New York Philharmonic, Barbican, London - review

Here was a meeting of the new world and the old. "We have waltzes on the brain," declared conductor Alan Gilbert, and so they did - perfumed Gallic waltzes by Ravel, pastiche Viennese waltzes by Strauss and, as an encore, the uplifting, balletic Waltz from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, all conjuring images of aristocratic European elegance.

The playing of the New York Philharmonic combines something of that old-world sophistication with the big-boned, technical brilliance one associates with the best American orchestras. This was the first of the main concerts in the orchestra's five-day residency at the Barbican and a good advertisement for its current standing.

When Gilbert took up his post in 2009, he arrived with a promise to give programming in New York a contemporary edge. This London visit included the first UK performance of Esa-Pekka Salonen's Nyx. The Greek goddess of the night is portrayed in a modern orchestral spectacular, one with enough content not to be just another skilful exercise in texture. At its best, the music has the most articulate light touch - the murmuring horns, the lyrical clarinet solos (the excellent Anthony McGill), the fleeting strings and flutes like racing high-altitude winds. Salonen's Nyx could give Don Juan and Don Quixote, the subjects of two of Strauss's tone poems, a run for their money.

The star soloist of the concert was Joyce DiDonato, rounding off her Artist Spotlight season at the Barbican. Ravel might be tut-tutting from the grave at the slow speeds she and Gilbert chose for his song cycle Sheherazade, but if there is one singer who could carry them off, it is DiDonato. Every line glistened with an impressionist's subtlety of colour. The dark, lower reaches of her mezzo-soprano conjured the dangerous lure of the Orient. Her barely audible invitation "Entre!" was a mere breath of sensuality.

Then it was on to a second half in waltzing 3/4 time. In Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales and the Suite from Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier Gilbert was painstaking when this music demands flair above all. But he must also take credit for the high standard of the playing, New World calibre that rightly won an old-world audience's applause.

barbican.org.uk

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