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“Serenade” is someplace in between, a violin concerto that Bernstein, late within the writing course of, dressed up with a philosophical title whose connection to the rating is tenuous at finest. Yoo, to her credit score, leaned into the music as summary moderately than programmatic, neither too ruminative nor romantic. And, on the way in which out, she let the viewers know that she is simply as comfy with a flamboyant encore, enjoying Vieuxtemps’s “Souvenir d’Amérique,” a sequence of virtuosic and entertaining variations on “Yankee Doodle.”
In each the Rachmaninoff and the Bernstein, Rouvali stored the Philharmonic at a supportive, even deferential reserve, to the purpose of occasional blandness. He is a conductor, although, who shines in a symphony, the place his method to the rostrum has essentially the most room to breathe.
And over his two weeks with the orchestra, he had loads of time to point out off his type, following the “Serenade” with Strauss’s “An Alpine Symphony” and, final evening, opening with Farrenc’s “Overture No. 2” and ending with Dvorak’s Seventh Symphony.
Rouvali will be uneven — to a level that both frustrates or fascinates, relying in your urge for food for unpredictability — however he’s hardly ever mannered and infrequently shocking, with a component of hazard that, when it pays off, makes for an exciting expertise. You get the impression that gamers actually have to concentrate to his baton, with its swerves into rubato that simply as shortly settle again into the written tempos and rhythms; consequently, he attracts livelier performances than you hear throughout a routine week on the Philharmonic.
Livelier, but additionally generally extra chaotic, as within the account of “An Alpine Symphony.” This is a piece that fills the stage at Geffen Hall to capability with its immensity, and that scale proved troublesome to wrangle, with unreliable steadiness that exacerbated Strauss’s relentless extravagance, leading to a musical tour extra exhausting than awe-inspiring.
