wiener symphoniker – Likely Impossibilities

Fabio Luisi and the Wiener Symphoniker in NYC

November 14, 2011 8 Comments

Of course I couldn’t miss a chance to reunite with the Wiener Symphoniker on Sunday. (known in these parts as the Vienna Symphony Orchestra–where the “orchestra” came from, I know not). I wrote about it for Bachtrack.

The Italian conductor Fabio Luisi has become an increasingly familiar
and welcome face to New York audiences. Recently appointed Principal
Conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, he is primarily known here as an
operatic conductor. But he has also been the chief conductor of the
Vienna Symphony Orchestra (known as the Wiener Symphoniker in German)
since 2005, and on Sunday the Viennese joined him in Avery Fisher Hall.
While the warhorse program recalled the taste of the city’s other major
orchestra–the arch-conservative Vienna Philharmonic–it was a fine
afternoon.

Click here to read the whole thing. I like Luisi a lot but I was really going to this concert to hear Schmidt’s fantastic Symphony No. 4, which was swapped with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, a piece the Symphoniker could probably play in their sleep. (The obvious explanation is that this change had to do with the amount of time Luisi has been spending at the Met.) I was quite disappointed.

It’s interesting how Luisi’s reputation in New York is so much better than it is in Vienna. He keeps canceling Symphoniker gigs to conduct at the Met, which doesn’t endear him to the Viennese, but most of the people I talked to managed to both be pissed about his absenteeism and denigrate his conducting skills. In my experience he is a better opera conductor than a symphonic conductor, and he doesn’t conduct opera in Vienna much (as one of the many, many conductors who doesn’t get along with the Staatsoper), but he’s still a fine musician, far above average, and I was surprised at how low Viennese audiences rated him. I think there might be some national prejudice here–his repertoire overlaps to a dangerous extent with Christian Thielemann’s. But anyway, Vienna, New York is happy to take Luisi off your hands.

I’d prefer you send him over with Schmidt next time, though.

Petrenko and the lyric Symphoniker

February 25, 2011 3 Comments

Kirill Petrenko and the Wiener Symphoniker brought an unusual program to the Musikverein this week: Zemlinsky’s Lyrische Symphonie, Liadov’s The Enchanted Lake, and Scriabin’s Le poème de l’extase. I wish I could have written about this sooner, because there were a disappointing amount of empty seats at Wednesday’s first of three concerts and it was really worth hearing. The Lyrische Symphonie can be easily described as a Das Lied von der Erde rip-off, and as a series of lush orchestral songs for two alternating vocal soloists set to Asian poetry, there are obvious similarities. However, Zemlinsky’s musical language is quite different, and so are his poems’ themes. Petrenko and the Symphoniker’s account was monumental and dramatic.

The first movement was gloriously un-transparent, not dissected as much as a thick, ever-shifting carpet of sound. After hearing many technically overworked and clinical performances recently, it was a lovely change to hear the whole orchestra together instead of eliciting reactions such as “oh, hi, oboe section!” The soloists were excellent and carefully traced the work’s journey for youth to love to loss, but Petrenko’s focus was more on the orchestra than on them. Baritone Wolfgang Koch sounded somewhat flat and detached in the first movement, but warmed up to an imposing, passionate delivery in the other movements. Suddenly ubiquitous soprano Camilla Nylund was much better suited to this work than she had been to Rosalinde or Salome, her silvery sound projecting perfectly but never losing its freshness. Her “Sprich zu mir, Geliebter” was beautifully floated.

This was a very smartly put-together program. Anatoly Liadov’s brief, quiet tone poem The Enchanted Lake is another shimmering atmosphere piece, but one of greater delicacy, recalling a Russian Debussy. It served as a good introduction to Scriabin’s heady Poème de l’extase, whose chaotic structure and kaleidoscope of themes was, like the Zemlinsky, a dazzling exercise in orchestral color and balance. And, at the end, we heard how very, very loud an orchestra of this size can be. But it never felt gratuitous.

The concert was hindered by some spectacularly ill-timed coughing, and was met with a disappointingly lukewarm reception. I thought it was unusual and glorious.

Wiener Symphoniker, Kirill Petrenko, conductor. Musikverein, 2/23/2011. With Camilla Nylund, soprano and Wolfgang Koch, baritone. Program: Zemlinsky, Lyrische Symphonie, op. 18; Liadov (Lyadov/Ljadow), The Enchanted Lake, op. 62; Scriabin (Skrjabin), Le Poème de l’extase, op. 54.