Seen and Heard
International Concert Review
Mozart and Strauss:
Emanuel Ax, Richard Woodhams, Philadelphia Orchestra, Christoph Eschenbach,
21 January (BJ)
A major snowstorm having been promised for the weekend, I switched
my tickets from Saturday evening to Friday afternoon, because this
was one program I definitely did not want to miss. The most delectable
of the four orchestral programs in Christoph Eschenbach’s
month-long Late Great Works festival, it framed Strauss’ Oboe
Concerto and Metamorphosen between Mozart’s Zauberflöte
overture and his last piano concerto, in B-flat major, K. 595. Nor
did the event in any way fall short of what the bill promised.
It was evident at once in the overture that the orchestra had already
settled down well in Eschenbach’s new – that is, classic–seating
arrangement, with first and second violins ranged to his left and
right, and the basses over on the left behind the cellos. Though
without any hint of the cloying over-ripeness in which Eugene Ormandy,
for half a century, used to bedizen his Mozart, the tutti tone was
rich, warm, and solid, while the offbeat accents in the fugato statement
of the main Allegro theme were at once lithely and unexaggeratedly
pointed. At the other end of the program, the concerto blossomed
under the hands of Emanuel Ax, whom you might call a natural rather
than a doctrinaire stylist. From his own experience as a pianist,
Eschenbach knows the piece from the inside, and he dovetailed every
orchestral entry neatly with the contributions of the soloist, whose
light yet never brittle tone was ideal for this understated yet
poignant music, and who offered some delicate melodic embellishment
where appropriate and, especially in the finale, a richly varied
touch at all dynamic levels, particularly toward the pianissimo
end of the spectrum.
The juxtaposition of the two Strauss works proved to be highly illuminating.
They share an important thematic element, a figure of four notes
on the same pitch followed by a descending scale – but it
is as if the Oboe Concerto views this material from a standpoint
of luxuriant serenity, whereas in Metamorphosen it informs
Strauss’ deeply pessimistic artistic reaction, at the end
of the Second World War, to the devastation of the heritage he held
dear. In Richard Woodhams, the Philadelphia Orchestra possesses
a principal oboist without peer: his was a magical performance,
the sound both opulent and cleanly focused, the phrasing full of
vivacity and charm. Then, after intermission, Eschenbach crafted
as eloquent and cohesive a reading of Metamorphosen as
I can remember hearing. With its intricate scoring for 23 solo strings,
the piece can sound muddy if performed with anything but perfect
intonation, but that is exactly what the Philadelphia Orchestra’s
expert string players gave it on this occasion. The opening paragraphs
had an almost visible sunset glow, and as Germany’s dark night
spread its shadows over the music, the final explicit quotation
from the funeral march of Beethoven’s Eroica took
on a fatefulness as emotionally searing as it was musically inevitable.
Bernard Jacobson
