And what textures they were. In last night’s first movement, vast sheets of sound drifted slowly off the stage, growing in density as if layer by layer, punctuated on occasion by a downward growl from basses or a sharp percussive chord.
Ligeti also charges the orchestra’s sound with a kind of timbral electricity, produced through minutely calibrated dissonances and subtle microtonal shadings. There are localized moments of tension and release, even as a quiet sense of stillness pervades the whole.
The second movement is full of more active lines and surface motion that glides by in a blur of silvery radiance. Last night, principal flute Elizabeth Rowe and principal oboe John Ferrillo were the fine, unflappable soloists, and Dohnanyi led a performance of great textural sensitivity.
After touring Ligeti’s distant soundscapes, the program promptly returned to more conventional terrain by way of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4 with the German violinist Arabella Steinbacher making her subscription debut. There was plenty to enjoy in her suave and sensitive playing, which seemed to privilege warm tonal beauty above most everything else, at the same time as there was little to truly set her apart from other young soloists on the international scene. It would be interesting and no doubt revealing to hear her again in any number of the more unusual concertos in her repertoire, including those of Glazunov, Hartmann, Schnittke, or Szymanowski.
The night ended with a rewarding account of Dvorak’s Seventh Symphony, one in which Dohnanyi seemed to determine to honor this work’s high-German symphonic aspirations as well as its rustic Czech soul.
The outer movements had a driving sense of rhythmic energy; the conductor drew some gleaming playing from the brasses and from the strings a muscular earthy tone.
