The American Michael Tilson Thomas conducts the BR Symphoniker – Munich
Aaron Copland’s Third Symphony is a smash hit, American-style, both mind-blowing and entertaining. First performed in 1946, it also embodied America’s newfound confidence after defeating Nazi Germany, audible later in the fourth and final movement with the built-in “Fanfare for the Common Man”. In row eight of the Herkulessaal, percussion and brass quickly reach the pain threshold and make it clear that Munich will soon need a large concert hall again, the renovated Gasteig or, from BR’s point of view, even better, the new one in the Werksviertel. Then the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra called the American conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, who was last a guest with them 30 years ago, to conduct the relatively rare work.
In the first half, on the other hand, with the violinist Julia Fischer, not only a real Munich resident can be experienced, but also a piece that has already collected some dust due to its popularity: Ludwig van Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Michael Tilson Thomas approaches it in a deliberately sober manner, forms the orchestral phrases in a slim, rather small-scale manner, and, inspired by historical performance practice, quickly takes them back to the piano after a sforzato.
Especially in the final rondo, the concerto remains friendly, perhaps somewhat harmless, game music. All in all, it suits the slim, unpretentious playing of Julia Fischer, who is once again distinguished above all by her absolute purity of sound and intonation. She plays the figurations imaginatively but lightly, while Fritz Kreisler’s traditional cadenzas bear witness to technical perfection and a fast, almost orchestral violin sound. Playful lightness and violinistic bravura unite in their encore, the seventeenth Caprice by Niccolò Paganini.