The Mystical Wonder

By Anthony Tommasini, *Conductor Makes Philharmonic Debut With Sufi Poetry and Celestial Yearnings* - The New York Times - New York, NY, USA; Friday, March 4, 2011

Few conductors the age of Daniel Harding have had his extensive international experience.

Currently this 35-year-old British artist is the music director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the principal conductor of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the principal guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and a presence on opera podiums including La Scala and Covent Garden.

He proved himself to New Yorkers last fall when he opened Lincoln Center’s Great Performers season, conducting two impressive programs with the Dresden Staatskapelle.

But intangible things make the relationship between a conductor and an orchestra click, or not. On Thursday night, when Mr. Harding made his highly anticipated debut with the New York Philharmonic in a program of Mahler and the Polish composer Karol Szymanowski, the performances, though fascinating, seemed not quite settled. Mr. Harding has a record of needing some time for particular orchestra musicians to figure him out. That seemed to be happening here, especially during an uneven though involving account of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony.

Mr. Harding began the program at Avery Fisher Hall with a challenging assignment. Glenn Dicterow, the orchestra’s veteran concertmaster, was the soloist in Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No. 1.

Composed in 1916, it is an elusive, mystical and seldom-heard work, though a Dicterow specialty. The Philharmonic had last played the piece in 2004, with Mr. Dicterow as soloist and Kurt Masur conducting.

When he wrote this work, Szymanowski was equally entranced by musical Impressionism and Eastern mysticism, especially the allegorical love poems of the Sufi poet Hafiz.

Though written in one movement, the concerto is episodic and fitful. It begins with flittering, quietly bustling orchestral music. Imagine the opening of Stravinsky’s “Petrushka,” turned a little cosmic, with the setting moved to a Persian city.

The violin enters and calms things down with questioning melodic lines that skirt stable harmonies.

For 25 minutes the concerto surges through passages of bucolic serenity, complete with exotic birdcalls, ominous Wagnerian outbursts and frenzies of sensuality right out of Scriabin.

The violin has long stretches of ruminatively lyrical, restless music, which Mr. Dicterow played with a warm, throbbing tone and supple phrasing. But during the more crazed passages of the piece, his playing lacked incisive attack and sinewy power.

Mr. Harding’s challenge was to convey the mystical wonder of the music while bringing shape to the score and providing support to Mr. Dicterow without overwhelming him, all of which he did with sensitivity and skill.

With the Mahler Fourth, Mr. Harding seemed intent on rattling the perception of this piece as the composer’s most easygoing and pastoral symphony. Mr. Harding emphasized the restlessness of the first movement, laying out the overlapping strands and discontinuities of the music, especially in his feisty handling of the development section.

Still, at the start, when Mr. Harding stretched the rising notes in the violins that lead to the downbeat of the main melody, the landing was not quite coordinated. Here and there, passages of solid, compelling music making were marred by tentative, uncertain moments.

And yet I was drawn in. There was nothing cute about Mr. Harding’s approach to the rustic second movement, which had snap and crackle. Amid the wistful serenity of the great slow movement, Mr. Harding drew out the subdued tension and conflict below the surface.

And with the fine young soprano Lisa Milne as an animated and beguiling vocal soloist, Mahler’s portrait of heaven, as reported by an angel, worked its magic. Who would not want to spend eternity in a place where wine from the cellar does not cost a penny, the kitchen is headed by St. Martha, and splendid music is courtesy of St. Cecilia and her kin?

Mr. Harding’s first outing at the Philharmonic may not tell all. He is a consequential conductor who should return.

Picture: Daniel Harding leading the New York Philharmonic for the first time at Avery Fisher Hall. Photo: Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times.