At most symphony concerts, the worst disturbance might be a poorly timed cough. But on Sunday, March 23, demonstrations against the Israel Philharmonic’s performance at Davies Symphony Hall began long before the first downbeat — and continued throughout the evening, both outside the concert and within.
“They’re killing the children,” one protestor in the hall screamed. “Go back to Gaza,” someone else retorted. While the security hung back, a trio of audience members pinned a demonstrator to the ground as onlookers cheered.
If not for these considerable political disturbances, it would have been a fine if not especially memorable performance from a musical perspective. A brief 20th-century piece began the program. Standing in for a concerto were a couple of neat works featuring two of the orchestra’s capable principal players. The main event was Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, a crowd favorite that practically plays itself.
That’s not to downplay the contributions of the musicians, particularly in such a charged setting. Music Director Lahav Shani, a charismatic young conductor, coaxed a more delicate sound out of his orchestra than is often heard at Davies. (He had neither a baton nor, much of the time, a score.) In the concertante works, both soloists rose to the occasion. Cellist Haran Meltzer sensitively phrased Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, and flutist Guy Eshed accented the many moods — sweet, then spitting — of Leonard Bernstein’s Halil.
Skirmishing audience members’ shouts, which came loudly and often, added dramatic tension. Indeed, the push to the end of Tchaikovsky’s slow movement might not have felt so urgent had not a minutes-long brawl in the terrace seats rendered earlier sections of the music inaudible. In this fraught environment, it was admittedly difficult to appreciate some of the shapes that Shani brought out in the symphony — an especially boisterous pizzicato in the third movement’s waltz, for example, and an unusually weighty finale.
Each movement, played without pause, could hardly settle. Such brisk pacing did heighten the harmonic uplift from the foreboding end of the first movement to the unabashed romance of the second. Yet it was jarring when the waltz barreled into the finale’s processional in what seemed less like an artistic decision and more a tactic to ward off further interruptions.
Still, the playing here was assured and only grew more so as the performance persisted. Earlier in the evening, particularly in the Bruch, Shani’s conducting prioritized expression over rhythm. A few entrances were blurry. But in the Tchaikovsky, the ensemble only got tighter and tighter, ending in a fittingly triumphant transformation of the melancholy motif that had dogged the piece’s previous movements. “Complete resignation before Fate,” Tchaikovsky wrote as he planned the symphony’s scenario and overall structure — though we know little of what the composer thought of the finished work.
The Philharmonic’s choice of music for its North American tour (which is being underwritten by the American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic and stops next at Costa Mesa’s Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall on March 26) could be read as an appeal for alliance. The concert began with the U.S. and Israeli national anthems (both countries’ flags flanking the stage) and ended with an encore of the “Nimrod” movement from Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations, written in tribute to the composer’s friends.
The program carried an anti-violence message, too. Bernstein dedicated Halil, whose central motif is an anguished major-minor cluster chord, to an Israeli flute student who was killed during the Yom Kippur War. In the cadenza, the soloist comes up against a torrent of percussion.
Prayer, the string piece that opened the program, was written by Israeli composer Tzvi Avni in honor of his father, who was killed during the 1936–1939 Arab Revolt. The music’s melody muses first in the violas alone, growing resolute as the other sections join in and finally cresting in a vigorous dance that sparkles with quartal harmonies. On Sunday, it was the quieter moments — the glassy harmonics and shimmering tremolos — that left the deepest impressions. No one said a word.
