for a few years, but never stopped being a terrific orchestra. Based on the other night—as well as other New York performances recently, such as the Verdi Requiem at Carnegie—there's no doubt that this is one of the strongest orchestras out there right now.