The Vienna Philharmonic has not had a permanent conductor since 1933. But I did have a favorite conductor.
Among the great musicians who led this autonomous and proudly idiosyncratic orchestra, Leonard Bernstein and Pierre Boulez were made honorary members. Herbert von Karajan and Karl Böhm were awarded honorary command titles. Violinist Daniel Froschauer, president of the Philharmonic, said the ensemble's top roster today secretly includes two virtuosos: Riccardo Muti and Franz Welser-Möst.
Last weekend at Carnegie Hall, Austrian-born Welser Möst, 63, performed a thrilling program of Bruckner and Mahler symphonies, as well as works by Berg, Hindemith, Schoenberg, Strauss and Ravel.
It takes a lot of effort to win the love of the Philharmonic, one of the best ensembles in Europe. It's like it takes a lot of effort to join the ranks. Known for their richer sound, brighter, higher tuning frequencies, and distinct Viennese expression, these players can be arrogant and stubborn. I have seen them blatantly ignore the conductor in rehearsal.
Welser-Möst not only infiltrated the Philharmonic's inner circle, but he did so by leading the Cleveland Orchestra, another top-tier ensemble, although its sound was vastly different from that of the Vienna Orchestra.
The main difference between the Cleveland Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic is that while the Cleveland Orchestra was criticized for playing too well, no one could blame the Vienna Philharmonic.
In Cleveland, Welser-Möst has maintained and deepened the orchestra's transparent, pristine sound for the past 20 years. (He is scheduled to leave the position in 2027.) This performance is the most precise of any American ensemble, perfectly balancing the delights of perfectionists and the frustrations of those who crave something more daring in concert.
The Philharmonic is also surprisingly proficient, but has a grungy feel that tends to liven up the score rather than depress it. These performers are, first and foremost, human beings. Expressiveness pervades wide tremolos, wailing glissandos and almost theatrical physical gestures.
If Clevelanders like simple music, Vienna people like rich music. “mit Schlag.” Together, these orchestras embody two approaches to musical excellence. Welser-Möst can walk down any road with them.
At Carnegie, the Philharmonic's style was most evident in Bruckner and Mahler's Ninth Symphony. The symphony was suitable for inclusion in Welser-Möst's Perspectives series at the hall, but not in the “Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dance on the Cliffs” festival.
During its short life from 1918 to 1933, the Weimar Republic was a special period for all types of art. But the audience at the Philharmonic concert could find little of that in three programs whose relevance was based solely on the period. The performance further expressed the Germanic world's descent into modernism at the end of World War I and the disillusioned mood of the war's aftermath: the decline of Romanticism and the rise of bitter irony.
The idea may overlap with the instability and collapse of the Weimar Republic, but it is not identical. And where they met was the Philharmonic's Saturday program, which opened with Hindemith's Konzertmusik für Blasorchester, written in 1926 for a military band with a satirical spirit then heard on the Berlin Revue stage. In 1928, Schonberg's Variations for Orchestra premiered, but were disastrously mishandled by the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler. But at Carnegie, both were given easy-to-read readings. Played with an ease that allowed its underlying expressiveness to emerge, Schoenberg provided evidence that “atonal” does not inherently mean “unpleasant.”
From there, the Philharmonic's programming moved away from the Weimar Republic, with works such as Ravel's “La Valse” first performed in Paris in 1920 rather than Germany. And Strauss' Symphonic Fantasia “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” is a 1947 reworking of an opera composed before and after World War I.
This is not to discount the performance of this piece. Ravel's dreamlike memories of the Philharmonic's famous New Year's concert unfolded and turned into a nightmare. And Strauss, whose large scale and dense writing skills make it difficult to maintain balance, <프라우>It was a work that took a seductive and fragrant stroll through the lush sound world of .
Perhaps the furthest from the Weimar theme is Bruckner's, dedicated to God and left unfinished upon the composer's death in 1896. Welser-Möst loved juxtapositions, and on Friday he paired them with Berg's pieces as a finale. Three pieces for orchestra composed in the 1910s — Berg's music raised Bruckner's music to the threshold of modernity.
Discursive and inconclusive, Bruckner's Ninth Symphony once rivaled the mysterious and mystical power of Wagner's “Parsifal,” but it acquired dramatic shape and cohesion under Welser-Möst. The introduction started quietly and escalated into an explosive declaration, and the phrases that followed rose and fell like distress signals, burning brightly and fading away. From the silence emerged a ray of melody and balletic delicacy, followed by more explosions, leaving behind a softly glowing halo of sound.
In Mahler's Ninth Symphony, released exclusively on Sunday, there was a similar debate over a sense of form, or grandeur. Welser-Möst took a fast tempo, but with energy rather than impatience, resulting in a running time of about 75 minutes that some conductors would push the score to 90 or more.
This work is full of farewells: allusions to Beethoven's “Les Adieux” sonata, Mahler's “Leb' wohl!” Epitaph And, as Theodor Adorno wrote, an ending that leaves quietly, looking suspiciously at uncertainty.
Welser-Möst's interpretation was one that had a lot to say on the way out. The first movement developed into a defiant freedom, and later movements developed into the Ländler, a folk dance particularly popular in Austria. This folk dance began with a rustic, rustic feel, but ended in a cosmic dance and a passionate lament in the finale.
That final action is often performed as a kind of prolonged death. But the “ersterbend” or “dying” direction does not appear in the score until the penultimate page, and the Philharmonic players did not make a linear journey to get there, with their energies diverted in the glacial stillness. The music wasn't ready to say goodbye, and after three days, neither were they.