ABBADO AND MEDIA

 MUSICAL AMERICA
August 26th 2003

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Abbado’s New Orchestra Triumphs

By George Loomis
MusicalAmerica.com
August 26, 2003

LUCERNE, Switzerland -- When Toscanini launched the Lucerne Festival in 1938 after the Salzburg Festival fell under Nazi domain, a newly formed festival orchestra was one of the main attractions. It endured until 1993, but by then it was made up primarily of free-lance musicians whose other jobs interfered with the quality of its performances. Especially after the festival’s splendid new concert hall opened in 1998, the resident ensemble was little missed. Several of the world’s leading orchestras play in Lucerne every summer; this year’s crop included the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Concertgebouw, and the Vienna Philharmonic.

In 2000 Claudio Abbado, having decided to give up the musical directorship of the Berlin Philharmonic, approached festival director Michael Haefliger about reestablishing a festival orchestra, an idea Haefliger took to immediately. The ensemble made its debut at the Aug. 14 opening of the Lucerne Festival with Abbado conducting. He has led four concerts here, including the opening Wagner-Debussy program, all the Brandenburg Concertos (Aug. 17), and two performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (Aug. 19 and 20). Daniel Harding led a chamber orchestra concert, and there were six additional chamber ensemble performances.

Filling the orchestra’s ranks were musicians with active solo careers, such as violinists Kolja Blacher and Renaud Capuçon and cellist Natalia Gutman, as well as the members of the Hagen Quartet and the Ensemble Sabine Meyer. Most of Europe’s leading orchestras supplied players, and many younger musicians were drawn from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, which Abbado established in the mid-1990s.

Having contact with Abbado’s supreme musicianship was something most of the players apparently found irresistible. According to Blacher, who was Abbado’s concert master in Berlin for six years, “he has a unique way of making people listen and react to each other.” Another player spoke of the privilege of playing in a “private orchestra” under a conductor who “gives totally.” There was a feeling of participating in something special, and Lucerne’s magical setting, with its lake and mountains, doubtless contributed.

The Brandenburg evening illustrated Abbado’s famed capacity for bringing out the best in musicians while remaining an unobtrusive overseer. These were lithe, vital performances that were every bit as persuasive stylistically as anything offered by a period-instrument group. Baroque specialists such as recorder player Michala Petri and harpsichordist Michele Barchi were welcome guests, and Rainer Kussmaul’s agile violin was a valued asset. But otherwise the soloists came from the orchestra, with Reinhard Friedrich’s mellifluous trumpet and Albrecht Meyer’s expressive oboe standing out as especially distinguished. Hearing all six of these masterfully diverse works in a single evening gave one a new appreciation for how distinct each is from the other.

Many expected the Mahler to be the orchestra’s crowning achievement, and they were not disappointed. The orchestra’s playing had a wonderful freshness and clarity, and if there were concerns that its corporate sound might be found wanting compared to that of established ensembles, they were quickly put to rest by the gleam of the string playing. For all the turmoil, the first movement never lost its character as a funeral march, its tension-charged quieter passages holding the audience utterly rapt. The second-movement “Ländler” found the strings sounding mellow and ruminative and, like the other internal movements, had its own character while advancing the progression to the emotional peaks of the final movement. Here the great orchestral eruptions, whether thrilling or forbidding, served the spirituality of the whole. The singing of the Orgeon Donostriarra chorus from Spain—which, like Abbado, knew its music by heart—matched the orchestra in the vitality of the pianissimos and contributed tellingly to the serenity of the close. Soloists were soprano Eteri Gvazava and mezzo Anna Larsson; the latter was especially eloquent.

Abbado, who miraculously survived cancer a few years ago, appeared to be in robust health. Preparing the three programs in Lucerne was surely taxing, but he seems to be proceeding with care: Along with two concerts with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra last spring, these four performances in Lucerne are expected to be the sum total of his 2003 appearances. He and his new orchestra are expected back next summer.