An Old Hand at Only 26
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
The precocious French conductor Lionel Bringuier,
all of 26, took the podium at Avery Fisher Hall on Thursday to lead the
New York Philharmonic in an impressive program. It is not often that a
conductor of any age can bring out the musically daring elements of a
crowd pleaser like Dukas’s “Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” To those who
remember Mr. Bringuier from his New York debut in 2008,
when he conducted the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, also at Avery
Fisher Hall, he must have seemed almost a seasoned maestro in
comparison. He has certainly been rising fast, making appearances with
major international orchestras. He takes over as chief conductor of the
distinguished Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich next year and is just
completing his sixth and final season as resident conductor with the Los
Angeles Philharmonic. Mr. Bringuier made his official debut
with the New York Philharmonic in 2009, conducting the chamber ensemble
in Britten’s “War Requiem,” a performance led overall by Lorin Maazel.
But this was his first time conducting the full orchestra on his own.
Though small-framed, Mr. Bringuier is kinetic and charismatic on the
podium. It took a kind of courage to open with “The Sorcerer’s
Apprentice,” a work inspired by a Goethe ballad that will forever be
associated with the 1940 Disney film “Fantasia,” with Mickey Mouse as
the hapless apprentice. There was no trace of nostalgia and very little
kid stuff in this compelling performance. The mysterious opening
section, with the magic chords and hazy textures, seemed genuinely
ominous. In the episode that depicts the walking broom carting buckets
of water, Mr. Bringuier kept the tempo mostly reined in and brought out
the music’s dark colorings and rhythmic relentlessness. He highlighted
the buzzing inner voices and lush harmonic details in the scherzo.
Mr. Bringuier was then joined by the formidable violinist Leonidas Kavakos
for a brilliant account of Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in G
minor. Mr. Kavakos’s playing combines utter mastery of the instrument
with rich sound and searching musicianship. He brought a questioning
quality to the opening solo phrases, signaling that he was intent on
revealing the complexities, both musical and emotional, beneath the
Neo-Classical surface of this 1935 work.
In the first movement, when episodes of busy passagework for the violin
break out, the music often sounds like an insistent toccata. But Mr.
Kavakos and Mr. Bringuier brought out the uneasy restlessness of these
episodes.
Mr. Kavakos also teased out the quizzical strands and shifting moods of
the deceptively tranquil slow movement. And he was dazzling in the
rustic, dancing finale. Mr. Bringuier drew comparably incisive and
colorful playing from the Philharmonic.
After intermission Mr. Bringuier conducted an animated account of
Kodaly’s “Dances of Galanta” (1933). For all its Gypsy dance character
and tart harmonic writing, this is a lightweight work. Mr. Bringuier’s
program, which ended with Stravinsky’s Suite from “The Firebird,” would
have benefited from at least one recent piece to show us how he grapples
with truly contemporary music. That said, the performance of “The
Firebird,” except for some occasional careless execution, especially in
the brass, was lucid, urgent and exciting.
No comments:
Post a Comment