It’s fitting, in a sense, that “Catamorphosis” premiered without a live audience in the darker pandemic days of early 2021, streamed by the Berlin Philharmonic on its Digital Concert Hall. This is the music of natural forces indifferent to human witnesses; yet in those violins and their sense of looming urgency, a doleful cry for help — from Thorvaldsdottir, from the earth itself — begins to emerge.
Percussive textures continue to pass through while the strings, rarely rising above a mezzo piano but made richer by divisi lines that add voices to each section, flare with the emotional tension and release of Barber’s Adagio for Strings — though, crucially, never for phrases long enough to tip into sentimentality. It is a requiem taking shape but held at bay.
Radulovic was similarly withholding in the Prokofiev concerto. After lifting his bow above the strings of his instrument repeatedly, like a tennis player bouncing the ball before a serve, he softly let out into the work’s opening solo, resisting its invitation for a vibrato-heavy, singing line and opting instead for something lighter and more objective, befitting the transparency of the score.
Modest at first, he was nevertheless an immediately commanding presence. Part of it was his pop star look, including platform boots and a mane of long, wavy hair with a topknot. But he was also charismatic in his adventurous rubato later in the Allegro moderato; in his simply lovely and smartly shaped melodies in the second movement; and in his folk freedom and crunchy chords in the Spanish-inflected finale. His encore — Paganini’s showy Caprice No. 24, made showier in an arrangement by Aleksandar Sedlar and Radulovic — was a dose of old-fashioned fun, with the kind of virtuosic, at times laugh-out-loud showmanship that has had audiences cheering for centuries.
Throughout the concerto, Rouvali was a willing accomplice, lending the score the clarity it requires with a whiff of daring. It’s the kind of playing you might expect from the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, where he is the principal conductor. There, his close relationship with the ensemble has often resulted in lively performances that change from night to night in a spirit of experimentation and curiosity.
Those aren’t qualities I usually associate with the New York Philharmonic. But I did on Thursday — and hopefully will more often in the future, whether Rouvali returns next as the orchestra’s music director or, at the very least, as a welcome guest.
New York Philharmonic
This program repeats through Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org.
