The New Criterion
By Eric Simpson
he notion of the decline of America’s “Big Five” orchestras has been batted around for at least the last decade, usually with such knowing nods of agreement among critics and observers that it is now taken as gospel. There’s a cyclical feeling to this conversation: every few years, when another fine orchestra is having its moment, we start hearing about the Big Five again, and how we don’t care about them any more. To be sure, the members of that august fraternity—the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic—are not so completely dominant in the field as they once were. The recording boom has contributed somewhat to that change, as has the flood of expert musicians from ever-growing conservatory classes competing for a handful of full-time chairs—the orchestras of Houston, Minnesota, Atlanta, and others have become formidable ensembles, and a few, such as the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, now enjoy international fame.
There is no denying, however, that a certain mystique still hangs around the five orchestras that built America’s musical culture in the first half of the twentieth century. These are the ensembles that embark on major international tours, headline important festivals, and play to sold-out audiences at Carnegie Hall year after year. There’s a certain box-office logic to this: Chicago, like Vienna or Berlin, is going to draw crowds on the strength of its reputation alone; casual concertgoers may not be so inclined to take it on faith that less renowned orchestras like the Dallas Symphony are worth a slice of their cultural budgets.
The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra has long been one of America’s better ensembles, an outside challenger to the Big Five even in their heyday. The orchestra has enjoyed a parade of storied leaders, from Fritz Reiner to William Steinberg, André Previn, Lorin Maazel, Mariss Jansons, and, most recently, Manfred Honeck. Honeck will be well known to New York audiences: his guest appearances with the New York Philharmonic have been uniformly excellent, including, last season, the most thrilling performance of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony that I have ever heard. Indeed, he was widely considered a leading candidate to replace Alan Gilbert as the Philharmonic’s Music Director, before that honor went to Jaap van Zweden.
Under Honeck’s baton, the pso has recorded almost constantly, pressing some dozen albums in the last decade on the Reference Recordings label. Whether these discs show a “distinctive” sound is a matter for longer consideration, but they do show a tight, powerful ensemble with a conductor capable of leading riveting interpretations. Listen to the ferocity of attack in the opening bars of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, giving way to unforgiving bleakness (2017)—or listen to the finale of Beethoven’s Fifth, and admire how the heroic melodies of the brass rise over intricately structured chaos (2015).
Attention to detail seems a crucial element of Honeck’s approach as a conductor: ensure that each individual facet is meticulously crafted, and the complete picture will emerge. Formerly a violist with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (where his brother Rainer still serves as a Concertmaster), he can discourse for half an hour on the vital role that specificity of vibrato plays in determining the color of the strings; or on the perfect amount of metrical stretching to make a Viennese waltz truly dance. It’s not hard to hear the results of this kind of work in his performances—I recall an astonishing Mahler Second with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood, making a powerful impression with a spectacular range of textures, maintaining a simmering energy even in the music’s stillest moments.
In December I heard Honeck lead the pso at their home, Heinz Hall, a jewel of a concert venue whose Gilded Age grandeur might trick you into believing it’s served the orchestra for a century or more. Located in the heart ofPittsburgh’s Culture District, just a block or two from the southern bank of the Allegheny, Heinz Hall began life as a movie palace in the early twentieth century; it wasn’t until 1971 that it opened as a 2,600-seat concert hall, after extensive refitting.