NY Phil raises a splendid noise in Davies
[...] when the orchestra muscled its way onto the stage of Davies Symphony Hall on Friday night for a program of works by Beethoven and Sibelius, there was no doubt that we were in for some bold, brawny music-making.
Friday's concert, the first in a two-night run under outgoing music director Alan Gilbert that was part of the San Francisco Symphony's Great Performers Series, put the most persuasive imaginable spin on the Philharmonic's trademark sound.
Saturday's program was devoted to music of Schumann - the Cello Concerto with the orchestra's principal, Carter Brey, as soloist - and Brahms.
The "Egmont" Overture boasted an epic blend of imposing weight and fleetness, so that you could sense at some subliminal level a dark drama rushing toward its denouement.
The sprightly rhythms of the first movement - full-throated but aerodynamic - found their counterpart in the even more propulsive pacing of the finale.
The composer's final effort in the genre, it unfolds in a single wildly varied stretch, and its formal logic has a fantasia-like freedom.