Philharmonic opens season with a sentimental journey for MTT, Ax
It seems to have become mandatory for the conductor and the soloist to hug each other after a concerto performance. But Thursday night in David Geffen Hall, something different happened: Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and pianist Emanuel Ax hugged each other before a note was played.
As the pianist, 75, and the conductor, nearing his 80th birthday, walked onstage slowly and a little stiffly to open the New York Philharmonic’s 2024-25 season, they were greeted not with the usual hello-nice-to-see-you applause but with an enormous ovation that seemed to take even these beloved artists by surprise. In response, they spontaneously embraced, and the audience’s roar rose to fortissimo. It’s no secret that many people at a symphony concert get there with the aid of canes and walkers, but on this night even younger onlookers were swept along on the wave.
One must thank the Philharmonic’s “gap year” between music directors for this memorable moment. With Jaap van Zweden departed and Gustavo Dudamel not yet available to take the reins, the orchestra turned to Tilson Thomas, a local favorite, to lead its opening night.
The presence of this smiling brain cancer survivor on the Geffen stage seemed to symbolize the survival of symphonic music and the institutions that make it, as the cultural and financial ground shifts under their feet.
Appropriately, the conductor brought his favorite composer with him, Gustav Mahler, and the funeral-to-party scenario of the latter’s Fifth Symphony.
But first, there was Mozart to attend to, his Piano Concerto No. 14 in E-flat major, K. 449. Although, as of last summer, Lincoln Center Inc. no longer considers Mozart a marketable brand, on Thursday its tenant the Philharmonic, with a boost from the two distinguished guests, produced a Mozart performance that would be hard to top for vigor and even sensuality.
The long orchestral exposition of a Classical-era concerto can seem a dreary ritual postponing the soloist’s impatiently awaited entrance. Under MTT’s baton Thursday, this mandatory business had the anticipatory zest of an opera overture.
When his turn came, Ax seemed to make Mozart’s quicksilver thoughts spring effortlessly from the keyboard. Along with full-bodied yet lucid tone, the pianist showed a modesty of manner befitting the concerto’s first performer, Mozart’s gifted pupil Barbara Ployer.
The pianist’s gleaming sound and airy fioritura in the Andantino brought to mind Vladimir Horowitz’s advice “to play Mozart like Chopin and Chopin like Mozart.” Both composers sent their piano pupils to the opera to learn about phrasing and ornamentation, and on Thursday the Polish-born pianist’s Chopin sensibility enlivened this tender slow movement.
Similarly, the finale’s busy fingerwork was unfailingly melodious, never percussive or mechanical. MTT and the orchestra were right there with spicy rejoinders, amusing transformations of the rondo theme, and a leggiero coda that kept the concerto airborne to the end.
Amid applause, the pianist reached up to hug the conductor on the podium, then lent a hand as he descended. The two bowed to the audience, then to the orchestra, and were repeatedly called back to the stage—a custom that may be going out of fashion in classical concerts, but seemed driven on Thursday by a genuine reluctance to part with these two gentlemen.
Tilson Thomas returned after intermission, signaling the orchestra to stand and, in the spirit of the occasion, shaking hands not just with concertmaster Frank Huang but with all eight front-chair players ringing the podium. Then he and the massive, stage-filling ensemble gave a Mahler performance that was as colorful and superbly managed as one could wish for.
The trumpet call announcing the opening funeral march artfully walked the line between militant and elegiac, a foretaste of the touchingly inflected theme that marched to the slow, inexorable beat. The large orchestra seemed to move as one, and maintained dead-on intonation even in the most exposed passages for woodwinds and horns.
The fast movement that concluded the symphony’s Part I came off with excellent energy and accuracy, but a little short of the “greatest vehemence” the composer called for in the score. One became aware of what was missing in this otherwise admirable performance: a sense of dramatic urgency for what was, after all, an instrumental opera in three acts.
In the scherzo-like Part II, amid the whip-smart dialogue and the astonishing originality of Mahler’s scoring, one felt the need for a stronger contrast of mood with the other movements, the better to set off the achingly sexy and sad Adagietto that opened Part III.
Tilson Thomas took the latter at a meditative pace, closer to a true adagio, and in a persistently soft dynamic, minimizing gushy crescendos until near the end. If, as alleged, this movement was a love letter from the newlywed composer to his wife Alma, MTT’s veiled performance Thursday was a reminder that this music has accompanied some famous leave-takings as well.
Like another famous Fifth—Beethoven’s—this symphony closed with an entire movement triumphantly asserting its home key. Mahler kept it interesting with intricate fugatos and more magic tricks of scoring, and Tilson Thomas made it roll and yawp unpredictably, dropping into a suspenseful pianissimo before a joyful rush and a grand brass chorale at the end.
If this performance didn’t quite realize the full emotional arc of Mahler’s hour-and-a-quarter-long piece, it certainly revealed the New York Philharmonic as a finely tuned and regulated musical instrument, which one hopes this season’s parade of guest conductors will make the most of.
The program will be repeated 2 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Sunday. nyphil.org
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