Lalo's Symphonie espagnole was the first piece performed by the NY Philharmonic, led by Rafael de Burgos, in yesterday evening's performance. The symphony is a light, pleasant piece with an Iberian accent, and the playing was competent if not distinguished. Augustin Hadelich, as the violin soloist, was more than adequate and performed seamlessly with the orchestra.
The performance of Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique in the second half was more problematic. Every listener familiar with the piece and its history is aware of something wild eyed and out of control, almost psychedelic, lurking below the surface of Berlioz' revolutionary score. Last evening, that element remained hidden. This was fundamentally a civilized performance of a piece that is itself not entirely civilized. Its nightmare evocation of black magic in the final movement went unrealized. Instead, the weirdness of the Witches' Sabbath was subsumed under a deftly led interpretaton entirely lacking in drama. While the program notes correctly state: "Berlioz' sense of the programmatic goes well beyond the merely descriptive; it enters the realm of the psychological, imaging a state of mind that is far from stable and that spills into hallucination," the playing and conducting last evening no more explored an artist's tortured unconscious than does an evening of Puccini's La Boheme. That was a great disappointment. There's much more to Berlioz' music than the perfunctory, if melodic, reading it received here.
No comments:
Post a Comment