Thursday, February 28, 2013

Another day, another Parsifal post

Another quick word about conductor Daniele Gatti.

Whether or not you're sympathetic to his shaping of the piece, it's clear that the Met Orchestra is with him closely throughout. The sound he gets from the strings has a depth and sheen not often heard from non-Levine conductors here, and though Gatti is happy to discard/reset continuity of motion to build that patina of spontaneity, the orchestra maintains the continuity of sound for him unabated. Perhaps the players are in fact encouraged by the extraordinary efforts required to hold this contrast: after almost six hours of long slow concentration in the pit, they actually stayed therein for curtain call, returning to Gatti some of the applause he of course was giving them. (This rarely happens after the first night of a run, and with no moviecast cameras present it wasn't for that either.)

And no coordination issues this time. As much as I've previously admired the more straightforward work of Asher Fisch, I wonder if next week's performances can match these first weeks of the run.

More on the production, perhaps, in the next post.

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Absolutely no axe-grinding, please.