Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – In her impressive NY PHIL debut, Karina Canellakis conducts with incisiveness and ample feeling

• By drediman
• April 5, 2024
• No Comments

This week at David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, conductor Karina Canellakis made a notable debut leading the New York Philharmonic. Currently the chief conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and the principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the youthful-looking 42-year-old has been making a name for herself as one of the leading conductors of her generation.

For her Philharmonic debut, Canellakis conducted a program heavy on the tone poems, allowing her to show off both her incisive musicality, as well as her sensitivity to the poetry of the music. The concert’s appetizer was Webern’s deceptively compact Six Pieces for Orchestra. Indeed, in just about ten minutes of delicately wrought music, the composer packs in quite the array of color, which Canellakis was able to elegantly navigate. The first of the tone poems was Richard Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration, an emotionally overflowing meditation on the last moments of our mortal coil and beyond. Here, the maestro conducted with ample feeling that translated to an authentically moving account of the Strauss score. Also making her Philharmonic debut was pianist Alice Sara Ott, who led an impressively nimble rendition of Ravel’s jazz-infused Piano Concerto in G. Particularly impressive was the floating caresses she brought to the score’s second movement. The concert concluded with an emphatic reading of another tone poem, Scriabin’s florid Poem of Ecstasy. It’s a massive, almost unruly piece that Canellakis confidently tamed with a great sense of shape and progression.

Despite being bombarded with blaring emergency warnings from the audiences’ cell phones due to the unlikely earthquake in the New York area on Friday (indeed, this is one concert to remember for various reasons), both Canellakis and Ott were able to power through the concert with their dignity intact. These are two formidable talents I’d like to experience again without the competing attention of handheld devices.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

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