Formidable Bruckner launches Philadelphia Orchestra season

Just 16 hours after their typically festive opening-night gala, the Philadelphia Orchestra got down to the business of starting their new subscription season. In the freshly rechristened Marian Anderson Hall, they offered a serious program of Beethoven and Bruckner. Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 2 in B flat major requires an orchestra to decide an approach: will they treat it as a last gasp of the Classical era or luxuriate in its forward-looking qualities? No doubt this ensemble – famous for its sense of lushness and repose, and sometimes stodgy in pre-19th century works – made the right choice by leaning into its proto-Romantic sensibility.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin launched the performance with a touch of purposeful misdirection: the opening bars sounded stylish and snappy in the way you might expect from a more historically informed outfit. In short order, though, the tranquil beginning took a weighty turn, full of warm tones and expansive phrasing. Nézet-Séguin demonstrated excellent control of volume, bringing the forces down to a whisper before raising the dial on juicy chords that sent shivers down the spine. The orchestra found an especially satisfying impishness in the humorous Molto allegro finale, where Nézet-Séguin’s preference for accelerated tempos seemed right at home. The total effect was a best-of-both-worlds viewpoint: while keeping an eye toward tradition, the orchestra also fitted the music to its own strengths.

Seong-Jin Cho proved an ill-suited soloist to this conceptualization. Sounding wan and monochromatic throughout, the young South Korean pianist entirely lacked wit. Repeated phrases in the cadenza emerged without a sense of transformation – no rubato or ornaments, variations of dynamics or color. He seemed only in his element in the bright, high passages of the Adagio, though here too he ran the risk of sounding lachrymose. Although his foot rarely left the pedal, Cho was occasionally inaudible, and his bantamweight interpretation was at odds with the orchestra throughout. An encore, the Vivace molto movement of Haydn’s Piano Sonata in E minor (Hob XVI:34), suffered similarly from a lack of imagination.

Following intermission, Bruckner’s Symphony no. 7 in E major returned to the repertoire after an eleven-year absence. If Nézet-Séguin fostered a surprising richness in his accompaniment of the Beethoven, he achieved a similar but opposite feat here: at times this mammoth score sounded downright intimate. This is not to say the music was ever wimpy. The opening theme rose from the cellos, basses and violas with an enveloping abundance, buffeted by the special shimmer of the strings, and the cymbal crash that closes the Adagio caused the woman in front of me to leap from her seat. But have the woodwinds ever sounded so delicate, or the brass so admirably restrained (and well tuned)? Has this composer’s lyricism been so plainly evident? Perhaps not in my experience.

Throughout the 65-minute performance, phrases could sound stately one moment, impassioned the next. Don Liuzzi’s timpani, thrumming like an unsettled heartbeat, might be interrupted by the Alpine harmony of Jeffrey Khaner’s flute. Bruckner isn’t always the ideal venue by which to judge solo playing, but the newly installed Principal Trumpet Esteban Batallán (late of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) made a wily impression in the opening phrases of the Scherzo. But you come to this composer for the whole, not the parts. By the time the initial theme returned in the finale, it was clear Nézet-Séguin had taken the listeners on a journey that wouldn’t soon be forgotten.