The Philadelphia Orchestra audience came for Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Hélène Grimaud. They stayed for Julia Wolfe and Louise Farrenc. Nézet-Séguin made a smart programming move by surrounding a guaranteed crowd-pleaser – Brahms’ Piano Concerto no. 1 in D minor – with two less familiar works that nonetheless packed a memorable punch. The resulting concert was one of the most distinctive in recent memory, a testament to the full range of power the Philadelphia musicians have to offer.
The Philadelphia Orchestra co-commissioned Wolfe’s Pretty with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Houston Symphony; these were the first local performances. Wolfe found inspiration in an Old English root word for pretty, prættig, meaning “cunning, crafty or clever”. All three of those expressions could be used to describe the sound world and harmonic progression she builds over the course of 25 minutes.
Masses of strings alternately suggested roots rhythms and rock-and-roll cadences, especially when layered over hard-driving percussion. (That section, moving between timpani, drum kit, marimba and other novel instruments, got a real workout.) Brass and woodwinds played arresting fragments that flitted away without resolution. Tutti passages gave way to zesty solos, with particularly characterful writing for Concertmaster David Kim and Principal Second Violin Kimberly Fisher, both approximating folk fiddle. Some of it was pretty in the conventional sense; often it fit Wolfe’s tongue-in-cheek definition. Nézet-Séguin shepherded the action expertly to a cathartic conclusion.
Farrenc’s music has gradually gained a place in the Philadelphia repertoire over the past few years. Composed in 1841, her Symphony no. 1 in C minor offers a portrait of a genre at a crossroads, still indebted to Beethoven and Haydn but beginning to feel the Romantic influences that her program-mate, Brahms, would ultimately perfect. The opening movement nicely balanced the divide between Classicism and Romanticism, with lithe, details playing from the woodwinds and horns supporting a rich, insistent tone in the lower strings. The musical themes introduced by Farrenc were not especially captivating or memorable on their own, but the Philadelphians treated them with a polished sense of grandeur. Nézet-Séguin injected an edge into the old-fashioned Minuetto (written in place of a Scherzo) that kept it from seeming fusty, and the finale (marked Allegro assai) was buoyant and rhythmically precise.
Expertly balancing elegance and brio, Grimaud made an ideal soloist for the Brahms First Piano Concerto. Her attention and stamina never wavered in the long Maestoso opening movement, where she contrasted a rich quality of sound amply supported by generous pedaling with a soft glow in the instrument’s upper register. Nézet-Séguin kept textures thick and hurtling within the orchestra, so Grimaud served as our guide through the movement’s various shifts in mood, with tempos that were expansive but not sluggish. After the Sturm und Drang of the first movement, the central Adagio felt like a lovely oasis, and Grimaud brought rhythmic clarity to the concluding Allegro non troppo. Despite multiple curtain calls, she wisely demurred an encore – it’s difficult to imagine how she might have topped such a performance.
