New York Classical Review

“The way Dvořák should sound,” read the ads for the Prague Philharmonia’s concert in Carnegie Hall Monday night, capping the orchestra’s U.S. tour. But before trying to make good on that boast, there was a little matter of Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Mozart to deal with.

Founded by the eminent conductor Jiři Bĕlohlávek during the cultural efflorescence that followed the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the Prague Chamber Philharmonia distinguished itself from a gaggle of other orchestras with similar names by focusing on the symphony orchestra’s foundational repertoire, composers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Although the ensemble has ventured widely since then—and dropped the “Chamber” from its name along the way—Monday’s program got back down to bedrock with the above-mentioned composers. The orchestra describes itself as “midway between chamber orchestra and small symphony orchestra in terms of format and repertoire,” and still proudly claims a chamber-music-like transparency and attention to detail.

That claim was borne out throughout the evening, starting with a bracing rendition of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, led by the orchestra’s chief conductor Emmanuel Villaume. Stark contrasts of pianissimo and forte heightened the drama, and one heard the string sections interacting with each other as one rarely does in this music.

Conducting without a baton, Villaume was a busy figure on the podium, not above acting out moments in the story the music was telling. He shook his fist at the Volscian army advancing on Rome, and slumped at the pianissimo close like the disgraced Coriolanus himself.

For sheer busy-ness, however, the conductor was topped by piano soloist Andrew von Oeyen in Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor, a piece composed in the “note-spinning” style favored by touring virtuosos of the time, which was mocked by the likes of Chopin and Schumann. But this was Mendelssohn, not Pixis or Kalkbrenner, and the blizzard of notes was mitigated by fetching tunes and sparkling figurations.

Von Oeyen’s digital prowess was unquestioned as the scales raced up and down the keyboard, and the brittleness of his attack on octaves and chords resembled what the piece might have sounded like on the edgy fortepianos of Mendelssohn’s day. Villaume drove the orchestra in lusty tuttis that kept the athletic excitement going.

The pianist led the way in the dreamy Andante with sensitive rubato and well-voiced chords, though the overall direction of the music wasn’t always clear. Notes spun like never before in the buoyant finale, the pianist resuming his blistering pace while the orchestra tripped the light fantastic behind him. Even the sentimental second theme sounded tongue in cheek.

The dazzled audience called van Oeyen back to the stage repeatedly, until he obliged them with an encore, the Adagio from Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in D minor, BWV 974 (after Marcello), played with more singing tone than he had used anywhere in the Mendelssohn.

Another classic concerto, Mozart’s No. 3 in G major for violin (“Strasbourg”), received a very different treatment, signaled by soloist Blake Pouliot’s strolling onstage in a long black coat and long white scarf, blinking in the lights as if surprised to find himself in Carnegie Hall with a live audience. Then he and Villaume gave a puckish performance full of droll glances at each other, finding little jokes in every phrase and inflating a minor-key episode to mock tragedy, sometimes losing the thread of the piece in search of a momentary effect.

In contrast, the Adagio was steady and meditative, Pouliot playing softly and with slim tone, as if for himself alone. Mostly far in the background, the orchestra weighed in with a glow of horns at cadences in the music. The amusingly ADHD finale, with its abrupt swings between elegant dances and a hearty Strasbourger folk tune, fared better in this performance’s casual atmosphere than the first movement did.

Pouliot too favored the audience with an encore, his own arrangement of the traditional Irish song “The Last Rose of Summer,” its tender, falling melody gently elaborated with double-stops.

How Dvořák should sound is a matter of personal preference, but one can report that his Eighth Symphony sounded exceptionally piquant, energetic and transparent on Monday night. (His mentor Brahms, it should be noted, actually preferred smaller ensembles, such as the Meiningen Court Orchestra, to perform his own symphonies.)

The first movement’s tumble of themes projected the distinctive character of each, and their interplay in the development section delighted the ear. Villaume kept this episodic music moving through an onrushing storm scene all the way to the headlong coda.

Tchaikovsky-like sighing strings set an utterly different tone for the Adagio, a lament punctuated by bird calls, soft at first but rising to an anguished cry. Strings again, now silken and swirling, defined the character of the third movement, shaped by Villaume’s broad gestures into scenes of one Viennese ballroom after another—at least until a cheeky folk tune in 4/4 time crashed the party at the end.

After the finale’s initial trumpet call, cellos glowed with the main theme on a cushion of woodwinds, and that horn razzberry in the fast variation never sounded sassier. Subsequent variations explored textures from lacy to massive, and moods from contented to bombastic to nostalgic, each vividly rendered by this imaginative conductor and ensemble, until the accelerando coda brought it all to an exhilarating close.

Not to be outdone by the soloists, the orchestra offered an encore of their own, a madcap performance of the overture to Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. Back in 1787, visiting Prague where the opera was a smash hit, Mozart exulted, “Here they talk of nothing but Figaro!”  Hearing today’s Prague musicians play the overture, one can understand why.