Lorenzo Viotti is above all a host who wants to take the stiffness out of the concert hall ★★★★☆

That’s another way of doing it. During a change, when the orchestra members walk off the stage between pieces, simply address the audience as the conductor. Why else would you cut the momentum like that, give visitors the opportunity to check their phones? Lorenzo Viotti (32), conductor of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra since last summer, seems even more in his element on Friday in the Haarlem Philharmonie with a microphone in his hand than when he stands in front of the musicians with a baton.

Because Viotti is above all a host, who wants to take the stiffness out of the concert hall with well-timed jokes and interaction with the audience (who can sing ‘shoobiedoo’). Although there is ‘just’ music on the music stands by John Adams, Stravinsky, Bernstein, Gershwin and Artie Shaw, it feels more like a show with good music than a classical concert.

And sometimes it feels more like a Viotti show than a collective show. In Shaw’s clarinet concerto, for example, with the formidable Andreas Ottensamer as soloist, when Viotti wants to show that he can also play the drums – in the other pieces we had already noticed that the orchestra has excellent percussionists.

But it’s vanity that makes you laugh too. And the question is whether this isn’t just what most of the public wants. No one has been talked about as much this concert season as Viotti. Media that never paid attention to classical music, from Linda to Arjen Lubachs the evening show, dived into Viotti, who, as a top-fit ​​Instagrammer, is tapping into a new audience. This is also noticeable in Haarlem: there are (slightly) more people in their twenties and thirties. And so they are visiting a program that not so long ago would be considered ‘difficult’.

Based on his first season, you don’t get the impression that Viotti is the type of conductor who digs into the deepest layers of the score; his first priority is to build the walls, not to investigate the idea from which they came up on the blueprint. The walls are in Stravinsky’s Symphony in three parts in any case, standing firm. Dry strings, the tightness, wit in moderation, a nice table tennis between the orchestra sections: this is correct.

In the sultry Fantasy Overture by George Gershwin, arranged by Angela Morley, the NedPho (the traditional costumes have been replaced by more frivolous outfits) shows itself to be a good jazz orchestra that audibly enjoys the freedom this outing offers. The absolute highlight is Prelude, Fugue and Riffs by Leonard Bernstein, with crackling copper fortresses, spiky saxes and fat plucked bass. Ottensamer lets his clarinet go wild in this decibel feast.