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Schubert: cond. Christoph Eschenbach, Philadelphia Orchestra, Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center, Philadelphia, 15.5.2008 (BJ)


The era that began five seasons ago with Christoph Eschenbach’s installation as the Philadelphia Orchestra’s seventh music director came to an end, so far as home audiences are concerned, with his final program in that post (Schubert’s 8th and 9th symphonies), and I, for one, am greatly saddened that an association so rich in both promise and artistic achievement should have fallen victim apparently to divergences of musical vision between the conductor and his marvelous talented players. By the time these words appear on the musicweb site, they will be performing together on tour in Asia, making superb music, and no doubt enjoying the kind of audience acclaim that only exceptional interpretative insight and transcendental execution can hope to arouse.

I speak as an outsider – though as a Philadelphia resident at the time I witnessed Eschenbach’s first seasons from close quarters–but my impression is that the divergences I speak of are mostly concerned with his flexibility and perceived unpredictability in the matter of tempo. He rehearses, I have heard it said, at one speed, and then, quite aside from shifts of pulse within a performance, bases the actual performance in a different tempo. Come on, my friends: what are you complaining about? Great conductors, from Furtwängler down to this orchestra’s own former music director Riccardo Muti, have done that, and it is what has distinguished their work from that of the more strait-jacketed practitioners we frequently dismiss as mere time-beaters or “traffic policemen.” I recall a conversation with Muti himself, just before the orchestra set off for a European tour in 1991. There had been three or four performances of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony in preparation for its performance in Hamburg, and he spoke of how he needed to re-establish the brisk tempo of the first movement, which had slowed down somewhat after the first of those preliminary outings–but, he added, “I mustn’t tell the players beforehand–they have to be surprised.” Surprised they were, and they played as if perched on the edges of their seats, and the Eroica I heard in Hamburg was one of the most exciting and satisfying I have ever heard.

It is not necessary for me to claim Furtwänglerian stature for Eschenbach in order to insist that the freedom, the “unpredictability” if you like, of his interpretative approach has over these last five years yielded many performances that bring the Philadelphia Orchestra’s great musical past back to mind. After Muti’s departure, ten years under the leadership of Wolfgang Sawallisch had produced nothing remotely unpredictable but also next to nothing of any especial musical imagination or insight. To put it bluntly, during those years, it seemed at Philadelphia Orchestra concerts as if nothing at all was happening. And then, with Eschenbach’s arrival, we were suddenly confronted once again with the old richness of artistic and cultural reference, yet with a freshness of vision that was all the new man’s own, and with a blessed willingness to take the sort of risks without which there is no point in performing music in the first place.

In saying all this, I must be careful to add that there was nothing at all outré or disorienting about Eschenbach’s conducting in this final program. The program itself was a gem: the “Unfinished” and “Great C-major” symphonies make a pairing that I have never previously encountered, but that, once experienced, establishes itself as a marriage of content and message made in music heaven. And these performances, without a trace of either eccentricity or routine, did more than justice to both works, realizing in full vividness their Protean expressive character. The orchestra played with an elegance, a refinement of tone, a hair-trigger rhythmic precision, and a generosity of feeling that made the notion of conductor-player dissension seem flatly unbelievable. Eschenbach, too, was generous in regard to Schubert’s marked repeats, omitting only the two in the da capo of the Ninth’s scherzo and the one in its finale. In the scherzo, the delicacy of the violins’ articulation had to be heard to be believed. Among many eloquent solos, principal oboist Richard Woodhams’s glorious tone and phrasing may perhaps be singled out.

It was a great evening, of a kind that I suspect the Philadelphia audience–and the Philadelphia Orchestra–may well before long find themselves looking back on wistfully, and it may be also with a touch of self-reproach for allowing this gifted musician and dedicated man to leave so prematurely. At least they can console themselves with the thought that he will, apparently, be returning with some frequency as a guest conductor.

Bernard Jacobson

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