United States Various: Lisa Batiashvili (violin), Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra / Klaus Mäkelä (conductor). Carnegie Hall, New York, 22 & 23.11.2024. (ES-S)
Carnegie Hall hosted one of its most spectacular weeks in recent memory, featuring two of the world’s greatest orchestras, each with a long tradition of excellence. Following the Berlin Philharmonic under Kirill Petrenko (review here), the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra took the stage, led by its artistic partner, the 28-year-old sensation Klaus Mäkelä, who will assume the role of chief conductor in September 2027 – the same season he begins as music director of another powerhouse, the Chicago Symphony.
Returning to New York just months after his debut visit with the Orchestre de Paris, one of the two ensembles he currently leads, he presented two distinct programs. The first featured a Carnegie Hall premiere – a rare feat for a major visiting European orchestra – and two early-twentieth-century Russian works. The second concert was comprised of two post-Romantic masterpieces, conceived in the German-speaking world during the twilight of the nineteenth century.
Composed during Ellen Reid’s residency at the Concertgebouw and co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall, Body Cosmic is, in Reid’s words, ‘a meditation on the human body as it creates life and gives birth’. The fifteen-minute piece unfolds in two distinct parts. The first evokes an eerie and tranquil celestial landscape, with minimal disturbances except for shooting stars suggested by the harps. The second is more tempestuous, reflecting the distress and uncertainties tied to bringing a new life into the world. As percussion becomes more prominent and rhythmic patterns accelerate, the work concludes abruptly with a single, prolonged violin tone that lingers in the silence – suggesting a newborn, a question mark or perhaps both. Showcasing Reid’s remarkable gift for color and uncommon orchestration, Body Cosmic was warmly embraced by both conductor and orchestra and deserves further listening.
Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No.2, celebrated for its sweeping lyricism and lush scoring, offered a rich showcase of the ensemble’s versatility and unity, and of the skill of its principals. The Concertgebouw’s instrumentalists demonstrated their artistry throughout, bringing warmth and precision to every phrase. Clarinetist Calogero Palermo stood out, delivering a beautifully rendered Adagio solo that captured the movement’s tender, introspective character. Yet, despite the glorious sound, Mäkelä did not fully avoid the sense of longueur, occasional predictability and overreaching sentimentality that this somewhat anachronistic score – completed in 1907, later than Scriabin’s Symphony No.3 or Mahler’s Seventh – inherently carries.
As the highlight of the Friday night program, Lisa Batiashvili brought her signature blend of technical mastery and lyrical expressiveness to Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No.2. Her close collaboration with the conductor and the group ensured seamless transitions through the concerto’s shifts in style, dynamics and meter. The slow movement’s tender melody, foreshadowing Romeo and Juliet, intertwined beautifully with the staccato accompaniment. In contrast, the finale’s sharp irony and caustic energy were delivered with neo-classical restraint, balancing wit and elegance. Throughout the performance, passages where the violin’s sound was subsumed into the orchestral fabric alternated with moments where it floated luminously above, with harmonic surprises treated with subtlety rather than force. However, a more pronounced emphasis on the distinct characteristics of each of the three contrasting movements might have further deepened the listener’s experience.
The encore, Bach’s chorale ‘Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ’, transcribed by Anders Hillborg for violin and strings, offered a brief, poignant glimpse of the Concertgebouw strings’ remarkable warmth and cohesiveness – a depth of sound that fully blossomed the following evening in Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht.
The orchestral version, introduced by four soft and eerie calls from the lower strings, preserved the delicacy and transparency of the original sextet, even as multiple voices – primarily that of concertmaster Vesko Eschkenazy – frequently came into play. The music, inspired by a five-stanza poem from Richard Dehmel’s Weib und Welt (Woman and World), was full of controlled tension. Each sentence in the dialogue between the unnamed man and woman, walking along a path through woods lit by a full moon, was beautifully shaped. Mood transitions – for example, the D major shift at the beginning of the ‘Sehr breit und langsam’ segment, signaling the man’s loving acceptance of the woman’s past, with all its consequences – were handled with natural ease. Individual sounds were caressed with such dedicated care that the overall perspective of the narrative and soundscape occasionally lost focus. Nevertheless, the sense of an impending, irreversible change – both in terms of musical vocabulary and syntax – emerging from these post-Romantic, Tristan-like sonorities of Verklärte Nacht was unmistakably perceivable.
Arguably, no Mahler symphony is more suited to be conducted by a 28-year-old than his First, conceived when the composer himself was of approximately the same age. With lively rhythms and bright sonorities, the music is marked by exuberance and optimism, especially the triumphant endings of the first and last movements. Angst, desperation and the obsessive quest for the real meaning of life are not central concerns here; rather, the music reveals a youthful fascination with nature’s wonders and mysteries.
Despite the conductor’s continual and focused attention to detail – birdsong-like snippets, a distant fanfare or the transformation of the lied ‘Ging heut morgen übers Feld’ from the earlier cycle, Songs of a Wayfarer – it was not the first movement’s pastoral atmosphere that emerged as the most fully realized feature. Instead, it was the intertwining of a funeral march, another song – ‘Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz’ – from the same cycle and a klezmer fanfare that was indeed extraordinary in its precise and nuanced calibration. Other special moments included a ländler tinged with dark undercurrents in the second movement and the maelstrom-like opening of the finale.
Mäkelä, supported by the exquisite playing of an ensemble with a rich heritage of interpreting Mahler’s music, sought to stamp his own imprint on the First Symphony. Time will tell how his interpretations will mature, but the Finnish conductor undoubtedly shows the potential to become a great Mahlerian.
Edward Sava-Segal
22.11.24 – Lisa Batiashvili (violin)
Ellen Reid – Body Cosmic
Prokofiev – Violin Concerto No.2 in G minor, Op.63
Rachmaninov – Symphony No.2 in E minor, Op.27
23.11.24
Schoenberg – Verklärte Nacht, Op.4
Mahler – Symphony No.1 in D major