A New Season, Set To Touch Highs & Lows
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

On Wednesday night, Lorin Maazel began his fourth season as music director of the New York Philharmonic. It has been a tenure of dazzling successes, and bewildering failures. Just like Mr. Maazel’s career. Most conductors never touch his heights, or plunge to his depths. They occupy some middle range of competence. Better to live life Mr. Maazel’s way, I would think.
His program on Wednesday night had Beethoven in the first half and Strauss in the second. But first Mr. Maazel conducted the national anthem, as is traditional on opening night.
Every year, I can’t help contrasting James Levine’s national anthem, at the Metropolitan Opera, with Mr. Maazel’s. Each reflects the man. Mr. Levine’s is tidy, brisk, no-nonsense, compact (though of course very musical). Mr. Maazel’s is grand, deeply felt, consciously shaped. The anthem on Wednesday night seemed twice as long as it had been at the Met, on Monday night – and it was magnificent. Mr. Maazel sang as he conducted, by the way. I could not hear him midst the throng so can’t report on the quality of the voice.
The Beethoven on the program was the Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat, known as the “Emperor.” Its soloist was Evgeny Kissin, the popular Russian virtuoso. He is one of the great thumpers in all of music – he thumps the keyboard, pounds – and this concerto is full of thumping potential. It is also the Beethoven concerto that can most bear Mr. Kissin’s style. But it cannot bear it entirely.
Mr. Kissin took to the “Emperor” like Joe Frazier to an opponent. He had all the necessary aggressiveness, but not enough lyricism or elegance. He had the verticality of the Beethoven – but not its horizontality, if you will. Mr. Kissin was often blocky, oafish, blunt. His rubato – his poetic license – seemed calculated and fake. And there were times when you could have killed for a singing line.
The piano’s first notes in the Adagio are an F sharp followed by the F sharp an octave above. That second note should sing a little, if not soar. From Mr. Kissin, it was absolutely dead – hit and struck to the ground. So it was with subsequent such notes. And Mr. Kissin warped this movement with strange hesitations, or stutters – these were not merely not Beethoven, but not musical. And his trills were more brutal than impressive.
The closing movement, the Rondo, was majestic enough, that’s for sure – but it would have benefited from some flair, even a little wit. And as Mr. Kissin bowed to the enthusiastic audience, I had a thought that had occurred to me before: He bows rather like he plays – stiffly, with calculation.
That said, there is a certain cold command about his playing that is appealing. He is a man utterly in charge of himself, and he does whatever he wants. He plays the way he does because he has chosen to do so. He seems unhindered by doubt. And technically, he has no limits.
Mr. Maazel can be a stirring Beethoven conductor, and he was on this occasion. Talk about command: He had complete control over his orchestra, and its Beethoven was consistently well-defined. The conductor exhibited an especially strong sense of tempo. These tempos tended to be slow, but they convinced. The Adagio was “daringly slow,” as critics like to say. And that movement began with amazing chorale-like warmth from the orchestra. Also, the melody sounded almost like an arioso.
Overall, Mr. Maazel imbued the “Emperor” with all its nobility. More specifically, I thought of the famous phrase Coleridge used to describe Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra”: angelic strength.
And how about that second-half Strauss? The first of the two pieces was the tone poem “Don Juan,” and the big question about Mr. Maazel was, “Will he fuss it to death?” No: The music breathed. Oh, it breathed on the conductor’s terms, but it breathed nonetheless. The middle section was slow – you might even say daringly slow – but it never stalled. And the final pages were almost overwhelming in their aching passion.
Do you recall how Strauss greeted American soldiers as they arrived on his doorstep at the end of the war? “I am Doktor Richard Strauss, composer of ‘Salome’ and ‘Der Rosenkavalier.'” He must have been proud of them. I would have thrown in “Elektra,” but no one asked me.
Mr. Maazel closed his program with the “Rosenkavalier” Suite, a piece for which he has tremendous affinity. He has always seemed half Viennese, anyway. He luxuriated in this score, milking it for all it was worth – and “Der Rosenkavalier” is worth quite a lot. The sheer richness of the Philharmonic’s sound was gratifying, and this is not an orchestra known for sound, to say the least. As he opened his fourth season, Lorin Maazel proved once again that he is one of the most musical people alive – on his good days, which, fortunately, are plentiful.