home country of Venezuela<\/a> has been through lately, could it be any other way?) N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin generates excitement, often uses speed and clarity of intention. Dudamel creates a kind of frenzy seldom heard since Leonard Bernstein. But not always. The final moments of Dudamel\u2019s Mahler 5th had it. But while his performance had solid playing and steady electricity, there were few surprises. <\/p>\nIt was safe, which is understandable. <\/p>\n
The pressure on Dudamel is enormous. His mandate isn\u2019t just great music making but outreach, including concerts at Radio City Music Hall. He\u2019s building an ensemble whose last three music directors, most recently Jaap van Zweden, didn\u2019t make the orchestra their own. Dudamel himself recently came off a curtailed tenure at the Paris Opera. And he has left his longtime comfort zone, the Los Angeles Philharmonic. <\/p>\n
At the end of Tuesday\u2019s Mahler 5th, the floor-to-ceiling livestream video screens at David Geffen Hall showed Dudamel looking relieved, not joyful.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, few orchestras have a history of stable leadership as the Philadelphians, and it shows with artistic consistency and ability to take risks with confidence. At this point, the Philadelphia Orchestra commands as much attention with supersoft playing as with fortissimos. <\/p>\n
But the orchestra has not grown so refined that it can\u2019t rock \u2018n\u2019 roll in the final section of Julia Wolfe\u2019s Liberty Bell, co-commissioned by the orchestra, and also in Friday\u2019s program. It\u2019s apocalyptic as well as celebratory. Having grown up in the area, Wolfe spent formative weekends on South Street, and you hear that in this piece. But then, in the middle of the last section, comes an explosion sounding like World War III. Say it isn\u2019t so.<\/p>\n
Explosions, softness bode well for Mahler. <\/p>\n
In the symphony\u2019s long spans of music, N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin finds an underlying element that makes them more cogent, whether the underlying bass lines, the waltz rhythms of the third movement, or something less discernible in the finale where everything is happening at once. Layers of counterpoint, fugues plus antiphonal effects between upper and lower strings all tumble out at warp speed \u2014 and not with the light touch N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin employed in past years. <\/p>\n
In N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin\u2019s Carnegie Hall concerts with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, every symphonic motif behaves like a stage character. It comes naturally to those players, and I\u2019m hearing more of that in his Philadelphia Mahler. It\u2019s a great fit. These are some of the more fully realized Mahler performances I ever hope to hear. <\/p>\n
The program will be repeated at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Kimmel Center. Tickets: $29-232. philorch.ensembleartsphilly.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min \ufeffThe symphonic world has evolved into an ongoing Mahler festival, so much that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,123384],"class_list":["post-299164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-philadelphia-orchestra-mahler-fifth-ny-philharmonic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}