July 29, 2011, Shenzhen Concert Hall
Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra - Christian Ehwald Smetana Ma Vlast
Christian Ehwald returned to conduct the last concert of the SSO season. The program consisted of only one work, a rare treat of the complete Ma Vlast, though regrettably there was an intermission.
I cannot have enough praise for Ehwald's fluent conducting of this mammoth work. Smetana composed this work over a long time, and the individual tone poems in lesser hands do not always feel like part of the same fabric. Despite the intermission, Ehwald most skillfully knitted the work into an organic whole, no mean feat.
Ehwald natural phrasing was always evident, and as usual was mindful of structural integrity. Under his steady but gentle leadership, the orchestra warmed up quickly, blossomed and went from strength to strength. The beautiful playing of the harpist (not the Russian leading lady) set the mood, but it was the woodwind section that really shined above everything. The "pictorial" depictions demand the utmost of the woodwinds and they delivered in spades. The winds had to play almost non-stop, and up and down the scale. Take one example, the opening of Vlatva, when I watched the recent movie "Tree of Life", which uses this music, I instantly recalled the woodwinds in this performance, of the utmost coherence and beauty, really as good as the soundtrack (supposedly from the incomparable Czech Philharmonic)! Of such integrity was the performance that the closing pair, Tabor and Blanik, truly brought the piece to a resounding conclusion.
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