Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – THE MET ORCHESTRA returns to Carnegie Hall with the sublime orchestral colors of an all-Strauss bill

• By drediman
• June 13, 2025
• No Comments

The Metropolitan Opera’s 2024/2025 season may have officially concluded over at Lincoln Center, but the Met Orchestra continues on with a pair of June performances at Carnegie Hall. The first of these two concerts occurred last night, with music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin leading his ensemble — one of the finest in the country — in an all Richard Strauss program that also featured sensational soprano Elza van den Heever (the second Met Orchestra appearance at Carnegie Hall, a different program, is scheduled next week on June 18).

Despite being an all-Strauss evening, there was wonderful variety therein, commencing in a celebratory manner with the Der Rosenkavalier Suite. The Met Orchestra has a deep connection and a long history with Strauss’s beloved “Mozartian” opera, and it showed. The swooning strings were in turn poignant and lilting, particularly in the increasingly enveloping waltz segments of the oft-performed suite. The evening continued with a quintet of rarely performed miniature leider. As sung by den Heever — who has had quite the stellar season at The Met, particularly with her noteworthy appearances in two Strauss operas (the revival of Die Frau ohne Schatten, the new production of Salome), both of which were indisputable highlights — they came across with disarming directness thanks to the South African soprano’s intelligent interpretations. Indeed, she sang with affecting poise, only unleashing the full scale of her powerful, gleaming voice — capable of both dramatic heft and thoughtful lyricism — when the music or the poetry called for it.

The smartly-curated concert came to a close showcasing another dimension of Strauss’s compositional talents in the form of Ein Heldenleben, a tone poem charting the life of a hero through evocative orchestral writing (e.g., battle scenes were depicted, as was a moving account of the hero’s transcendent departure from the world). Despite being segmented into three parts, the Met forces played the piece essentially as a single continuous movement, bringing an epic quality to the composition. Nézet-Séguin has always had the ability to draw maximimum orchestral color from his players, and it was put to particularly sublime use during last night’s concert.

RECOMMENDED

THE MET ORCHESTRA
Classical Music
Carnegie Hall
2 hours (with one intermission)
The Met Orchestra returns to Carnegie Hall on June 18