Manfred Honeck debuts with the New York Philharmonic.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
The New York Philharmonic got 2013 off to a brisk start with a Jan. 3 concert led by Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra music director Manfred Honeck. This marked the Austrian conductor's debut with the orchestra. He came armed with a work the Philharmonic had never played before: his Suite from Walter Braunfels' Fantastic Apparitions on a Theme by Hector Berlioz. The program also featured two well-traveled favorites: Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto (with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet) and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7.
Walter Braunfels (1882-1954) was an underrated German composer whose large body of work has been virtually ignored since he fell out of favor with the Nazi regime. He wrote a number of operas and orchestral works, the best known being the comic Aristophanes-inspired Die Vogel. This composition, finished in 1917) is built on Mephistopheles' "Song of the Flea" from Berlioz' La damnation de Faust. The whole work is roughly fifty minutes. Mr. Honeck's version includes the Introduction and three variations and lasts just ten.
Braunfels' work re-imagines the Devil's aria as a series of increasingly complex orchestral variations. The original Berlioz melody played on the cornet before yielding way to a languorous tone poem for the whole orchestra, overlaid on a lush carpet of strings that would make Richard Strauss proud. (That composer's influence is also audible in the harmonies, which echo some of the more sensual pages of Der Rosenkavalier.) The final variation brings back the original theme, charging forward with vigor and renewed purpose. This movement recalled Berlioz' own anarchic spirit, and made one curious to hear the entire piece.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
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| Conductor Manfred Honeck made his New York Philharmonic debut on Thursday night with Braunfels, Beethoven and Grieg. Image framegrabbed from a Medici.tv webcast. |
Walter Braunfels (1882-1954) was an underrated German composer whose large body of work has been virtually ignored since he fell out of favor with the Nazi regime. He wrote a number of operas and orchestral works, the best known being the comic Aristophanes-inspired Die Vogel. This composition, finished in 1917) is built on Mephistopheles' "Song of the Flea" from Berlioz' La damnation de Faust. The whole work is roughly fifty minutes. Mr. Honeck's version includes the Introduction and three variations and lasts just ten.
Braunfels' work re-imagines the Devil's aria as a series of increasingly complex orchestral variations. The original Berlioz melody played on the cornet before yielding way to a languorous tone poem for the whole orchestra, overlaid on a lush carpet of strings that would make Richard Strauss proud. (That composer's influence is also audible in the harmonies, which echo some of the more sensual pages of Der Rosenkavalier.) The final variation brings back the original theme, charging forward with vigor and renewed purpose. This movement recalled Berlioz' own anarchic spirit, and made one curious to hear the entire piece.
