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It is a maxim of orchestra administration that whenever you rent a brand new music director, it’s best to instantly begin searching for the following one.
Gustavo Dudamel arrives this fall because the New York Philharmonic’s music director designate, then as its music and inventive director within the 2026-27 season. No one is trying to change him shortly, however even with an incoming celebrity, any orchestra’s accountability is to maintain casting round for rising expertise — to see who has chemistry with the gamers, who’s worthy of being invited again and who would possibly even be an intriguing candidate for a hopefully well-in-the-future opening.
The new 12 months has introduced a few of this new blood to the rostrum at David Geffen Hall, with back-to-back debuts from two maestros of their 40s, of the identical technology as Dudamel. I heard them on back-to-back evenings: Kevin John Edusei on Tuesday and Daniele Rustioni on Wednesday.
Both live shows had been wonderful. The Philharmonic has emerged from its vacation break sounding recent and vigorous, but open to a pair of conductors clearly curious about drawing out subtleties.
Edusei’s debut was maybe the extra spectacular achievement, since this German musician, who’s ending a time period as principal visitor conductor of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra in Texas, was presenting a program of items that may be tough to place throughout. Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” like all this composer’s tone poems, can come off leaden and overlong. Berlioz’s set of six songs “Les Nuits d’Été” can really feel too delicate to essentially register in a giant live performance corridor.
“Zarathustra” is, in fact, well-known for its swelling, blasting opening, the brass fanfare that Stanley Kubrick used so memorably in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” But a lot of the half-hour work shouldn’t be on this triumphal vein; it’s evocative grumbling, chamber-style closeness, eerily murmured music.
The greatest conductors of Strauss’s tone poems revel within the quieter stuff, slightly than seeming to simply wait impatiently for the following blaring climax. If you relish this materials, as Edusei did, these climaxes construct extra naturally and powerfully. On Tuesday, the consistently altering, all too simply meandering piece got here off as tauter than ordinary; it wasn’t compelled, however it did really feel centered. Strauss’s roguish grotesqueries had been superbly performed, with heat coziness to the thicket of intertwining traces within the winds.
In “Les Nuits d’Été,” Berlioz’s wistful settings of affection poems, the mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard was an excellent soloist. She sounded silky but wealthy, her tone in “Sur les Lagunes” dusky and melancholy, with the seductive phantasm of arriving from a distance. She captured the longing stillness of “Absence,” but additionally the insouciance of the primary and closing songs. The orchestra was trendy and particular: misty but exact in “Au Cimitière,” with a way of nocturnal intimacy all through.
Edusei’s live performance started with Samy Moussa’s “Elysium” (2021), a glacially evolving, bombastically stirring 12-minute piece that the Philharmonic performed with cinematic radiance. There was an opener of the identical size on Rustioni’s program, which continues by means of Saturday, however it’s a rarity from the previous slightly than one thing up to date.
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s stressed “Merchant of Venice” Overture (1933) hadn’t been carried out by the orchestra since 1941, so it was fascinating to listen to this confidently woven combination of forcefully dramatic and gracefully dreamlike music.
Rustioni is an Italian conductor greatest recognized in opera; he was lately named the Metropolitan Opera’s principal visitor conductor. But he’s doing ever extra live performance work, notably within the United States, and capped his admirable debut with an thrilling rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, one of many pillars of orchestral repertoire.
As within the Castelnuovo-Tedesco overture, Rustioni guided the transitions of the Tchaikovsky in a method that was dramatic with out being overstated. There had been passages within the first motion that originally struck me as overly sluggish, however Rustioni confidently — certainly, thrillingly — elevated the tempo little by little, negotiating the rating with out abruptness or awkwardness and rising to a scorching sprint on the finish of the motion.
The second motion was intentionally paced but coiled with restrained vitality; the lyricism felt expansive with out dropping ahead momentum. The celebration of the third and fourth actions felt actually earned, with the orchestra seeming to take pleasure in its full dynamic vary.
Before intermission, in Dvorak’s Violin Concerto, Joshua Bell dealt with the solo half together with his ordinary preternaturally clean tone and his ordinary odd lack of shock regardless of floor liveliness. He blended particularly properly with the winds within the first motion. In the second, the strings performed with heated unanimity, and the third was vigorous but elegant, not too rustic or heavy. Even with a sure fairly vacancy at its middle, the concerto was polished and pleasurable.
While Dudamel is on his method, it’s reassuring that the Philharmonic isn’t utilizing his hiring to relaxation on its laurels. We can solely hope that the relationships it’s starting now with artists like Edusei and Rustioni will proceed and deepen.
