Photo by Chris Lee

A terrific season of orchestral music at Carnegie Hall continued memorably with three fine, nearly sold-out concerts on consecutive dates—beginning on the evening of Friday, February 23rd—of music almost entirely drawn from the Romantic era, given by the extraordinary artists of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under the expert direction of the immoderately acclaimed Gustavo Dudamel.

 

The excellent first program, devoted entirely to works by Johannes Brahms, opened splendidly with a sterling account of his uncharacteristically jubilant, delightful Academic Festival Overture.The ensuing, lovely, equally popular Variations on a Theme by Haydn afforded comparable pleasure in a beautifully realized performance. The event concluded with an estimable version of the Symphony No. 1, especially impressive in the vigorous finale. Enthusiastic ovations elicited two wonderful encores, appropriately with Viennese affiliations (as those in the other two concerts were to have): Leonard Bernstein’s Waltz from his Divertimento for Orchestra—one of the most charming of his classical pieces—and Winterlust by Josef Strauss.

 

The following evening’s program was also strong. It began with an assured reading of the only completed movement from Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 10, the powerful Adagio—Dudamel’s approach was faithful to the composer’s intentions and achieved the requisite intensity. Similarly rewarding was the accomplished rendition of the closing work, the marvelous Symphonie fantastique of Hector Berlioz, with the conductor handling the transition from delicate refinement to wild abandon with aplomb, again surpassing himself in the exuberant finale. A passionate reception was met with another gratifying encore: the Delirien Walzer of Strauss.

 

The satisfying final concert, presented on the following afternoon, was preceded by an informative talk by Jan Swafford, a composer and author who has written a biography of the maverick Charles Ives, whose idiosyncratic Second Symphony—which, in 1953, the Vienna Philharmonic was the first to record—began the program, heard in a confident interpretation acutely attuned to the kaleidoscopic variety of musical ideas to be found there. The proceedings ended triumphantly with the playing of the beloved Symphony No. 4 by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, in which the intense emotionalism of the work was successfully conveyed. Ardent applause was generously reciprocated with a superb encore by the same creator: the magnificent Waltz from Swan Lake. I await with anticipation the next appearance of these musicians.