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From Pittsburgh with control

Conductor Manfred Honeck helms persuasively in his debut with the Philadelphians.

Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra music director Manfred Honeck. STEPHANIE STRASBURG
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra music director Manfred Honeck. STEPHANIE STRASBURGRead more

When he led his own superb Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra last year at the Mann Center, Manfred Honeck drew razor-sharp unanimity from the ensemble. That he could do the same Thursday night in his debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra points to a conductor of unusual powers of persuasion.

It helps that the interpretations were so gorgeously etched, so generously individualized. The program was skimmed from the top of the popularity charts, so you might not have expected to leave the hall buoyed by a sense of discovery. The most startling rethinking, oddly, was the overture to Johann Strauss Jr.'s Die Fledermaus. Honeck had tight control over the tempos, given to sudden gusts. Significantly, he brought vocal inflections into phrasing from the operetta to come, and these emerged as fully formed characters - like oboist Peter Smith's fine solo. You believed that Honeck sees in Fledermaus a humanity more complex than the faint consideration it often gets.

The ensemble was thinned to about three dozen in Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major (K. 219). This allowed Christian Tetzlaff's detail work - tone shadings, an understated vibrato - to come across in a veil of intimacy. The cadenzas were something deeper: stylized, emotionally developed, suggestive of ideas outside of the classical era. In the third movement, Tetzlaff introduced a more saturated sound than before, which coincided, deliciously, with an expanded emotional range.

In Dvorák's Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Honeck walked a fine line between reinterpreting what the composer might have meant and what the conductor wanted to say. Tempos changed often, flashpoints were plenty, and it was perhaps slightly overmanipulated in spots. What got produced, though, was rare and highly original.

Honeck seemed unconcerned with producing any particular overall ensemble sound in the Dvorák, which is especially notable given the homogeneity apparent in the Pittsburgh Symphony's Tchaikovsky that 2012 night at the Mann. Where does it come from, and who is responsible for this kind of upkeep (after all, cultivated in rehearsal)? These are important questions. The musicians of our orchestra talk a lot about a trademark sound. It might be time to more consistently back up word with deed.

pdobrin@phillynews.com

215-854-5611

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