From Alexander Vedernikov's last performance before he died of COVID giving a revelatorily insightful performance of Honegger's Second Symphony in Poland. Vedernikov was a giant of the podium for the relatively few who knew about him. It's easy enough to give an exciting performance of Scheherazade or Prokofiev 5, it's much harder to make a work like Honegger 2 come to life, but when you do, it's a much more profound, life-changing experience than the type of performance you come away from feeling as though you've been through a virtuoso thrill ride. A Honegger symphony can take your mind on a journey through the 20th century and all its ugly fears and anxieties, and all the moreso when one hears it amid the COVID era. Vedernikov brings a structural rigor from it you don't get from Munch's dionysian thrillride, or can hear amid Karajan's dark plush apolstery, but within that rigor is an astonishing lyricism that soars right along with the music. It really is as good a performance as I've ever heard of this still underrated masterpiece of the 20th century. The violas have trouble with their high notes in the finale, but amid that there are some of the cleanest and most precisely played syncopations you'll ever hear that generate enormous tension.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYiy82oWVrc
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