Review: A Conductor’s Exciting Return to the New York Philharmonic

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/arts/music/review-new-york-philharmonic-susanna-malkki.html

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In Debussy’s “La Mer,” you can almost hear the heaving sea speckled with dawn sunlight, the dancing waves, the gusty winds.

That’s certainly the painterly, descriptive way audiences are often encouraged to think of this repertory staple. But on Thursday at David Geffen Hall, the Finnish conductor Susanna Malkki led the New York Philharmonic in a performance of the work that was so urgent, detailed and exciting that I forgot all about cresting sea and splashing waves. I was, instead, engrossed by the way Ms. Malkki brought out the colors, intricacies and radicalism of “La Mer” (1905), which came across as Debussy’s idea for an alternative kind of 20th-century symphony.

Ms. Malkki, making her return to the Philharmonic after a belated debut in 2015, certainly drew out the atmospheric sonorities in the subdued music the opens the piece, with the softly rumbling timpani, flecks of harp, heaving low strings and woodwind lines that seem to peek through the mist. But I was more struck by the unusual clarity of the textures, the careful voicing of chords to highlight pungent harmonies. In the final movement, Ms. Malkki deftly balanced the music’s tumultuous frenzy with symphonic majesty, driving headlong to the brassy climax without a trace of cinematic excess.

She preceded “La Mer” with the New York concert premiere of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s “Helix,” from 2005, which the composer has described as a nine-minute accelerando. The music starts tentatively, with halting chords, eerie blips and a strange, tolling bass riff. Moment by moment, this dark music gains intensity and volume, as jerky rhythms break out and fragments try to coalesce into phrases. It hurtles to a dizzying, blazing final stretch, played to the hilt here.

The concert began with a vanishingly rare sight at the Philharmonic: two women appearing together as concerto soloist and conductor. The brilliant Latvian violinist Baiba Skride gave a magnificent account of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. Her distinctive sound — full-bodied and sumptuous but never forced — ideally suited the passages of melting lyricism and nobility. She brought tender grace to the rueful slow movement. And, with the alert Ms. Malkki there to keep the orchestra right with her, Ms. Skride tore through the breathless finale with impetuous energy and impressive precision.

This season Ms. Malkki began her tenure as principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. If only she had that post here in New York.