Israel Philharmonic Orchestra Perform at Carnegie Hall
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 31 October 2025 14:04
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Photo by Stephanie Berger
At the wonderful Stern Auditorium, on the night of Wednesday, October 15th, I had the pleasure to attend an excellent concert—the first of three in the same week—presented by Carnegie Hall, featuring the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under the impressive direction of Lahav Shani.
The event started splendidly with a superb account of Sergei Prokofiev’s marvelous, seldom played Overture on Hebrew Themes, which builds to an abrupt—but delightful—finish. (It was originally composed for sextet in 1919 and orchestrated in 1934.)The renowned soloist Pinchas Zukerman then entered the stage for an admirable performance of the unsung, even rarer Violin Concerto, Op. 58, of Paul Ben-Haim, from 1959. (It strongly recalls the work of Paul Hindemith and Béla Bartók.) The initial, Allegro movement begins somewhat insistently and maintains a driving rhythm for most of its length—much of the music has an affirmative quality although there are reflective passages too—and it closes forcefully. The ensuing, brief Andante affetuoso is soulful and song-like on the whole, and the most beautiful of the three movements. The Cadenza e finale is somewhat spiky—it acquires a propulsive pace and a sprightly ethos and concludes emphatically. Enthusiastic applause elicited an exquisite encore from Zukerman and the ensemble: the same composer’s Berceuse Sfaradite.
The second half of the evening was even more memorable: a magnificent rendition of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s extraordinary Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 36. The first movement’s Andante sostenuto introduction begins dramatically with majestic fanfares; the bulk of the Moderato con animamain body has an intensely passionate character but there are more subdued moments and an optimistic, recurring, secondary theme that provides a lyrical refuge from the turbulence that surrounds it—it concludes powerfully. The following movement—its tempo is Andantino in modo di canzona—opens wistfully with a solo, oboe melody that expresses, according to the composer, “that melancholy feeling which comes in the evening when one sits down alone … a host of memories appears, and one is sad because so much is passed, gone”; it too conveys Romantic longings and concludes softly. The succeeding Scherzo, marked Pizzicato ostinato, allegro, is playful, charming and lively; it becomes march-like and ends quietly, if cheerfully. Tchaikovsky said that the movement suggests
...elusive apparitions that pass through the mind when one has drunk a little wine and feels the first stages of intoxication … one remembers a portrait of drunken peasants and a street song. Then somewhere in the distance a military procession goes by.
The Finale, an Allegro con fuoco, opens exuberantly, celebratorily, and dynamically, preceding a gentler, dance-like interlude before the more exultant music returns, dominating the remainder of the movement, which closes triumphantly. A standing ovation drew forth another fabulous encore: the ‘Russian Dance’ from the same composer’s Suite from his astonishing ballet, The Nutcracker.