An Evening with Daniele Gatti at Carnegie Hall

Details

Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 05 February 2016 17:30

Written by Jack Angstreich

Daniele Gatti

Another terrific experience at Carnegie Hall this month was had by those with the good fortune to attend the mesmeric performance by the magnificent Orchestre National de France under the sterling direction of Daniele Gatti on the evening of Thursday, January 28th. I heard these musicians with this conductor once before in an extraordinary concert at Avery Fischer Hall a few years ago and my high expectations for this event proved entirely justified.

The program opened with a previously unscheduled, although most welcome, addition (performed in memory of the recently deceased Kurt Masur, who led this ensemble for several years): a beautiful rendition of the heavenly Prelude to Act III of Richard Wagner's sublime masterpiece, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Equally thrilling was the gripping account that followed of another supreme monument of the Classical repertory, Claude Debussy's ethereal Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.

Virtuoso violinist Julian Rachlin then took the stage for an arresting performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s challenging and eccentric Violin Concerto No. 1. The soloist was seemingly undaunted by the difficulties of this work and, consequent upon an enthusiastic ovation, then dazzled with a mesmerizing encore, the “Ballade” movement from Eugène Ysaÿe’s Sonata for solo violin in D Minor, Op. 27, No. 3.

The second half of the program amazingly surpassed the first, with the strongest account of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s magisterial Symphony No. 5 that I’ve ever heard on the concert stage. The applause was rapturous and the evening was brought to an exquisite close with a splendid encore: a gorgeous rendition of Gabriel Fauré’s lovely Prélude from Pelléas et Mélisande. I eagerly await their next appearance in New York.

• < Prev
• Next >