Eschenbach’s Drive Elevates Performance of Hamburg Orchestra

Christoph Eschenbach is hardly a musician in need of gainful employment. He is the music director of the NDR Symphony Orchestra Hamburg, the most important orchestra in northern Germany. Last month he began his first season as music director of Orchestre de Paris. He is music director of the Ravinia Festival, the outdoor venue where the Chicago Symphony performs in the summer. He is artistic director of the extensive Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. He is conductor laureate of the Houston Symphony, which he led for 11 years. He is in demand as a guest, not just with symphony orchestras, but also for opera, for which he has a special gift. If that weren’t enough, he is also a superb pianist, who particularly enjoys accompanying singers in recital.

And that apparently isn’t enough. He has suddenly appeared as a leading candidate for the competing music director openings at the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra and Boston Symphony. And last week, before he realized he had better say no more--and stopped giving interviews--Eschenbach told the Philadelphia Inquirer that he found the prospect of heading that city’s orchestra “quite fascinating,” although he hasn’t conducted it in four years.

Actually, Eschenbach need say nothing, only conduct, which he happens to be doing quite a bit of in Southern California. Friday and Saturday nights he appeared with the touring NDR at, respectively, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and Orange County Performing Arts Center, with different programs. He also leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic in its subscription concerts this week and returns as guest conductor again in December.

The weekend performances demonstrated exactly what all the fuss is about. With the Hamburg players, Eschenbach appears an inspiring, electrifying figure. This is not quite a top-flight ensemble. There is a touch of raggedness in attacks. It lacks brilliance, and with the Chandler Pavilion acoustics, its collective sound tended toward tubbiness (it was a bit brighter in Orange Country’s Segerstrom Hall). But the sense of commitment from the players--many of them young--was palpable. Eschenbach has interesting ideas and energy, and the orchestra demonstrated an irresistible eagerness to follow him.

Both an intellectual and visceral conductor, Eschenbach makes an impact on many levels at once. At the Pavilion, for instance, he accompanied Midori in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in a manner that was remarkably flexible as he followed a young violinist intent upon imposing her own individuality on nearly every bar. And yet he brought out any number of intriguing details in the orchestra with a clarity, logic and individuality that gave the violinist’s passionate ferocity a substance.

Rhythm is at the heart of all Eschenbach’s music making. In the finest performance of the weekend, Mahler’s First Symphony in Orange County, Eschenbach made every detail in the rich orchestral textures seem crystalline. And again he did so without loss of flexibility or momentum. The result was that the symphony could feel fresh and surprising in each moment, yet never in such a way that it distracted but seemed rather part of a large and an exceptionally tense logic.

One disappointment in Eschenbach’s programs, however, was their conventionality. He is a sophisticated, cosmopolitan music director (and also one of the most stylishly dressed). The Pavilion program began with Weber’s Overture to “Euryanthe” and concluded with Schoenberg’s orchestration of Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor. There was plenty of color in both, and in the latter, Eschenbach was especially appealing in his ability to make the piece sound both like Romantic Brahms and like radical Schoenberg, although it would take a more dazzling orchestra to fully capture Schoenberg’s imposing instrumental colors.

At Segerstrom, Eschenbach, who happens to be an astute and graceful Mozartean, began the program with Mozart’s Symphonia Concertante for Violin and Viola. The soloists--violinist Stefan Wagner and violist Marius Nichiteanu--are principal players in the orchestra and not strong personalities. Remarkably, Eschenbach brought along none of seven new works he commissioned for the orchestra from a range of international composers to usher in the millennium.

But then, Eschenbach’s future does not likely include remaining forever in Hamburg. Ready to make his mark in Paris, he seems poised for the East Coast as well.