Critic’s Notebook: Manfred Honeck Scintillating with the VSO; Kavakos brooding in Korngold
Also published in Die Presse: Dirigent Manfred Honeck ließ im Musikverein die Funken sprühen
E.W.Korngold (& Barber) |
L.v.Beethoven |
Exuberance and Musical Joy with Manfred Honeck
The Vienna Symphony Orchestra, inspired-sounding, under the West-Austrian maestro from Pittsburgh
There aren’t many conductors who make you think: No matter what, where, or with whom – I need to be there and hear them. Manfred Honeck – who, over the past 17 years, has turned the fine Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra into one of the world’s most interesting ensembles – is one of them. Saturday night’s concert with the Vienna Symphony at the Musikverein offered ample reasons why.
Perhaps not quite yet in the Austrian premiere of Lera Auerbach’s Frozen Dreams, a joint commission by Pittsburgh, the Vienna Symphony, and the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (alias dictus Musikverein) – where one’s ears were primarily busy just taking in the new music. Soundscapes (a bowed gong, singing glasses, eventually the string sections) gently crept forward, pushing against the rustling restlessness of the hall. A wry smile, recalling Alfred Schnittke, underlies the piece when Auerbach lets familiar-sounding tunes dart through the abstract tectonics of her musical landscape – or when she just brusquely wipes away those friendly gestures with a broad orchestral swipe.
Perhaps also still not quite in Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto: Not here, simply because the soloist, Leonidas Kavakos, was squarely at the center of it all. It’s pretty safe to say that this concerto has arrived in the repertoire: this was already the fourth time it’s been heard in Vienna this season, and thrice with major performers. In February with the Tonkünstler and Simone Lamsma and in May with the VSO (!) and Renaud Capuçon.
Kavakos, by nature not a grandstanding, overwrought kind of soloist, is perfectly suited to this music that straddles the concert hall and Hollywood. Full-bodied and penetrating, charged with inner tension, and – despite a surprisingly broad and heavy vibrato – never soupy, he set the tone for the performance. That even an intonation-animal like him brushes up against the limits of ambiguity in the tricky Andante shows that Korngold offers his performers beauty, but not ease. (Capuçon and Lamsma were cleaner, more distict here, though neither brought anything like his expressiveness to the work.) The finale buzzed and hummed with energy. After that, his encore – the Bach "Loure" from Partita No.3 in E major, abstract and played right at the edge – felt like a glass of ice water.
Finally, in the Beethoven, Honeck’s influence came into focus. There was so much to discover and enjoy in this Seventh Symphony, for all its familiarity. It started with the fundamentals: articulation, phrasing. The crescendos were organic. Even at breakneck speed, there was never haste; never panic over bungled notes. Never lost in minutiae, he kept the momentum flowing just right. Sparks flew with intensity.
P.S.: This merits a little rant: The VSO is bloody lucky to have Honeck return to them regularly (he will be back in October with Anne-Sofie Mutter!); the Vienna Phil insane for not trying to tie him to the orchestra of which he was a violist-member for ten years. Is it, because his brother Rainer is their concert-master? Something is decidedly amiss when the Vienna Phil evidently avoids a conductor who, on paper, would be a perfect fit, one who is among the best regarded, most exciting maestros of our time, and who has such ample feeling for the 'Viennese style'. He should have been conducting the bloody New Year's concert oodles of times by now, instead the orchestras he has conducted at the Musikverein include the Pittsburgh and Munich Philharmonics, the Vienna Symphony, the Webern SO, a bloody student orchestra, the Jeunesse Youth Orchestra, the Swedish RSO, the MDRSO, and the ORF-RSO... but not the Vienna Phil. Anyone suggesting that anything but politicking and shady Viennese machinations are the reson for this, does not know this snake-put of a town well enough, methinks.
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