Bruce Hodges hears the performance of Bent Sørensen, Brahms and Korngold at Marian Anderson Hall, Philadelphia, PA, US, on 21 February 2025
For cinema lovers, hearing Korngold’s Violin Concerto is like being presented with an outsized, lavish bouquet. Written in 1945, the concerto draws inspiration from four of the composer’s film scores: Another Dawn, Juarez, Anthony Adverse and The Prince and the Pauper. If to some ears, the result is perhaps on the juicy, overstuffed side, most listeners find pleasure in the composer’s long breaths and easy-going melodies.
This reading soared in all the right places, thanks to Leonidas Kavakos, conductor Fabio Luisi and the Philadelphia Orchestra. The violinist’s appealing tone (he plays the ‘Willemotte’ Stradivari, made in 1734) and chemistry with the ensemble were constantly on display. Throughout the work’s half-hour duration, the violinist was completely immersed, and often seemed directly engaged with the audience, smiling briefly at people in the front rows.
To open came Bent Sørensen’s Evening Land, a brief, fascinating snapshot based on the contrasts between the composer’s early life in Denmark, and his more recent years in New York. The opening, featuring the orchestra’s concertmaster David Kim, had the innocence of a child’s song, reinforced by Kim’s deliberate use of pale double-stops and mostly vibrato-free tone. Finally, Luisi and the orchestra offered unabashed splendour in an engrossing, athletic performance of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony.
BRUCE HODGES
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