MET Orchestra Presents Brahms at Carnegie Hall

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Wednesday, 05 February 2025 15:21

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

At the outstanding Stern Auditorium—on the night of Thursday, January 30th—I had the exceptional privilege to attend a magnificent concert—presented by Carnegie Hall and continuing a memorable season—of music by Johannes Brahms performed by the extraordinary MET Orchestra under the superb direction of Myung-Whun Chung.

The event opened brilliantly with a marvelous realization of the masterly Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77, from 1878, featuring the celebrated virtuoso Maxim Vengerov—for whom, according to the program, “This season marks the start of his three-year tenure as a Carnegie Hall Perspectives artist, which sees him headline more than a dozen concerts, beginning with all of Mozart’s violin concertos in the fall of 2024 and culminating with all of Beethoven’s violin sonatas in 2027.” After the stately introduction to the complex and ambitious, Allegro non troppo initial movement, with the entry of the soloist the music turns emotional but with song-like passages of extraordinary beauty—the movement concludes forcefully and here drew applause. (Vengerov played his own cadenza.) The ensuing, melodious Adagiobegins with an exquisite theme played by the oboe, then recapitulated by the violin, and ends softly. The finale—marked Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace—is ebullient, dynamic and virtuosic and closes triumphantly. An enthusiastic audience response elicited a wonderful encore from Vengerov: Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sarabande from his Partita No. 2 for solo violin.

The second half of the evening was maybe even stronger: a terrific account of the glorious Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 98. Much of the graceful and Romantic, Allegro non troppo first movement has a pastoral quality but it does not lack for intensity; it finishes powerfully and again here the musicians were rewarded by applause. The tuneful Andante moderato that follows is enchanting but not without dramatic interludes, and ends celestially. The succeeding, exuberant and cheerful Allegro giocoso has some subdued moments but builds to a jubilant close and the Allegro energico e passionato finale, is a chaconne dazzling in its range and intricacy—it concludes affirmatively.

The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.

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