For his second consecutive week of subscription concerts with the New York Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel partially rekindled an experiment he performed in 2017 when – at the helm of his beloved Los Angeles Philharmonic – he juxtaposed Schubert's symphonies with Mahler's works for voice and orchestra. Linking two oeuvres for which song has constantly been a central element, a wondrous tool used to probe into the deepest corners of the human psyche, makes a lot of sense. Nevertheless, listening to Schubert’s Symphony no. 4, there is little indication that the 19-years-old composer had already completed such phenomenal Lieder as Gretchen am Spinnrade, Erlkönig or Der König in Thule. As indebted as the opus is to Mozart’s orchestral music, Schubert’s themes are barely marked by any outstanding vocal character as Mozart’s proverbially are.
From the slow, gloomy introduction to the rather uninspired finale, Dudamel – benefiting from the presence of the best group of instrumentalists that the New York Philharmonic has to offer – kept a remarkable balance between anguish and ebullience, with all the arching melodies carefully contoured. He strove to draw attention to several surprising harmonic wanderings – foretelling things to come in the composer’s output – such as the one several bars before the end of the Andante. As later in Mahler, the chemistry between Dudamel and the orchestra was readily apparent, even if, before the current series, their previous collaboration was a long 11 years ago.
Heldentenor Simon O’Neill was scheduled to take up the male soloist role in Das Lied von der Erde, but he fell ill and was replaced at the last moment by Andrew Staples who has just finished his stint as Andres in Metropolitan’s Opera Wozzeck. After all, this music must have sounded familiar to someone who has spent the last couple of weeks immersed in Alban Berg’s soundscape! Staples plunged valiantly into the first stanza of The Drinking Song of Earthly Sorrow, his voice easily soaring above the orchestral tapestry with its trumpet (a powerful, yet subtle Chris Martin) and horns. He was less successful though in switching to the anguish of the three-times repeated refrain “Dunkel is das Leben, ist der der Tod!” Not at any point did Staples give the impression that he was summoned for the role on such a short notice. His Of Youth had the same suave, porcelain-like transparency as the introductory triangle sound. In The Drunkard in Spring, he easily switched gears from the powerful insouciance of a character ready to drink the whole day – “den ganzen lieben Tag” – to melancholy, when evoking – in dialogue with concertmaster Frank Huang and the piccolo – a twittering bird announcing the arrival of Spring.