New York Classical Review

There was a sense of occasion about the concert by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, led by Louis Langrée, in Carnegie Hall Thursday night.

Of course, any evening devoted entirely to the music of Hector Berlioz is something to savor, even if it offers only such familiar items as the Overture to Les francs-juges, the song cycle Les nuits d’été¸ and the Symphonie fantastique.

But what really filled the seats Thursday was an opportunity to hear France’s current star tenor, Benjamin Bernheim, in a rare non-Met local appearance. Even those who don’t follow the opera or recital scenes may remember Bernheim’s inspiring performances in the closing ceremonies of the Paris Olympics in 2024 and the reopening of Notre Dame de Paris later that year.

Appropriately for Berlioz, it was an evening of strong contrasts, between the pieces as well as within them. It opened with the table-setting Overture, an early composition in which Berlioz’s attempt to write a zesty appetizer à la Rossini ran up against his own volatile temperament and love of big splashes of primary orchestral colors.

From the robust brass call with trombone glissandos to the skittering strings to the jaunty melody with loud interjections to the furious allegro with cymbal crashes, Langrée and the orchestra took it all in stride and wrapped it with a hot coda, just the thing to kick off an exciting night in the theater.

What followed Thursday was, instead, a poetic song cycle, and, in this case, an unusually introspective performance of it.

Bernheim’s extraordinary vocal support and control enabled him to favor leisurely tempos, and dynamics in the piano to pianissimo range, through most of the six songs. The opening “Villanelle” was a murmur of love, which nevertheless carried into the hall with superb diction. In “Le spectre de la rose,” a ghost is singing, and of a dead flower at that, accompanied by the merest vibration of horns and pizzicato, and except for one passionate surge, Bernheim made it all touchingly clear, even at the edge of hearing. Singer and orchestra took a long pause before the next song.

The anguish of the bereaved boatman stung in the descending refrain of “Sur les lagunes,” as the watery orchestra rolled and growled underneath. The song “Absence” returned again and again to the line “Reviens, reviens” (Come back, come back), a vocal line much interrupted by pauses and sensitively shaped by singer and conductor together. Eager swells to mezzo forte and forte hinted that the singer had plenty of vocal power in reserve.

Bernheim, who had permitted himself only the most minimal gestures to this point, swayed a little and shaped phrases with his hands recalling the shadowy angelic presence around the tomb in “Au Cimetière.”  He became positively debonair when inviting his “fair maiden” on a voyage to the land of love in the final song, “L’île inconnue,” seductively modulating his tone from forward-placed and heroic to covered and confidential, while strings made gentle waves and flutes blew favorable winds.

The singer responded to the enthusiastic applause with an encore, the aria “Pourquoi me réveiller?” from Massenet’s Werther, which displayed the tenor power only hinted at in the Berlioz. (A new recording of Werther, with Bernheim in the title role, is due out this month.)

After intermission, the Symphonie fantastique got off to a worthy start, with conductor Langrée maximizing contrasts at every opportunity. And opportunities abounded, starting with the tentative opening measures and the outburst of racing strings that followed them.

The slim statement of the idée fixe motto theme gave way to a thicket of offbeat accents, all indicated by Langrée’s very hands-on conducting. Berlioz’s brilliant scoring remained transparent, whether the sections were joining together in crescendos or squabbling with each other. And Langrée always gave this volatile music a sense of going somewhere, maintaining dramatic tension until the soft close.

The waltz movement was fast, almost scherzo-like, with a one-to-a-bar bounce but no lilt, and the theme was sometimes a little rushed, resulting in loss of coordination. The orchestra had a silky, Straussian dance-band sound, at least.

The “Scene in the Fields” conveyed a feeling of great distances, beginning with the English horn’s pianissimo call and ending with the oboe’s offstage echo, and timpani thunder coming from far away to scarily close. In between, a lonely line for violins led to a beautiful blossoming of the orchestra and a radiant idée fixe.

Rushing the beat also spoiled the effect of the “March to the Scaffold,” which became more of a scuffle to the scaffold. No matter how brilliantly the brass blare and the cymbals crash, if the performance loses that unvarying, inexorable beat, the feeling of unavoidable doom goes with it.

In contrast, the “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath” unfolded in an atmosphere of well-organized chaos, even if the bell-clanger did lose his place at one point. One might wish the nasty dance of the motto theme in the E-flat clarinet had stood out a little more, but that’s a small quibble with such a wild party to enjoy.

Carnegie Hall presents the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel with soprano Marina Rebeka, tenor Jonas Kaufmann, baritone Ludovic Tézier and other artists, performing Puccini’s Tosca in concert, 7:30 p.m. Nov. 13. carnegiehall.org