[They are now what their cousins, the Hungarians, used to be...:)]

http://tinyurl.com/a22ut

   Financial Times / November 7, 2005 / Arts & Ideas
   Mikko Franck / N.Y. Philharmonic
   Avery Fisher Hall
   MARTIN BERNHEIMER

   His name is Mikko Franck, and he must be a great white hope in
   the beleaguered world of baton virtuosos.  Only 26 - a mere child
   - he already heads the Orchestre National de Belgique.  Next
   season he takes over the National Opera in his native Finland.
   On Thursday he finally made his twice-deferred debut as guest
   with the New York Philharmonic.

   Franck doesn't seem to fit conventional images.  He favours
   thorny repertory.  Apparently more interested in leading the
   orchestra than the audience, he avoids flamboyant gestures.  He
   isn't tall, doesn't cut a dashing figure on the podium.  In fact
   he eschews conventional podium stances and conducts much of the
   time while seated on a throne-like chair.  That, we are told,
   is a concession to a back injury.  In moments of agitation,
   however, he steps down and works floor-level, eye to eye with
   his players.

   He cannot manage miracles, however, in a hit-and-run engagement.
   Beethoven's third "Leonore" overture, which opened the programme,
   emerged a bit brash and perfunctory.  Shostakovich's Fifth
   Symphony, which closed it, brooded broadly and relatively quietly
   at the outset.  When the composer succumbed to bombast and kitsch,
   however, the conductor followed suit.  At least the crashes and
   sighs were neatly gauged.

   The centrepiece, and highlight of the evening, took the taut
   form of Alfred Schnittke's "Concerto Grosso No. 5 for Violin
   and Invisible Piano." Gidon Kremer, who had been the soloist for
   the premiere at nearby Carnegie Hall in 1991, once again untied
   the structural knots with tireless strength, making the convoluted
   seem simple.  Andrius Zlabys made much of the ghostly utterances
   assigned to the amplified keyboard in the wings.  Franck held
   the disparate elements together with equal parts bravura and
   sensitivity.  He managed to drive Schnittke's cumbersome apparatus
   with unflagging focus yet no fuss.  What, one wonders, will he
   illuminate next time?

Janos Gereben
www.sfcv.org
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