Right from the start, one notes the meticulousness in the preparation of the Orchestra, which takes its time tuning the instruments before the conductor’s arrival: the process drags on. One senses the effort put into rehearsals, the rigor of which seems to have left some marks, and one observes among the musicians, with their unusually tense faces, a form of unease.
The reason becomes clear with the first notes of “Lontano,” a piece about ten minutes long written in 1967 by the Hungarian composer György Ligeti: the gestures of the Austrian conductor are both fluid and seem to evolve almost in slow motion. Even when he turns the page of his score, he conveys a sense of economy, the preservation of an inward energy. Yet, his impassive face and rather stiff body demonstrate relentless rigor. The work is indeed complex. It begins with a sustained note, drawn out to the infinite possibilities of instrumental range and which seems to thicken to gain successively larger volumes that Günter Neuhold moves effortlessly, with great fluidity. The conducting remains exceedingly restrained to the point that the notes, as if fearful of openly expressing themselves, seem to adopt pastel tonalities, confined to a subdued register. The tension is palpable throughout the hall, which understands and shares this demand of a piece worthy of encrypted notation, even though Ligeti distances himself with this music from his most direct inspirers. In this piece, he appears closer to Pierre Boulez than to Edgar Varèse or Karlheinz Stockhausen in his refusal of electronic interference and noise while remaining true to atonality. In the final measure, where the sustained note subtly diminishes, the fingers of Günter Neuhold’s conducting hand come together in a gesture of infinite slowness, destabilizing the audience which eventually begins to wonder whether it is still being played. A moment of exception where the stunned hall remains silent, the conductor and his orchestra motionless.
Dmitri Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 126, introduces us to the very talented soloist Sonia Wieder-Atherton. Composed in 1966 and dedicated to the late Mstislav Rostropovich who premiered it in Moscow that same year, this piece somewhat suffers from its tortuous origins: three movements, an initial largo intended for another piece, and a finale whose original score was destroyed and completely rewritten. It reflects the particularly tormented personality of the Russian composer. The score is especially challenging for the cellist, who emerges completely exhausted after an almost Olympic exercise in virtuosity. It’s regrettable that this Concerto, a supposed dialogue between a soloist and an orchestra, lacks part of its discourse: Sonia Wieder-Atherton’s nearly ecstatic passages are astonishing, yet the direction supports her in a style of play—admittedly of exceptional quality—that limits her interaction with the rest of the philharmonic ensemble. Slight delays in playing arise, and one wonders if the conductor, more concerned with meticulousness than with ensemble harmony, isn’t silencing his orchestra. Perhaps, it’s also fitting to recognize in this the essence of this very personal work by Dmitri Shostakovich, where the composer, lost in his anonymity, seeks to convey this inability to communicate with the world around him.
The argument becomes significantly less tenable for the second part of the evening where this communication between the conductor and his orchestra is also slow in coming in Robert Schumann’s Fourth Symphony in D minor, Op. 120. Four movements that must be played continuously. After the first of these in which the direction emphasizes more on “tempi” than on melodic phrasing, the romantic inspiration of the second, the noticeably smoother “Romanze”, manages to thaw the conductor who finally smiles and succeeds with this piece in building a closer relationship with the orchestra, whose progression towards ease of play and interpretative engagement is almost visually perceptible: Günter Neuhold seems, it appears, to have been seduced and the charm also affects the musicians. Like the young double bass player from Monaco—who was a replacement—and who, all smiles and absorbed in his score, seemed during the concert to be on “another planet.”
Note: The next exceptional concert will take place on Saturday, February 28, 2009, at the Opera. Maestro Marco Guidarini will conduct the Philharmonic Orchestra along with pianist Eric Le Sage in a Mozart program (Symphony No. 38 in D major, known as the “Prague”), Poulenc (Piano Concerto), and Haydn (Symphony 104 in D major, known as “London”).
