Zubin Mehta is back at the Nationaltheater, the long-time General Music Director and Honorary Conductor of the Bavarian State Orchestra! Sometimes ailing recently, the 86-year-old opens the fourth Academy Concert with a world premiere to mark the 500th anniversary of the orchestra: “Apollon et Dionysos. Patterns, Colors and Dances for Orchestra” by Minas Borboudakis.
The atmosphere in the short but powerful work of the Greek composer, who has lived in Munich for a long time, is sultry, sensual and broodingly overheated. Repeated, mainly rhythmic patterns are energetically charged, collapse in a standstill, increase again until the howling and raging of the symphonic apparatus. Rhythm, inspired by Cretan dances, unleashes sound, order intoxication, Apollo Dionysos.
The National Theater is filled with Apollonian beauty at the latest in the slow movement of Felix Mendelssohn’s (E minor) Violin Concerto. The violinist Vilde Frang lets it breathe, does not force anything, neither in the wonderful sound of her Guarneri del Gesù nor in the interpretation. It is quite unique, in the extremely savored tempo fluctuations of the first as well as in the spooky fast last movement, even in individual notes and phrasing. But Frang listens to the music and the moment, for example taking the big cadence very intimately back to the inside. Mehta, conducting from a seated position but wide awake, feels the inner freedom, listens to Frang’s playing and passes it on to the state orchestra in a flash.
Trust for trust, that is what can be experienced afterwards in Anton Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony between the two long-standing partners. Mehta doesn’t reinvent Bruckner – what’s the point? -, gives space to the fabulous wind soloists, spans the gigantic arc of the adagio, knows exactly what he wants and where he doesn’t have to do anything. Just an old master, celebrated with standing ovations.