Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Susanna Mälkki incisively conducts the NY PHILHARMONIC, producing an existential soundtrack for our times

• By drediman
• November 2, 2024
• No Comments

One usually goes to the concert hall to escape the realities of life. But on a recent visit to David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, I was struck by how Finnish conductor Susanna Mälkki — one of the world’s finest and most sought after conductors — and the New York Philharmonic used music to urge me to meditate our current state of existence. Through Mälkki’s brilliantly incisive conducting of a thoughtfully curated program comprised of a striking contemporary work and the unlikely pairing of two established works in the classical music canon, I marveled at the pointed ability of music to actively comment on our lives — mourning a world that’s been lost and anticipating an unknown frontier to chart. In short, the concert was an existential soundtrack for a world in transition.

The evening commenced with Luca Francesconi’s 2013 concerto Duende: The Dark Notes, which is enjoying its New York debut with this week’s performances. Although there are five sections, they seemingly unfold in a single movement, disassembling elements of flamenco and classical music and putting them back together in an unfamiliar form. The result is simultaneously shimmering and unsettling, suggestive of the murmuring of insidious forces lurking in the world around us. Indeed, the composer himself describes the Duende of the title as “a subterranean force of unheard-of power that escapes rational control”.  Violinist Leila Josefowicz was simply astonishing — instinctual, fearless — in the piece that both she and Mälkki premiered more than a decade ago.

The second half of the performance fascinatingly paired Richard Strauss’s plaintive yet beautifully contemplative Metamorphosen with Ravel’s La Valse. In the former — which Strauss composed as a memorial to the cultures lost in the devastation wrought by World War II — Mälkki and the New York forces produced lush playing from the string section without pushing too hard. Overall, the refreshingly unsentimental reading was patiently paced without being sluggish. As for the closer, the conductor did a magnificent job of counterintuitively reigning in Ravel’s careening waltz at the end of time. To be frank, I don’t think I’ve heard such clear control imposed over the escalating chaos of the score than I did here, with Mälkki as our trusted guide to the world just beyond the horizon.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC
Classical Music
David Geffen Hall
1 hour, 45 minutes (with one intermission)
Through November 2