United States Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich: Behzod Abduraimov (piano), New York Philharmonic / Gianadrea Noseda (conductor). Wu Tsai Theater, David Geffen Corridor, New York, 9.1.2026. (ES-S)
Tchaikovsky – Piano Concerto No.1 in B-flat minor, Op.23
Encore: Liszt – from Grandes études de Paganini, S.141: No.3 in G-sharp minor, ‘La Campanella’
Shostakovich – Symphony No.4 in C minor, Op.43
For the primary subscription week of 2026, the New York Philharmonic and visitor conductor Gianandrea Noseda introduced collectively two monumental works that belong to the identical musical custom, one Noseda has identified intimately since his youth on the Mariinsky Theatre. He thus formed this system as a development, drawing connections throughout works conceived and premiered beneath very totally different circumstances. An epitome of declarative Romanticism, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 was written largely in the course of the composer’s keep in Switzerland and carried out for the primary time in Boston. Marked by a distinctly twentieth-century combination of angst and irony, Shostakovich’s Symphony No.4 was composed in Leningrad in 1935–36 beneath growing political scrutiny following the Pravda assault on Girl Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. It reached the live performance corridor solely twenty-five years later, after the political thaw that adopted Stalin’s dying. Each works push theatrical gesture towards extra, treating scale as an expressive necessity. In Tchaikovsky’s concerto, rhetorical breadth nonetheless carries a assured, affirmative cost. Shostakovich’s symphony revealed how that very same language, carried ahead beneath totally different pressures, started to lose its assurances, steadily shifting into anxiousness.
Within the first half, the highlight fell on Behzod Abduraimov, making his belated debut with the New York Philharmonic, a decade after his first look at Carnegie Corridor. The Tashkent-born pianist approached Tchaikovsky’s oft-performed First Concerto with a mixture of technical assurance and restraint, favoring continuity and readability over overt show. The concerto’s famously demanding octave passages had been dispatched with feathery evenness, sounding steady and legato relatively than hammered. Sweeping arpeggios and filigree passagework had been absorbed into the continued musical stream, with out calling consideration to themselves. In additional lyrical episodes, notably within the Andantino semplice, he formed melodies with finely judged management of timing and shade, permitting phrases to breathe. Even within the grand rhetorical moments of the outer actions, the emphasis remained on fluency and proportion, giving the efficiency an inward coherence that largely prevented the concerto’s extra bombastic tendencies. As he additionally made clear within the encore – Franz Liszt’s celebrated paraphrase on Niccolò Paganini’s ‘La Campanella’ – technical bravura is, for Abduraimov, not an finish however an expressive means.
In a corridor whose acoustics are typically liable to piano–orchestra imbalance, Noseda initially saved the orchestral sound fastidiously in test, permitting the concerto’s iconic ascending chords to emerge with readability. Later within the efficiency, nonetheless, because the orchestra was granted higher latitude, the equilibrium proved much less constant, with denser orchestral textures at instances encroaching on the piano line.
After the interval, in Noseda’s rendition, Shostakovich’s Symphony No.4 unfolded as a piece pushed by relentless accumulation, its broad spans sustained with an inexorable sense of movement. The huge orchestral forces of the New York Philharmonic had been unleashed with blunt power when required but by no means allowed to interrupt into episodic show. As an alternative, repetition and sheer mass functioned as structural instruments, pushing the music ahead till its gestures appeared to pressure beneath their very own weight.
Within the first motion, Noseda introduced into focus a defining function of the symphony as a complete: a mode of musical considering wherein instability is ingrained, not incidental. What may initially sound incongruent was formed to register as deliberate, a part of a design that resists coherence with out relinquishing management. The motion’s fugato emerged not as a show of contrapuntal brilliance however as a mechanism of accelerating stress, forcing motion with out permitting launch. Marches and sardonic turns adopted with sharp definition however with out caricature, their power accumulating by way of repetition relatively than improvement. Moments of lyric launch – initiated by woodwinds or strings – had been in the end subsumed by brass and percussion, illustrating an general strategy wherein dense and sparse textures alternate.
From the very first bars, Noseda maintained a agency grip on inside stability, his staccato gestures underscoring assault and precision. Regardless of his managed strategy, he ensured that Shostakovich’s unsettling instrumental juxtapositions stood out throughout the dense orchestral cloth. Julian Gonzalez’s uncovered bassoon traces, set towards muted brass sonorities, hovered between lament and parody. Concertmaster Frank Huang’s solo traces had been shadowed by mechanized accompaniment. Christopher Martin’s trumpet entries, remoted towards abruptly thinned textures, arrived with a blunt readability that felt purposefully interruptive.
Within the Moderato con moto, Shostakovich launched a misleading distinction, one Noseda resisted sentimentalizing. The motion’s flippantly dancing floor, first entrusted to the violas, recalled a Mahlerian dance sort emptied of heat – much less a Ländler than a ghostly afterimage of 1. Underneath Noseda’s path, the music retained a brittle poise: rhythms had been neatly articulated however by no means allowed to settle, moments of obvious ease floating briefly earlier than dissolving as gestures circled with out arriving wherever.
The ultimate motion traced a protracted descent. Its funeral procession superior with heavy insistence, the low brass – particularly the disturbing solo trombone – lending the music a grim, impersonal weight, drained of lyric inflection. Moments of disquieting animation and hole grandeur surfaced alongside the best way, however they didn’t generate momentum; every surge arrived already undermined. Noseda sustained a outstanding depth as much as the eerie conclusion, the music slowly receding into nothingness.
Edward Sava-Segal
Featured Picture: Pianist Behzod Abduraimov, conductor Gianandrea Noseda and the NY Philharmonic © Chris Lee
