VIENNA — It’s hard to think of another city that can match the rich musical history of this Austrian capital. By birth or adoption, its musical luminaries have included Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg.
Home to the Vienna Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony and Vienna Radio Symphony, night after night its concert halls also present the world’s most famous touring ensembles. The Dallas Symphony Orchestra thus rated a particularly meaningful endorsement with a capacity audience for its June 12 performance at the Vienna Konzerthaus.
Sold-out concerts and enthusiastic audiences have been the norm on the DSO’s European tour this month, with dates in Spain, Germany, Austria and Belgium. (I’ve only heard the Munich, Hamburg and Vienna concerts, but reports from elsewhere have been the same.)
Leading the tour, DSO music director Fabio Luisi has his own Viennese history, including six years as principal conductor of the Tonkünstler Orchestra and eight years leading the Vienna Symphony. And violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, who’s touring with the orchestra, has a huge following in Europe.
The more famous of the two main concert halls here is the 1870 Musikverein, its acoustically luminous Golden Hall known worldwide from annual New Year’s telecasts. But the rich sound of the Konzerthaus, opened in 1913 just before World War I, was balm for the ears after relatively arid acoustics of modern halls in Munich and Hamburg. A traditional shoebox shape, with colonnades at the sides and frilly gilt reliefs on the ceiling, makes for excellent dispersal — and enhancement — of sound.
The Munich Isarphilharmonie and Hamburg Elbphilharmonie were transparent to a fault, but from the very beginning of the Vienna concert I heard a substantive bass and lower-midrange response missing from the new halls. While the Konzerthaus isn’t especially reverberant as such, at least with a full audience, sound here has a visceral impact and rich, enveloping effect more like what we get in Dallas’ Meyerson Symphony Center. It was wonderful to sit back and luxuriate in the sonic generosity.
Vienna got one of the tour’s only two performances of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony, and it was a doozy. (The other dates featured fifth symphonies of Tchaikovsky and Mahler.)
Coming a week after the last Pathétique, in Madrid, the Vienna performance had a slightly scruffy transition or two. And in a hall which strongly projected the winds, an occasional balance might have been adjusted. But Luisi’s gloriously over-the-top interpretation bared the music’s nerves and emotions as none I’ve experienced before.
As in two earlier performances of the Fifth Symphony, Luisi sometimes pushed and pulled the music almost to the breaking point, but never over. The hesitation before the first movement’s lyric theme was almost interminable, and yet one felt the pulse beneath it.
At just the right moments, brasses released scorching explosions of sound. (I wondered if an audience accustomed to Vienna Philharmonic refinement thought this Dallas excess, but it was actually reminiscent of old-school Russian orchestras.) At the other extreme, clarinetist Gregory Raden produced the most breathtaking — because phenomenally breath-controlled — crescendos and decrescendos out of and into silence.
The second movement’s added-beats waltz had a great swing. Luisi gave the scherzo aerobic ebullience, its ensuing march a militant snap that drew after-movement applause even in Vienna.
Perhaps surprisingly, given how Luisi had pushed so much of the preceding music to extremes, he did not follow some conductors in protracting the finale. No, its emotional intensity was actually heightened by pressing the music forward. Intense it certainly was, prompting a long, stunned silence at the end, exactly the impact one wants.
Uproarious applause that followed was rewarded with another exhilarating Glinka Ruslan and Lyudmila Overture. Vienna clearly was impressed.
The first half of the Vienna concert again included What Keeps Me Awake by former DSO composer-in-residence Angélica Negrón and John Williams’ Violin Concerto No. 2. You can read more about both pieces in the Munich and Hamburg reviews.
Mutter, for whom the Williams was composed, gave another committed performance of almost superhuman precision, with skilled and sympathetic collaboration from Luisi and the orchestra. For all the work’s effective textures and gestures, its sprawling construction again eluded me. But the Negrón, a compact seven minutes’ worth, seemed even more appealing this time.
After a free day in Vienna, the orchestra continues on to dates in Cologne, Essen and Brussels before heading back to Dallas. Vienna was my last stop after a challenging and refreshing week.
As when accompanying three previous European tours, chats with musicians were especially rewarding. It’s a smart and friendly group from whom I learn a lot. They’ve done Dallas proud.
