Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Music director Jaap van Zweden returns to the NY PHIL, purposefully leading a classics-laden program

• By drediman
• January 6, 2024
• No Comments

This week at Lincoln Center, the New York Philharmonic’s out-bound music director Jaap van Zweden returned to to the podium to conduct the orchestra at David Geffen Hall for the first time since October. On paper, it was a conservative program laden with classics of the Western repertoire. All in all, it was a purposefully conducted effort, featuring van Zweden’s meticulous, almost surgical approach to orchestral music-making.

The program commenced with the prelude to Act 1 of Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger. It was an unsentimental reading of this sweeping, stately piece of music, which seemed at odds with the grand romanticism for which the composer is known. Then came Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, which featured soloist Rudolf Buchbinder, whose playing throughout was disciplined and focused, as was the playing by the ensemble. The concert concluded with Brahms’s mighty Fourth Symphony. Perhaps the highlight of the program, van Zweden’s reading gave the piece just the right balance between poignancy and clarity – a combination that sometimes eluded the previous pieces.

Under their music director, the Philharmonic played with uncommonly tight precision. Although the playing at times left little room for the compositions to breathe, I found the transparency of it all often thrilling and at times even illuminating. It’s a fascinating approach that championed polished sleekness over lush lyricism, especially bold in a bill that’s tightly bound to the warhorses of the repertoire.

RECOMMENDED

THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC
Classical Music
David Geffen Hall
Approximately 2 hours (with one intermission)
Through January 6