Native New Yorker Karina Canellakis made an impressive (delayed by maternity) NY Philharmonic debut conducting a wide-ranging but mostly meditative program which also featured the debut of pianist Alice Sara Ott.
The evening opened with a superb performance of Anton Webern’s contemplative Six Pieces for Orchestra. Composed in 1909 for an exceptionally large ensemble, it was revised in 1928 for a substantially reduced – but still enormous instrumentation of 9 woodwinds, 13 brass, augmented strings and a huge percussive section, deployed on this occasion. Like all of Webern’s oeuvre, it is brief (10 minutes), with one movement only 11 measures long. The precise, pointillistic score, the most powerful and personal of the composer's early atonal period, features lean, frequently soloistic textures in episodes associated with the death of his beloved mother. Canellakis and the orchestra communicated the full strength of the work, gracing it with warmth, weight and intensity, but without exaggeration. The most compelling of the pieces was the fourth, a funeral march, where the atmospheric and menacing ostinatos built up to a ferocious final climax.
Contrasting strikingly with the Webern was Richard Strauss’ lushly expansive tone poem, Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration), which depicts the final hours in the life of an idealistic and dedicated artist. With sweeping gestures, Canellakis shaped a resplendent, exquisitely sculpted account – richly colored, perfectly paced, deeply affecting – in which the Philharmonic players were at their finest. The strings unveiled a sound both powerful and elegant, and there were many fine solo contributions, most notably from Robert Langevin’s nimble flute, Anthony McGill’s crisply intoned clarinet and Ryan Roberts’ evocative English horn.
In another Philharmonic debut – this one delayed for years because of the pandemic – Alice Sara Ott gleefully romped through Maurice Ravel’s jazz-inflected Piano Concerto in G major. With her sound ideally suited to the lighthearted music, masterfully supported by Canellakis, this was a superbly polished interpretation. Distinguished by flawless phrasing, glittering glissandos and spicy staccato chords, Ott’s exuberant rendition of this relatively compact concerto delivered the most exciting moments of the evening. As the mood alternated between effusive and reflective, she perfectly managed the acrobatic as well as the more lyrical episodes. The central Adagio assai was sublime, with its chamber like opening piano solo exquisitely shaded, but the most magical moments came near the end as Ryan Roberts’ mellow English horn sounded its graceful melody while Ott’s delicately executed scales flowed up and down the top half of the keyboard. In the Presto finale, the pianist’s light, flickering fingerwork was delightful as she and the orchestra conveyed all the music’s vivacity and wit. There was an encore: a dreamlike rendering of Erik Satie’s Gnossienne no. 1.
Alexander Scriabin’s ultra-romantic and aptly titled Poem of Ecstasy, which Henry Miller once described as “a bath of ice, cocaine and rainbows”, ended the program. Orchestrated for a massive ensemble – including an expanded woodwind section, eight horns, five trumpets, a battery of percussion, celesta, organ and a large complement of strings – this turbulent opus presents a multitude of orchestral colors within a musically unresolved, single movement structure. Canellakis skillfully controlled her huge forces, with every section of the orchestra doing justice to Scriabin’s exultantly orgasmic score. The trumpet theme which appears repeatedly throughout the score was captivatingly dispatched by Christopher Martin and maintained a feeling of timelessness and suspense until the work’s blaring final climax brought the ecstatic tone poem to an end.
