Back with a bang for the Philharmonie de Paris, with nothing less than two concerts by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the gold standard of orchestral virtuosity for a good century.
“Philly” is first and foremost a sound, which Leopold Stokowski then Eugene Ormandy forged and from which we have hardly strayed since.
A sound that is both powerful and rich, brilliant and dark, between gold and velvet: the “golden sound”.
Last Tuesday and Wednesday, the two Parisian concerts showed that, for ten years that the Quebecer Yannick Nézet-Séguin has been at its head, he has respected this DNA while making it evolve.
Because we did not expect to see the Philadelphians playing a fast and brilliant Beethoven, lighter in strings, the latter agreeing without apparent resistance to play without vibrato: a Beethoven very much of its time!
European orchestras are now used to this style of playing, much less familiar in the American “big five”, where we had remained attached to the great symphonic machine.
See also
The gold and velvet of the Philadelphia Orchestra
Philadelphia…
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