Orchestrapeak

Last night Gustavo Dudamel led the Philharmonic in Tania León’s Imágenes mestizas and Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, in a performance added recently to the concert run following heavy demand. León’s new work began in an almost Ravelian atmosphere, though without much of Ravel’s beauty. English horn and clarinet solos emerged from a bright, unsettled orchestral field; Stravinsky was nearby as well, especially in the sharper rhythmic writing. The piece seemed less concerned with song than with a succession of gestures or licks, each entering, pointing somewhere, and being displaced by the next. At moments it sounded almost as though the orchestra were directing traffic. It was not frantic, but it simply never settled.

There is a temptation with music of this sort to reach too quickly for jazz as an explanation, but I did not hear much jazz in it. What León has instead is a recognizable orchestral manner, assembled from color, attack, and motion rather than pure song, and this places Imágenes mestizas above a fair amount of contemporary orchestral writing. The work was without pretension, which is no small virtue, but I was left uncertain whether it had actually said anything. León was in attendance, and Dudamel brought her to the stage afterward to a laudatory reception.

Mahler’s Fifth followed after intermission, and from the opening trumpet call the sound was properly weighted. It was dark, though not as dark as I have heard this orchestra play Mahler in the past, and the first movement had an excellent style in the strings: enough lift to keep the funeral march moving, but never so much that its gravity disappeared. The antiphonal violins were indispensable, the second violins answering with extraordinary clarity, and from my seat in the second row the moving inner textures beneath Mahler’s sustained climaxes could be heard with great precision. Once again the new hall deserves praise. Avery Fisher could swallow exactly this sort of filigree; David Geffen Hall lets it speak.

The orchestra played magnificently. David Cooper, the Philharmonic’s new principal horn, was a particular cause for gratitude. It has taken roughly a decade to replace the indomitable Philip Myers with another musician who sounds fully like a principal in the old sense: not merely secure, but commanding enough to give the section a center. Richard Deane and others served admirably in the intervening years, and the horn section remained strong, but Cooper already gives the section the authority of a true principal. Joseph Alessi was superb as ever, while Christopher Martin had a less immaculate evening than usual, though even an imperfect night from him remains distinguished.

The Scherzo contained some of the most astonishing playing of the evening. Its pizzicato passages, especially in the front desks, had remarkable resonance and definition; the strings throughout were unusually animated physically, with a degree of visible chamber-music engagement one does not always associate with New York. The Adagietto was taken at a sensible moderate pace. I could have used softer playing in several places, but the basic sonority remained finely layered.

Dudamel remains more complicated. He gestures and phrases very well, and he plainly excites this orchestra, but he can become too large too quickly: a buildup begins and, almost before it has gathered its own necessity, he is already at full physical and emotional extension. At points his whole body seemed to be conducting so violently that one wonders when he will need to visit an osteopath. For the playing musician, Mahler of this difficulty cannot be survived at that temperature; the player must pace himself, relax where possible, and save energy for what is still to come.

Still, the result was remarkable. I have sometimes thought of Dudamel as one of those conductors who can draw the last two or three percent from an elite orchestra, perhaps the minimum qualification for being a very good conductor. Last night the margin felt closer to ten. He is an icon in some sense, with a recognizable manner, and the Philharmonic appears eager to play for him. The familiar New York weight was present, especially in the brass and lower strings, yet in its transparency, antiphonal conversation, and physical animation this was among the most European New York Mahler performances I can remember hearing.

The interpretation itself is harder to name. Mahler’s Fifth is less explicit about its meaning than several of the other symphonies. The Sixth gives us tragedy; the Second resurrection; the Ninth farewell. The Fifth moves from C-sharp minor to D major, from funeral march to blazing affirmation, and one can reasonably draw parallels with the Second Symphony sans text: life over death, and therefore, at least potentially, a religious argument. That was not what I heard last night. Dudamel’s Fifth was personal but not interior, joyful rather than metaphysical, ecstatic rather than transcendent. “Weighted lightness” may be the closest sonic description: an extraordinary display of orchestral facility that still retained substance.

The gentleman next to me, evidently a serious Mahler listener as he listed his favorite Mahler symphonies in order to me, was ecstatic at the end, and it was easy to understand why. This was an excellent early statement in Dudamel’s tenure and some of the finest orchestral playing I have heard from the Philharmonic. Yet my favorite Mahler performances retain some sense that the final triumph has been won against the ultimate things. Last night the orchestra played as though the music mattered enormously, but mostly as music: with delight, sincerity, virtuosity, and collective exhilaration. It was deeply sincere, though not quite grave enough in its conception.