I have spent quite a relaxing week in New York and Boston for my spring break. It was already my third time there and I wasn't enthusiastic about going to all these sightseeing spots for tourists. Turned out it became a cultural feast plus good times with long-time-no-see old friends.
I attended a concert at Carnegie Hall with NDR Symphony under Dohnanyi, and their string section was excellent. I have been quite frustrated by strings in American orchestras, especially under American conductors. One exception might be Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, but of course they are a chamber orchestra and have no conductors. This NDR Symphony from Hamburg demonstrated the German sound exceptionally in the Mendelssohn overture and Brahms' first symphony. The first two movements in the Brahms were a bit out of shape, but the last two were magnificent.
The next day when I arrived at Boston I tried out my luck at Boston Symphony and got a surprisingly cheap ($8!) rush ticket for Fidelio that evening. Turned out I sat at the second last row of the orchestra floor, but their symphony hall gave such a good and warm sound that it really didn't matter at all. The orchestra was in excellent shape under James Levine, probably because it was the last concert of their two-year Beethoven/Schoenberg project. The full-house attendence probably spiced up their spirit too. Fidelio did not make sense to me last time I saw it at SF Opera, but it came to my full understanding this time. Levine and BSO knew their role so well - you probably can't come across such exquisite and careful execution and understanding from any opera orchestra. The strings were in top form. The soloists and the chorus sounded fantastic too. I wonder how much of this came from the contribution of the hall acoustics, but I am sure that such a wonderful symphony hall already built up half a successful orchestra. Think of our Hong Kong Cultural Center. It probably killed the Philharmonic rather than helping it.
I was looking forward to the New York Philharmonic concert but it turned out to be a great disappointment. Having experienced the Symphony Hall in Boston, the acoustics in Avery Fisher Hall was way below my expectation. The weakness of the string section of the Philharmonic was clearly exposed in both Mozart's piano concerto and Sibelius' Lemminkainen Suite. They sounded worse than San Francisco Symphony in a regular subscription concert. I sat at the orchestra center during the open rehearsal, and at the orchestra first row during the actual performance, and thus any problems in the strings were clearly audible. There was no improvement in the actual concert from the rehearsal in the morning. I wonder what caused the problem. Was it the absence of the regular concert master? Was it Colin Davis? Were the musicians too tired? Or was it simply a problem of the New York Philharmonic? I got the chance to download the final movement of the Phil's live recording of Mozart's 39th Symphony under Lorin Maazel from the DG Concerts series, and again was greatly disappointed by the strings. Maybe NY Phil is simply overrated, or what they can do is only anything larger than mezzo piano but nothing exquisite or detailed.
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