I was thinking about this while listening to Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic do Brahms 4th yesterday afternoon. It was overall a thrilling performance--the first two movements were as good as anything I have heard, and third was great, and my only problem with the 4th was that I thought Dudamel's tempo was a little slow and he overplayed the contrasts a wee bit (of course, that is just a question of taste).
The playing, however, was awesome. So why makes an orchestra great? The following thoughts occur to me:
(1) They are completely in tune.
(2) They are precise and yet they also swing. The LA Phil did the Mozart Haffner Symphony earlier this year, and the strings sounded as if they were one instrument. Yesterday, when they played the great second subject of the first movement of the Brahms, they made it sound like a big, German Tango. The pulse never wavered, but there was great flexibility.
(3) They are powerful and yet transparent: they can get loud without being ugly, and every individual voice remains clear.
(4) They can play a great variety of styles. The Brahms 4 was very German yesterday, but when they did the famous Hungarian Dance 5 as an encore, it was pure Warner Brothers.
(5) Fine soloists. I have been a fan of Michelle Zukovsky, the LA Phil's principal clarenet, since I came across an album called Philharmonic Solo when I was in college (which was the late 1970s). I remember hearing her clarinet solo in the Beethoven 6 with Giulini when the LA Phil came to Boston many years ago, and she was terrific in the Brahms yesterday. David Buck, the new principal flutist, made the haunting flute solo in the 4th movement (bars 97-104), well haunting. First oboe Ariana Ghez produces consistently breathtaking sounds as well.
(6) The ability to be heterogeneous and homogeneous. Sometimes, when one instrument takes over a melodic line from another, one likes to hear them meld: for the clarinet to sound just a little like the oboe; for the strings to sound a little like the winds. Karajan's Berlin Philharmonic was miraculous at this, but Karajan liked that patricular characteristic a bit too much, so the orchestra sometimes sounded a little bit like how my mother-in-law's Cadillac would ride--it was just too cushy. Part of the LA Phil's flexibility is that is is capable of producing Karajanesque smoothness, but can also make instruments stand out for what they are.
(7) That they seem to care. Unlike any other major league orchestra I have seen, the member of the LA Phil never look bored to me. But maybe that is just me.
