Honeck Lights the Philharmonia's Fire: A Debut That Makes 2028 Feel Too Far Away

Manfred Honeck's first concert as principal conductor designate ran from Strauss to Strauss via Mozart — and made tradition sound like the most dangerous idea in the room.

Manfred Honeck walked into the Philharmonia's history last night not as a custodian but as an arsonist in a good suit. He's the seventh principal conductor in the ensemble's 81-year run, and he doesn't take the post officially until 2028, but the queue of predecessors — Klemperer, Muti, Sinopoli, Salonen, Ashkenazy, Jansons — felt distinctly present and distinctly challenged. His opening Mahler quote in rehearsal ('not the worship of the ashes but the preservation of fire') wasn't a press-release flourish. It was a programme note for the whole evening. The Fledermaus Overture came first, and it set the temperature for everything that followed. Honeck conducted from memory — no podium score, no safety net — and brought what can only be described as a decade of Vienna New Year's muscle to bear on the Philharmonia strings. The 'artfully delayed final beats' the reviewer heard were the hallmark of someone who has lived inside this repertoire long enough to know exactly where the wit lives. This was Strauss played as comedy, not as showpiece. Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major with Emanuel Ax as soloist provided the pivot point between the Viennese ballroom and the expressionist nightmare ahead. Ax's playing was lucid without being clinical — the 'ingenuous opening Allegro' the reviewer describes sounds right, as does the emphasis on 'supple duets with flute and oboe' in the slow movement. Mozart's C major concertos tend toward the ceremonial; Honeck and Ax found the argument underneath the ceremony. Then the Elektra suite, and the temperature went vertical. Richard Strauss's opera is about one of Western music's most psychologically annihilating plots, and Honeck's own arrangement of the suite didn't soften it. 'Queasy chromatic turmoil,' 'proto-Psycho scream,' 'deliciously bloody climax' — the reviewer's language is doing real work here. The heroine's triumphal dance done with 'horrible glee in cymbals and brass' is exactly what Strauss wrote and exactly what most conductors file down to something more palatable. Honeck leaned in. The arc of the programme — Fledermaus to Piano Concerto No. 25 to Elektra — was itself a statement. Light Viennese comedy, Mozartian grace under pressure, then full chromatic horror. Honeck was mapping his own musical heartland and daring the audience to follow him all the way to the edge. The concert is available on BBC Sounds until 12 December for anyone who wants to hear whether the reviewer's enthusiasm is earned. It is.