The esteemed Vienna Philharmonic is in residency in California this month and was at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall last week for three concerts sponsored by Cal Performances and led by Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, music director of The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Orchestre Métropolitain in Montreal.
I heard the Vienna Philharmonic’s performance on Thursday, March 6, which featured Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 4 (“Tragic”) and Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”). (The orchestra will reprise these works at Costa Mesa’s Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall on March 11 as part of its residency for the Philharmonic Society of Orange County.)
March 6 was a red-letter date, Nézet-Séguin’s 50th birthday. In an unannounced encore amid the curtain calls at the end of the program, concertmaster Rainer Honeck surprised the conductor by leading the orchestra in a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday.” Nézet-Séguin remarked afterward that he’d never had so many people play and sing “Happy Birthday” for him — and do it so excellently, too.
Thursday’s concert stood out for a more significant reason, however. Among the three programs the Vienna Philharmonic offered in Berkeley, this was the only one to omit a heaven-storming cathedral of sound — the other two evenings featured music by Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. Here was the orchestra’s best chance of not overloading the delicate Zellerbach acoustics.
And the orchestra didn’t. Though this was a robust presentation of Schubert’s and Dvořák’s symphonies, with big and brassy tuttis, the sound never became conspicuously coarse or blaring. The performance was dramatic and even thrilling, if somewhat indulgent (rather than profound) in interpretation, but it was an engrossing experience all the same.
Nézet-Séguin contributed to this effect by conducting in extremes but with a limit on exaggeration. Introductions, lyrical themes, and quiet cadences were notably slow and almost cautious, though ultimately tender. Here, Nézet-Séguin’s gestures gently shaped the music. This approach encouraged the effective buildup, in volume and tempo, of the climaxes.
Those climaxes often arrived with fury, accumulating a power that overcame any repetition in the thematic material. Larry Rothe’s program note mentioned that Schubert’s Fourth, despite its nickname, has nothing like the tragedy of the composer’s Symphony No. 8 (“Unfinished”). But in this performance, fierce outbursts in the Andante movement were strikingly reminiscent of moments in the Andante con moto of the “Unfinished.”
In the Dvořák, short exclamations carried less and rather melted away into quietude.
The greatest gift of the Vienna Philharmonic is the ensemble’s sound. Each of the string sections has a distinct tone, and on Thursday, the separated layering of individual lines was always audible and richly textured, even underneath active wind playing. Placing the violas at the right front of the stage, opposite the first violins, gave welcome emphasis to some attractive counterthemes in Dvořák’s finale. The chamber music texture at the conclusion of the “New World” Symphony’s Largo was even more strongly differentiated and clarified in a way rarely heard.
In the Schubert, where the role of the winds is limited, their playing sounded as if it was floating gently on top of the strings. In the Dvořák, which has more action in the woodwinds, not to mention the brass and timpani, these instruments punched aggressively in the climaxes and dispatched flurries of notes. Quieter music brought out a broad, smooth tone, even in the buzzier wind instruments. The famous English horn solo in Dvořák’s Largo was played by Wolfgang Plank with elegant grace.
After “Happy Birthday,” Nézet-Séguin alluded to a tradition that it’s the birthday celebrant who gives out the presents and offered one to the audience, leading the orchestra in a regular encore, the furiant of Dvořák’s Slavonic Dance, Op. 46, No. 1.
