New York Classical Review

For the past four seasons, the New York Philharmonic has been in a kind of limbo. The orchestra has played well—extremely so this season—but with a parade of guest conductors until Gustavo Dudamel takes over as the new music director in the fall of 2026. Even with the high quality, there has been no sense of strategic direction or of what the future might promise.

Dudamel is leading the Philharmonic’s closing weeks, and the season’s final subscription program was Mahler’s Symphony No. 7, which opened Thursday night in David Geffen Hall. It was the kind of performance that had one feeling tremendous excitement for the future.

This was also one of the finest Mahler performances one has heard, and easily the finest of this evocative but oblique work. It was also a reminder of how the Philharmonic is still Mahler’s orchestra, with a way with the music that no other ensemble has, even orchestras like the Concertgebouw, Vienna Philharmonic, and Czech Philharmonic that premiered his works. The NY Phil understands the complex sounds of Mahler’s genius orchestration, and also get at the psychology in those sounds, the insoluble conflicts of feelings, the beauty and the toughness.

In that, Dudamel was a real partner. This was the prominent quality at last week’s concerts as well, with conductor and orchestra as one ensemble, making music together with the energy and joy of collective purpose. To that, he added an exceptional command of the large-scale form of the piece, the proportions in each movement, and the details within balances and phrases.

Like every Mahler symphony, a performance hangs in the balance with the tempo and rhythms of the first few measures. Both were ideal, the strings with the pace of smooth oarsmen, the dotted rhythms of the tenor horn solo proud but unobtrusive. While Dudamel’s tempos were on the quicker side of each indication in the score, these were not only within reason but felt perfect throughout the performance. Inside these choices in the opening Langsam and the other movements, his tempo modulations were exceptionally precise while also being deeply musical and expressive. Each change was meaningful and dramatic in the moment and set up the one to follow, in a long and marvelous line of shifting moods and colors.

Most performances of the Seventh shoot for atmosphere—the symphony is packed with weirdness and unexpected moods—and conductors try to shoehorn the sequence of five movements into a linear narrative typical of Mahler’s other symphonies. Some of the biggest names on the podium have crashed and burned doing this. This performance took each movement as is, but that didn’t mean a cool, objective approach. This embraced the imagism and dream logic in the music with relish.

That made the languid section in the opening movement a kind of pastorale, or massive landscape painting with a balmy scene in front and a threatening storm in the back. The “Nachtmusik” sections felt like Berlioz—dark but often very warm, scenes of dancing and contemplation flowing by. The Scherzo was fantastically strange and thrilling, the strings slicing through their descending portamento, the tenor horn malevolent.

The sound of all of this was incredible. Dudamel divided the violins, which opened up the textures to reveal individual details one rarely hears, like a bizarrely insistent piccolo note, and precise bits of string articulation. The cellos and violas were sinewy, again a better sound for this symphony than a lusher one. One heard the interplay between and across sections more clearly than ever before, and the spikiness that is a key feature of the symphony.

The Rondo-Finale is toughest to pull off, major key all the way, fewer changes in mood, almost random snatches of previous movements. Thursday night this was full of life, light, and energy, a lively but not extreme tempo. It was agile, the orchestra played the loudest passages, like the opening and the closing pages, at enormous, volcanic volume, but with no heaviness, like streamers of fireworks turned into sound.

This program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. nyphil.org