Somewhere along the way I forgot about the orchestra.
Shortly after moving to the city in 1980, I attended a Philadelphia Orchestra concert at the Academy of Music with Eugene Ormandy conducting Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra. Throughout the rest of the 80's and most of the 90's I was a frequent attender and often a subscriber, usually seeing between six and twelve concerts every season.
But once I moved to the Wissahickon neighborhood in 2001, my concert-going came to a halt.
Which is a long way of saying that yesterday was the first concert I attended in the orchestra's new concert hall. It won't be my last.
I never had a problem with the acoustics in the Academy of Music, everything sounded very clear, if a bit dry, and I now know a bit lacking in base. Well, everything is still clear in their hall in the Kimmel Center, but now there is a significant improvement in the base sounds. The sound is now more visceral.
The best way I can describe it is that I never went to the Academy of Music for the sound, because my stereo system always sounded better to me. No more. The fortissimos finally sound like fortissimos.
As a bonus, the audience sounds aren't nearly as distracting as they used to be. I'm not sure why but in the Academy the rustles and coughs seemed to blend in with the music, but in the Kimmel Center the audience sounds are clearly in a different acoustic, and thus easier to filter out.
But the big story is the conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin. This was the first of two appearances this season of the orchestra's future music director. As he entered the stage, microphone in hand, to address the audience, he was greeted by thunderous applause. By my count there were six rounds of applause before the music started.
Nézet-Séguin used a slightly larger complement of strings to play the Haydn Symphony #100, and he elicited a warm, thrilling rendition from the Philadelphians. He had alerted the audience to a surprise in the "military" movement, and although I knew what it was, it was still something of a thrill to hear the very trumpet call in the Haydn work that would later form the starting point of Mahler's Fifth Symphony, the work that concluded the concert. (Note to self; fix the syntax in that last sentence.)
It was in the Mahler that Nézet-Séguin and the orchestra really triumphed. His performance was exhilarating. I was especially curious to hear how he approached the Adagietto. Would he play it as a funereal dirge as has become the custom, or would he treat it as the love song that Mahler so clearly meant it to be? Happily, he opted for the love music.
And I felt real goose bumps as the climax of the piece rang out on the full orchestra. Those Philly brass players have never sounded so great.
Both conductor and orchestra received an extended and well-earned ovation.
My next concert isn't until February. Can't wait.
