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Kavakos, Luisi, and Brahms Philadelphia
Marian Anderson Hall, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts
02/21/2025 - & February 22, 23, 2025
Bent Sørensen: Evening Land
Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Violin Concerto in D major , Op. 35
Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98
Leonidas Kavakos (Violin)
The Philadelphia Orchestra, Fabio Luisi (Conductor)
L. Kavakos, F. Luisi (© Diana Antal)
Can the Philadelphia Orchestra’s concerts get any better? I’ve been attending performances for half a century and continue to be amazed, even enthralled, by the quality and variety of the music and the organization’s anticipation of and responsiveness to social issues impacting the musical arts.
A case in point was the February 21, 2025, program featuring Leonidas Kavakos, the celebrated Greek violinist, and Fabio Luisi, leader of three major orchestras and a popular guest conductor on the international scene. The program kicked off with Evening Land, a stirring work by contemporary Danish composer Bent Sørensen. Like most 21st century works performed by American orchestras, this tone poem is brief (13 minutes), as though warming up more conservative members of the audience to the sometimes unfamiliar dynamics and harmonies of modern compositions. The work expresses the essence of peak experiences the composer had as a young child gazing over a distant landscape with flashes of light. Surely, everyone has memories such as this, recollections of a preternatural quiet, a sense of infinity. Natty in a dark jacket, grey slacks, and bow tie, the silver‑haired conductor led the musicians on a mystical journey through those moments, beginning with the breathless whisper of Concertmaster David Kim’s solo violin. Delicate, sighing melodies, flowing glissandi rose like incense from some primeval altar, filling the hollow of Marian Anderson Hall with a sense of ever‑evolving wonder. Small discords expanded into great shifting blocks of sound, dissolving, floating away like a kiss thrown on a wave good‑bye. What a thrilling sound experience, tingling with the magic of oboe, trombones, and horns, a fleeting glimpse as close as we may ever get to the recollection of a momentary spiritual awakening far back in time.
On a more worldly note, Kavakos joined the orchestra for the Korngold Violin Concerto, a delicious concoction of dramatic Hollywood sonorities and the wise constructions of a musical architect. Esteemed as a child prodigy and opera specialist, Korngold left Europe for the United States before World War II and became established as one of Hollywood’s most popular screen composers. But he never abandoned the seductive complexity of classical music, which he continued to compose as the work of his heart, the expression of deeply felt emotions. Kavakos’s performance was like a beautiful dream churned into melody. This artist has a fabulous but unexplainable charisma. Seeing him enter the stage with Luisi was like petting a cat and watching sparks fly. Yet, there is nothing showy or even vivacious about his presence, which seemed to me to be all humility in the service of music. The bespectacled artist is tall, but not ostentatious, his manner refined. Simply attired in black jacket and pants, his grey hair brushing his shoulders, Kavakos is almost invisible, yet his presence intensely felt, and his music a splendid effusion of sound. No gratuitous head-shaking or whole-body gyrations: just pure art.
The concerto is a work for large orchestra, this ensemble almost tumbling off the stage, consuming visual space. I loved the first movement, full of cinematic sweep, dreamy cascades arising from just four notes. Did this opening flight of tones (ADADG#) inspire the ABGGD theme of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)? While a light‑weight composition in the scheme of things, the concerto deserves its place in the violin repertoire, and Kavakos served it well.
The concert concluded with the hefty Brahms Symphony No. 4. Since its premier in 1886, the Fourth joined the canon of symphonic works sometimes dismissively referred to as “war horses” or “old chestnuts.” And indeed, some tepid performances in the mid‑20th century did leave the impression of musical mush, without character or conviction. This is no longer the case as conductors including Luisi have brought their own interpretive insight to performances rich with tonal variety and statements that seize and retain our undivided attention.
Conducting without a baton, Luisi led us on a pathway not only through Brahms’s score, but also through the conductor’s vast experiences both in the musical realm and within our shared humanity. Everything about this interpretation was varied and engaging, crowned by the majestic horn entrance of the Andante moderato and culminating in 30 variations and coda, each a shining gem of perfect proportions, in the final movement. Luisi’s fluid hand movements seemed customized for each variation, as though you could create video flash cards for this Allegro energico, this Passionato-Più allegro, rising in intensity to the towering conclusion. The stage presence and musical ideas of the performers, including the Philadelphia Orchestra’s impassioned first‑chair soloists, made this a symphonic event well worth attending.
Linda Holt
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