Merely Brilliant

continued

The New York Philharmonic, however, has run through a huge range of music directors--and sounds--over the last fifty years. After the flamingly charismatic but technically challenged Leonard Bernstein, they hired the technically brilliant but fatally uncharismatic Pierre Boulez, then the technically competent but interpretively extravagant Zubin Mehta, then the technically competent but interpretively circumspect Kurt Masur, and then the technically brilliant and interpretively extravagant but often willfully weird Lorin Maazel.

Maazel last entertained Ann Arbor audiences in two shows of classical favorites during his final season with the NYPO in February 2009. Now the orchestra is back with its new music director, Alan Gilbert, for another two shows of classical favorites. And I do mean favorites: The first night there's Mozart's Marriage of Figaro Overture and "Linz" Symphony followed by Brahms' First Symphony, and the second night there's Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain and Bloch's Schelomo followed by Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony.

Local audiences know by now what to expect from the New York Philharmonic: a tight-knit ensemble featuring virtuosic principals producing crisp colors and a polished tone. But who knows what to expect from Alan Gilbert? A young forty-five and the son of two Philharmonic violinists, Gilbert built his reputation as a conductor with the Royal Stockholm Symphony and the Santa Fe Opera. The recorded evidence is slim, and I'm familiar only with his Stockholm Mahler's Ninth, a finely calibrated, subtly nuanced, and obviously sincere performance that wants only passionate expressivity to achieve greatness.