Philharmonia/Honeck/Ax review – principal conductor designate gives a scorching taste of things to come

Royal Festival Hall, London
With this programme of Strauss (Johann II and Richard) and Mozart – and Emanuel Ax the deft and lucid soloist – Manfred Honeck, who joins as principal conductor in 2028, gave an exciting statement of intent

‘I am a man of tradition,” Manfred Honeck, the Philharmonia’s new principal conductor designate, declared earlier this week in rehearsals. But for the 68-year-old Austrian, who in 2028 becomes only the seventh principal conductor in the ensemble’s 81-year history, it’s tradition as defined by Mahler: “Not the worship of the ashes but the preservation of fire.” It was a fire in full blaze by the end of last night’s concert – a scorching taste of things to come.

Even if you couldn’t see Honeck smiling at his musicians, or them smiling back, you could hear it in a Fledermaus Overture that could barely keep the mischievous grin from its face. Conducting from memory, Honeck (a former violist) brought a decade of New Year’s Day concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic to bear on the sleek drape of the strings and the patent-leather gleam of woodwind, the elegance of those artfully delayed final beats of the bar tempering the madcap scuttle of the semiquavers.