Seattle Symphony triumphs at Carnegie

By Melinda Bargreen
Seattle Times music critic

	KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES Martin Friedmann, a first violinist, snaps a photo yesterday from Carnegie Hall's stage before a rehearsal for last night's Seattle Symphony debut. Friedmann, 75, said he last played Carnegie when he was 37. At right is cellist Amos Yang, playing there for the first time.
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NEW YORK — A standing ovation at Carnegie Hall: it's an orchestra's dream, and it came true for the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and music director Gerard Schwarz last night.

With the applause, a journey of 100 years finally ended. That's how long it took to get the symphony to Carnegie, the international proving ground of great orchestras.

Symphony fans from as far afield as London were on hand for last night's debut concert and yesterday's morning rehearsal, an invitational event for which Carnegie had printed special programs. The 95 orchestra musicians made their way through the wet, windy streets to the world's most famous concert hall, looking out from the stage to the red-plush and cream-and-gilt tiers of seating — where they would face the most critical audience of their four-city East Coast tour that evening.

The previous day had been considerably less glamorous: a long, long journey on three buses, from Worcester, Mass., to New Brunswick, N.J., with a rest stop whose chief culinary offering was Dunkin' Donuts. There was barely time for the musicians to change and get recaffeinated upon arrival at the New Brunswick State Theatre, where a big crowd gave hometown boy Schwarz (who hails from Weehawken, N.J.) and his band a warm welcome. Then it was back on the bus for the ride into New York City, while the larger instruments and the players' dress wardrobes went on a truck.

	KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES Gerard Schwarz conducts the Seattle Symphony in Richard Strauss' "Death and Transfiguration," which received warm applause last night.

If the musicians were fatigued, you sure couldn't tell it in the morning rehearsal at Carnegie.

"Everyone is so energized," marveled piccolo player Zartouhi Dombourian-Eby. "They're so focused on every note."

"We're ready," said violinist Mariel Bailey, "really ready."

The maestro's wife, Jody Schwarz, said the orchestra sounded "at least as good, if not better" than the last orchestral rehearsal she had heard in the hall — that of the august Vienna Philharmonic. Even allowing for some understandable partiality, the sound was indeed mind-boggling, not only in rehearsal but in the almost-full hall that evening.

	KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES Seattle Symphony conductor Gerard Schwarz yesterday prepares to take the stage at Carnegie Hall, where his program included Strauss, Sibelius and American composer Bright Sheng.

Concert program

Schwarz had chosen the Carnegie Hall program with considerable care. There was a big, colorful Richard Strauss opener, the tone poem "Death and Transfiguration," to show off the late-romantic, Wagner/Strauss chops of this orchestra; and an important symphonic work that's a little outside the Beethoven-Brahms mainstream that New Yorkers hear every day (the Sibelius Second). In between came the program's "hook," a new piece by a major American composer, Bright Sheng. It featured mega-soprano Jane Eaglen, a Seattle resident who's the toast of New York, appearing tomorrow at the Metropolitan Opera in Wagner's "Die Walküre."

Carnegie's acoustics, designed to flatter orchestral sound, left the last chord of "Death and Transfiguration" resonating last night in the sumptuous reverberations of the hall. Eaglen's spectacular voice shimmered and shone, sounding like a force of nature, in Sheng's "The Phoenix." Both works received a warmer ovation than they've gotten in Benaroya Hall.

	KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES The symphony performs Richard Strauss' "Death and Transfiguration" yesterday at Carnegie Hall. The legendary hall's acoustics left the last chord resonating.

The orchestra has never sounded stronger or more confident, with a sound that verged on overwhelming when all the brass got going in the Strauss and the Sibelius finale. It wasn't the cleanest performance of the Sibelius, but it was heartfelt.

Sweet acclaim

And as the hardened, cynical New Yorkers — those guys who hear the best orchestras in the world — rose to their feet, how sweet it must have been for Schwarz to hear the acclaim for the orchestra he has worked so hard to bring to prominence. Sweet, too, for the longtime believers in the Seattle Symphony who were in the audience, from board members to tour donors such as the Benaroya family.

	KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES Soprano Jane Eaglen, center, performs Bright Sheng's "The Phoenix" in its Carnegie Hall debut. The vocal work was the centerpiece of the Seattle Symphony's program at the hall last night.

Carnegie Hall season-ticket holder Mikhail Filimonov, a 33-year New York resident, said that when a Carnegie audience demands an encore, "That is the ultimate achievement." Filimonov admits a bias, however; his brother Gennady Filimonov is a Seattle Symphony violinist. Still, he said, "I know how tough a crowd we can be and how critical we are of everyone and everything that comes to our town."

The encore was the first movement of Busoni's "Turandot" Suite.

The reviews will come, from the dozen or so critics in the house (including one from The New York Times). But for the Seattle Symphony, the best review has already come in from the audience: They like us; they really, really like us.

After the concert, the players took over an upscale Chinese restaurant, Shun Lee West (haute Chinese food at its finest, says the Zagat guide), for a party. They go on tonight to the Tilles Center on Long Island for the tour's finale — buoyed, no doubt, by that Carnegie Hall energy.

Melinda Bargreen: mbargreen@seattletimes.com

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