The Philharmonic’s first program of the 24-25 season opened with a sparkling account of Mozart’s genial Concerto No.14 with Emanuel Ax. Written in 1784, K449 is the first of his mature piano concertos and the first composition he entered into a notebook which he kept until his death, specifying the date, title and main themes. Composed of equal parts playfulness and classical restraint, the graceful music profited from the pianist’s gentle and effortless touch. The elegant interplay between piano and ensemble shone throughout as Ax performed with lustrous legato and Michael Tilson Thomas drew brisk,responsive playing from the NYP. Ax ripped through the energetic opening of the first movement and the satisfyingly spacious Andantino was filled with lustrous sound and poetic beauty, but it was the exquisitely effervescent Finale, where he imbued Mozart’s lively and precise music with a buoyant, improvisatory spirit, that proved most memorable.
The simple elegance of the Mozart contrasted mightily with the tangled emotions of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, a composition with which Philharmonic has a distinguished and well-documented history. Prior to the orchestra’s first complete performance, under Willem Mengelberg in 1926, the first movement was performed at a 1911 memorial concert dedicated to the recently deceased composer, who had served as the orchestra’s Music Director from 1909 to 1911. Bruno Walter led the ensemble in the world-premiere recording in 1947 and Leonard Bernstein conducted it frequently during his eleven years as Music Director.
One of the premier interpreters of Mahler – he recorded all nine of the composer’s symphonies with the San Francisco Symphony between 2001 and 2009 – MTT held up his Mahlerian reputation in this concert. Three years after being diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, the most aggressive and deadly form of brain cancer, he was alert and committed during all 75 minutes of the performance, shaping a deliberately paced, highly nuanced and splendidly managed account. The most impressive playing came in the first movement, where the brass section was in especially fine form. Christopher Martin’s intonation of the trumpet fanfare which opens the Funeral March perfectly balanced the elegiac with the militaristic. The orchestra played as one throughout, with the music steadily building in intensity and then diminishing to end in utter desolation. In the stormy second movement, the cellos played their delicate, heartbreaking lament with focus and restraint, and there was gracefulness in the lively ländler rhythms of the central Scherzo. Under Thomas’s firm and steady conducting, the Adagietto, taken at a contemplative pace, flowed along naturally, never veering into excessive sentimentality. The Finale was marked by spirited back-and-forth between the violins seated antiphonally and the other instruments relished Mahler’s constantly varied melodic material all the way through to the colossal ending.
This performance was preceded by ones on September 12 and 13.
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