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| Mahler: Symphony No. 4 – Manfred Honeck, New World Symphony – New World Middle, Miami |
Johann Strauss: Overture to Die Fledermaus, Haydn: Symphony No. 93 in D main; Mahler: Symphony No. 4; Lauren Snouffer, New World Symphony, Manfred Honeck; New World Middle, Miami, Florida
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras (14 December 2025)
The unexaminable nature of how music touches the human expertise. In his final Letter from Florida of 2025, Robert J Carreras experiences Maher’s Fourth Symphony
Pythagoras is believed to have been the primary to formally examine a relationship between math and music. The Greek thinker of antiquity and “father of math” is now rooted to music as a lot as to math. In his idea, “the music of the spheres,” Pythagoras theorizes that celestial our bodies are in some type of concord and synchronicity by way of and with an otherworldly one thing. In accordance with Pythagoras, there’s a cosmically ordered supply that systematizes sounds as people expertise them.
From this, Pythagoras set forth on making a rules-based system for understanding music, particularly consonance, that grew to become foundational to enrich within the Darkish Ages and the Renaissance interval. In impact, Pythagoras stumbled upon goal and observable patterns that make music pleasing to the ear.
Manfred Honeck is a seeming disciple of Pythagoras, an heir of wanting to make math audibly pleasing. Honeck is that uncommon breed of musical mathematician – in his proper hand is a counting baton, in his left, a veritable abacus of creative expression.
With New World Symphony (NWS), Honeck delivers on the important thing components of Johann Baptiste Strauss II, Franz Joseph Haydn, and Gustav Mahler and seeks to attract bridges throughout the changeovers of every of the composer’s works performed this afternoon. The conductor’s idiosyncrasies betray Viennese partialities; he likes to hold his upbeats, crashing them down onto downbeats; his baton flicks take getting used to, within the method of, however total his counting is straightforward sufficient to observe.
Honeck doesn’t thoughts crouching right down to eye-level of the violins as first line of contact, to elicit the beginning of a shift in orchestral stability. Honeck shows very high quality and exacting instructions from his abacus – it as lively as his counting; this piques pursuits about Honeck’s hand dominance and dexterity.
Not because the summer time years of Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) has NWS mixed this stage of quantity and dynamic range. There may be additionally an try and combine the tonal switches gestalt to a composer’s concepts, particularly these of Gustav Mahler. Below Honeck’s management, these gamers create greater sounds that stretch the NWS canvas over an additional giant body in a approach harking back to MTT.
Within the Fledermaus overture, NWS hit all of the marks that comprise the opera; the mistaken identities, social gathering favors, and choose tunes are all right here in good kind. If not zestfully Viennese, the musical intent is successfully etched by NWS. Honeck obtained them to and thru the timeless and placeless components of this piece.
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| Manfred Honeck, New World Symphony |
As court docket composer held in excessive esteem by his royal benefactors, all the required components had been in place to meal the busy musical thoughts of Franz Joseph Haydn. The Austrian composer churned out music to match his scenario and bearing, producing symphonies to the tune of over 100.
Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had been shut buddies, and it’s all the time fascinating to listen to how a conductor observes the affect the 2 had on each other. As one would count on, Manfred Honeck tones issues down and takes the fuel pedal off from The Waltz-King Strauss for Haydn. NWS touches on the entire options key to Haydn in Symphony 93.
Manfred Honeck’s humour has an air of snobbish and stuffy, and he creates composites of, fairly than accents to, the orchestral variations the 93rd is thought for. The harmonic adjustments are much less prone to shock, the summits much less prone to be felt viscerally; each are settled into nearly imperceptibly. The listener is left questioning how he obtained there.
Within the “Menuetto,” Honeck fosters a Teutonic people dance taste, suggestive of the Fledermaus that forewent and of the Mahler forthcoming in a most fascinating approach. The orchestra merely alludes to Mozart within the Presto ma non troppo and its bow to liberta and Don Giovanni.
Gustav Mahler’s 4th Symphony recurrently prompts some model of the themephrase – them there sleigh bells bay of bedlam – on this listener. There’s one thing anxiety-provoking about how these hit the ears within the first motion (“Bedächtig. Nicht eilen”). Honeck retains the motto of the bells as a spotlight of the 4th, not bashful in any respect about their prominence over the violins straight by way of to the top of this symphony.
This was a top quality efficiency, the sort shared with classical music fanatics and on classical music boards for a lifetime. Manfred Honeck’s abacus right here takes on a blueprint extra Austrian than Viennese. Regardless of the case, Honeck provides one more sweep of hue tints to the huge palette of colours that contact this NWS household of musicians.
Merely put, that is essentially the most spectacular introduction and observe by way of to Mahler’s 4th this listener has heard aside from recordings. The closing of the primary motion was marked by a luxuriated whisper in orchestral texture and a Paso Fino gait in tempo.
These instrumentalists explored a deep set of shadings and stretches of dynamics and shade varieties, executing on all fronts. It was a case of the exemplary articulation of sections in entrance of a collective coming collectively of the identical. On into the second motion, NWS’ enjoying was very Viennese, very Mahler, very a lot a reminder of and tribute to NWS founder Michael Tilson Thomas.
Honeck offers the harp robust illustration in Mahler’s 4th. Within the Scherzo, it plucked and pinged. Celestial our bodies are summoned within the “Ruhevoll,” the instrument climaxing with the horns and timpani. Within the remaining “Sehr behaglich,” the harp flowed together with the opposite sections right into a state of nice reduction.
The orchestral surge that signifies the fruits of the “Ruhevoll” into the “Sehr behaglich eilen” resulted in a peak of nice panoramic sonority, main right into a “Das himmlische Leben” (The Heavenly Life) of unabashed splendor.
“No music on earth may very well be in comparison with ours,” narrates Lauren Snouffer, an exquisite singer with a vocal and private demeanor designed for this music. The talking high quality of this soprano’s singing in German is a extremely intelligible pleasure to listen to. Along with Honeck and NWS, Snouffer’s narration is an exponentially satisfying decision to Mahler’s 4th.
Pythagoras’ findings are fundamental to the understanding of music by way of math, of this there is no such thing as a doubt. But, in The Golden Encyclopedia of Music, Norman Lloyd finds the connection greater than failing to account for the unexaminable nature of how music touches the human expertise: “[I]f arithmetic ever actually proved something in regards to the nature of music – a lot because it has been utilized in efforts to rationalize what has wanted no rationalizing to the human ear – the mathematicians both have saved their secret to themselves or buried it in calculation.”
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| Mahler: Symphony No. 4 – Lauren Snouffer, Manfred Honeck, New World Symphony – New World Middle, Miami |
Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)
Overture to Die Fledermaus (1874)
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Symphony No. 93 in D main (1791)
Adagio – Allegro assai
Largo cantabile
Menuetto – Allegro
Finale: Presto ma non troppo
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Symphony No. 4 in G main (1899-1900)
Bedächtig. Nicht eilen (Intentionally. Not rushed)
In gemächlicher Bewegung. Ohne Hast (In simple movement. With out
haste)
Ruhevoll (Serene)
Sehr behaglich (Very leisurely)
Narrator: Lauren Snouffer, soprano
Manfred Honeck, conductor
New World Symphony
New World Middle, Michael Tilson Thomas Efficiency Corridor,
John S. and James L. Knight Basis Stage
Miami, Florida
Sunday, December 14, 2025 at 2pm
New World Symphony
The New World Symphony (NWS) is an American orchestral academy
based mostly in Miami Seashore, Florida. Based in 1987 by Michael Tilson Thomas
and Lin and Ted Arison, NWS has helped launch the careers of practically
1,300 alumni worldwide. In fall 2022 Stéphane Denève was named Creative
Director of the New World Symphony.
NWS is a coaching ensemble for younger musicians in preparation for
skilled careers in classical music. Since 2011, the New World
Symphony has its headquarters within the Frank Gehry-designed New World
Middle in Miami Seashore, Florida. The orchestra presents a season of
live shows from September to Might on the 756-seat live performance corridor of the New
World Middle, together with full-orchestra live shows, a chamber music collection, a
new music collection, percussion consort collection, small ensemble live shows, a
household collection, and particular festivals and recitals.
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