Simmering Shostakovich and subpar Schumann at the Philadelphia Orchestra

In 2021, Nathalie Stutzmann opened her first concert as Principal Guest Conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra with Missy Mazzoli’s Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres). Four years later, she and the ensemble returned to the Pennsylvania-born composer’s oeuvre with Orpheus Undone, a work inspired partly by Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus. The 15-minute symphonic poem proved a worthy addition to the long history of compositional fascination with the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, emerging as one of the most distinctive pieces of programmatic music heard in recent memory.

Mazzoli divided her retelling of this anguished story into two sections, performed without pause. Behold the Machine (O Death) opened distinctively with unsettling quarter notes played on a wooden block by Associate Principal Percussion Charlie Rosmarin. The insistent repetition captured Orpheus’ anguish at the loss of his wife, his emotions constantly borne back to grief. Heavy string sighs underpinned the persistent yearning, before dissolving into a more traditionally lush texture supported by cascading woodwinds. Stutzmann handled both the jagged and the luxuriant elements of the music well, with the dichotomy returning in the second section, We of Violence, We Endure. She drew out quirky details in the writing, like a march that suggested the futility of the couple’s doomed journey back from the Underworld.

Mazzoli’s work has been well represented locally – especially by Opera Philadelphia, where she served as composer-in-residence from 2012 to 2015. It’s encouraging to see her hometown orchestra take a greater interest in her output, and one hopes to hear more, especially with passionate interpreters like Stutzmann in their conducting stable.

Stutzmann excelled as usual in shaping the architecture of a grand symphonic work in the concert’s second half: in this case, Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 5 in D minor. She drew powerful sound from the lower voiced sections of the orchestra, particularly the cellos and double basses in the Moderato and the scarily intense brass that open the Allegro non troppo. Stutzmann crafted a constant sense of shifting perspectives, suggesting the darkly humorous irony that critics and scholars have often read into this piece. The savage Allegretto – with its biting violin solo played here by Juliette Kang – flowed naturally into the sumptuous Largo, taken with generous rubato. Shostakovich has not been a major focus of this orchestra in recent seasons; this performance suggested that it should be.

Only the program’s central selection disappointed. Stutzmann led a workmanlike performance of Robert Schumann’s Cello Concerto in A minor, which lacked the driving momentum needed to sustain the musical thread across its three unbroken movements. Edgar Moreau’s polished and elegant playing lacked the right Romantic character for the piece, and his sound emerged slightly bantamweight within Marian Anderson Hall. He seemed more comfortable in his refined encore, the Sarabande from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cello Suite no. 3 in C major.