Sunday, January 12, 2025
Golden Hall, Musikverein, Vienna
For this Sunday-morning performance, the second of six presentations of this Wiener Philharmoniker programme, the last of which is in Paris this Friday, Zubin Mehta returned to the work and orchestra with which he made one of his first Decca recordings (SXL 6202; released January 1966), although both have been regulars since.
Sixty years on, Mehta led a (three-movement) Bruckner Nine (the Finale left in sketch form when Bruckner died) that was immediately pregnant with anticipation, the first movement flowing with purpose – expressive, wholesome, homogenously sounded yet without restricting Bruckner’s harmonic boldness, climaxes inevitable, the coda hard-won, a traversal coming across as Bruckner’s final musical testament re-studied/re-thought, continuing with a very deliberate pace for the stamping Scherzo, detailed afresh, the Trio a mix of scamper and reflection (quiet timpani figures crisply delineated). The Adagio, for all its Heaven-opening grandeur at the outset, and later, came across as resigned to fate – sad if accepting – the Vienna Philharmonic totally identified with this music, glowingly so at times, and locked into Mehta’s leadership as the painful, dissonant climax was reached and shadowy in its aftermath. As for Blomstedt in Berlin in this work a few weeks ago, a lengthy silence followed…
The Mozart first half found Pinchas Zukerman in stylish form, neatly and elegantly accompanied, articulate tempos, Classical poise and musical camaraderie to the fore, the central Adagio romantically spacious and beguiling, the Finale sprightly and joyous. Good to know that Wolfgang Amadeus’s music is still played this way.
Throughout, Austrian Radio’s broadcast was excellent in terms of perspective and balance.
https://www.classicalsource.com/concert/vienna-philharmonic-mehta-in-london-haydn-bruckner
(Correction needed for the above review: I mistakenly wrote that Christopher Raeburn produced Mehta’s Decca Bruckner Nine; it was Erik Smith.)