A Stunning Performance
Conductor Phillipe Entremont
ON WEDNESDAY, February 2, The Charleston Concert Association (CCA) presented a stunning performance by the German State Philharmonic Orchestra of Rhineland-Palatinate in Gaillard Auditorium. Philippe Entremont conducted a magnificent German-Austrian program which offered three works that, to my knowledge, have never been performed in Charleston.
Entremont, who brought the Vienna Chamber Orchestra to Gaillard several seasons ago under the auspices of the CCA, is one of those rare performers who fulfills every music lover’s dream of hearing a re-creation of the compositions of the masters with style and intelligence without podium hamming or interpretive insults to the scores.
Conducting a full stage of 88 career musicians, Entremont opened with Carl Maria von Weber’s overture to his rarely heard opera “Oberon,” one of the early and grandly Romantic works of the 19th century German repertory. The orchestra played to the manner-born, with vigor and insight, in this 1826 curtain raiser full of poetry and drama.
Pianist Sebastian Knauer
The second offering was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto in E-flat major for Two Pianos, K. 365 (1779). Entremont, who started his career as a young piano virtuoso, conducted from the keyboard and was joined by his former student Sebastian Knauer at the other keyboard. With a clear understanding of Mozart’s music, Entremont brought this vivacious and exuberant masterpiece the captivating vitality required. Knauer, with a keyboard touch decidedly different from Entremont’s, blended carefully and strikingly. The orchestra shifted to the Classical mode of Mozart without a snag.
Entremont’s final choice was Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 in G Major, one of the composer’s Wunderhorn symphonies (along with Nos. 2 and 3). No.4 has a fairy-tale quality, exhilarating and mesmerizing, brought to full fruition by this grand orchestra whose players exuded an assurance and passion palpable on the stage and throughout the hall.
Soprano Julie Cherrier
The final movement tells of a child’s view of heaven, sung by soprano soloist Julie Cherrier. Cherrier is a lovely young woman with a voice of rich and telling quality, although her pianissimos frequently got lost in the cavernous auditorium.
Mahler, the last of the great Romantic-era symphonists, created here a sound world of exquisite fascination, missing the torment and anguish infused in his other symphonies.
Entremont, as is customary today, did not play all of the portamentos indicated in the score. This was no great loss. This sliding from one note into the next was once all the rage, but it generally has been abandoned.
We had the expert orchestra, with Entremont’s profound insight, deliver a reading as resplendent and nearly flawless as can be imagined.
Overall, this was a knock-out concert. The standing ovations earned two encores: dances by Brahms and Dvorak. Those who missed this evening (and there were too many empty seats) missed a remarkable occasion.
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Very good review by Zan, as usual. I noted his comment about Julie Cherrier’s pianissimos being lost in the not-full auditorium and hope that publicity on your web site in future might generate more attendance.