Seen and Heard International Concert Review

Philadelphia Music: After the Sopranos, the Cellists–by Bernard Jacobson

Rather like Noah’s Ark, the music season in Philadelphia seems to be filling up with pairs. After the two sopranos who began, respectively, the Philadelphia Orchestra season and the Kimmel Center’s own classical programming, it was the turn of two cellists–two musicians, this time, with an important link between them. Daniel Müller-Schott, the soloist in Strauss’ Don Quixote with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Verizon Hall on 23 September, numbers among his teachers Steven Isserlis, who opened the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia’s season three days later in the Center’s smaller Perelman Theater with Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1.

Müller-Schott makes a lovely sound and phrases most musically, so that his contribution to Don Quixote, abetted by a vivid portrayal of Sancho Panza by the orchestra’s principal violist, Roberto Díaz, made an excellent impression. I did not feel that the closing section, depicting the Don’s decline and death, was quite as moving as it can be, but that is perhaps an aspect of the solo part that this young cellist will take possession of with increasing maturity. The orchestra, under Christoph Eschenbach’s direction, played splendidly, as they had in the opening work on the program, Trainwork, by the American composer Augusta Read Thomas. Heard on this occasion for the first time in Philadelphia, the piece offered some arresting sonorities and some equally telling musical ideas, but, like a number of other contemporary concert-openers, it seemed to me to end–after a mere nine minutes–too soon to allow of a really satisfying working out of those ideas.

At all three Philadelphia Orchestra concerts I have heard this season, the absolutely wonderful sound of the orchestra itself has been a delight. Happily, after some structural work associated with the installation during the summer of the organ console, Verizon Hall has finally realized its potential as a great concert environment–just about on schedule, since the architect and acoustician warned us from the start that it would take three years for the sound to be fine-tuned to full satisfaction. At any rate, the orchestral balance now sounds pretty well ideal, and the strings–especially the violins–are now heard with a bloom, a sheen, and a strength that were not abundantly in evidence before this season.

Our second cellist of the week, Steven Isserlis, was making a welcome return to the Chamber Orchestra’s series in collaboration with Ignat Solzhenitsyn, now promoted from his previous principal-conductor role to full responsibility as music director. As I have warned readers before, I am associated with the Chamber Orchestra as program annotator and pre-concert lecturer, so I shall not go on at length about the orchestra’s playing. But I think it fair to say that Isserlis’s no-holds-barred take on the Shostakovich concerto surpassed any performance I have encountered in music that can too easily sound a shade lightweight. Not this time, for Isserlis dared all in the way of uninhibitedly incisive articulation and richly resonant tone, and carried all before him as a result. The concerto emerged much closer in stature than I have previously thought it to the composer’s Second Cello Concerto, a great musical and human document that deserves to be heard much more often.

As it turned out, there was a string soloist also on the Philadelphia Orchestra’s second subscription program of the season, but it is perhaps kinder not to say too much about Sarah Chang’s performance of the Dvorák Violin Concerto: the sparkling finale brought some impressively feathery articulation from this young player, but to maintain the same kind of high-octane tight vibrato in the slow movement deprived the work of any trace of repose. Several members of the audience, in consequence, expressed themselves less than enchanted by the concerto itself, which is a pity, because in the hands of master it can indeed be a bewitching piece, especially in that central Adagio.

On this occasion there was, fortunately, plenty to enjoy on either side of the concerto. Making an overdue debut with the orchestra, the Czech conductor Jiri Belohávek began the evening with a riveting interpretation of Martinu’s radiant Frescoes of Piero della Francesca, and ended it with the most beautiful performance of Dvorák’s New World it has ever been my good fortune to hear. The slow movement, in particular, was a dream of loveliness, floating apparently effortlessly on the conductor’s clear, graceful, and mercifully unsubdivided beat. I can only hope that it will not be long before Belohávek is invited back. He is one of those relatively rare conductors who really work on orchestral sound, and the dividends were amply apparent throughout this inspiriting evening.

Bernard Jacobson

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