Letter from Florida: Manfred Honeck conducts Mahler’s 4th with New World Symphony in Miami

Mahler: Symphony No. 4 - Manfred Honeck, New World Symphony - New World Center, Miami

Johann Strauss: Overture to Die Fledermaus, Haydn: Symphony No. 93 in D major; Mahler: Symphony No. 4; Lauren Snouffer, New World Symphony, Manfred Honeck; New World Center, Miami, Florida
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras (14 December 2025)

The unexaminable nature of how music touches the human experience. In his last Letter from Florida of 2025, Robert J Carreras experiences Maher's Fourth Symphony

Pythagoras is thought to have been the first to formally study a relationship between math and music. The Greek philosopher of antiquity and “father of math” is now rooted to music as much as to math. In his concept, “the music of the spheres,” Pythagoras theorizes that celestial bodies are in some kind of harmony and synchronicity through and with an otherworldly something. According to Pythagoras, there is a cosmically ordered source that systematizes sounds as humans experience them.  

From this, Pythagoras set forth on creating a rules-based system for understanding music, especially consonance, that became foundational to counterpoint in the Dark Ages and the Renaissance period. In effect, Pythagoras stumbled upon objective and observable patterns that make music pleasing to the ear.

Manfred Honeck is a seeming disciple of Pythagoras, an inheritor of desiring to make math audibly pleasing. Honeck is that rare breed of musical mathematician – in his right hand is a counting baton, in his left, a veritable abacus of artistic expression. 

With New World Symphony (NWS), Honeck delivers on the key parts of Johann Baptiste Strauss II, Franz Joseph Haydn, and Gustav Mahler and seeks to draw bridges across the changeovers of each of the composer’s works played this afternoon. The conductor’s idiosyncrasies betray Viennese partialities; he likes to hang his upbeats, crashing them down onto downbeats; his baton flicks take getting used to, in the manner of, but overall his counting is easy enough to follow. 

Honeck does not mind crouching down to eye-level of the violins as first line of contact, to elicit the start of a shift in orchestral balance. Honeck displays very fine and exacting directions from his abacus – it as active as his counting; this piques interests about Honeck’s hand dominance and dexterity.

Not since the summer years of Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) has NWS combined this level of volume and dynamic diversity. There is also an attempt to integrate the tonal switches gestalt to a composer’s ideas, especially those of Gustav Mahler. Under Honeck’s leadership, these players create bigger sounds that stretch the NWS canvas over an extra large frame in a way reminiscent of MTT. 

In the Fledermaus overture, NWS hit all the marks that comprise the opera; the mistaken identities, party favors, and select tunes are all here in good form. If not zestfully Viennese, the musical intent is effectively etched by NWS. Honeck got them to and through the timeless and placeless parts of this piece. 

Manfred Honeck, New World Symphony

As court composer held in high esteem by his royal benefactors, all the necessary elements were in place to meal the busy musical mind of Franz Joseph Haydn. The Austrian composer churned out music to match his situation and bearing, generating symphonies to the tune of over a hundred. 

Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were close friends, and it is always interesting to hear how a conductor observes the influence the two had on one another. As one would expect, Manfred Honeck tones things down and takes the gas pedal off from The Waltz-King Strauss for Haydn. NWS touches on all of the features key to Haydn in Symphony 93.  

Manfred Honeck’s humour has an air of snobbish and stuffy, and he creates composites of, rather than accents to, the orchestral variations the 93rd is known for. The harmonic changes are less likely to surprise, the summits less likely to be felt viscerally; both are settled into almost imperceptibly. The listener is left wondering how he got there.  

In the “Menuetto,” Honeck fosters a Teutonic folk dance flavor, suggestive of the Fledermaus that forewent and of the Mahler forthcoming in a most interesting way. The orchestra merely alludes to Mozart in the Presto ma non troppo and its bow to liberta and Don Giovanni. 

Gustav Mahler’s 4th Symphony regularly prompts some version of the themephrase – them there sleigh bells bay of bedlam – in this listener. There’s something anxiety-provoking about how these hit the ears in the first movement (“Bedächtig. Nicht eilen”). Honeck keeps the motto of the bells as a highlight of the 4th, not bashful at all about their prominence over the violins straight through to the end of this symphony. 

This was a high quality performance, the kind shared with classical music enthusiasts and on classical music forums for a lifetime. Manfred Honeck’s abacus here takes on a blueprint more Austrian than Viennese. Whatever the case, Honeck adds yet another sweep of hue tints to the vast palette of colors that touch this NWS family of musicians. 

Simply put, this is the most impressive introduction and follow through to Mahler’s 4th this listener has heard apart from recordings. The closing of the first movement 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 color varieties, executing on all fronts. It was a case of the exemplary articulation of sections in front of a collective coming together of the same. On into the second movement, NWS’ playing was very Viennese, very Mahler, very much a reminder of and tribute to NWS founder Michael Tilson Thomas. 

Honeck gives the harp strong representation in Mahler’s 4th. In the Scherzo, it plucked and pinged. Celestial bodies are summoned in the “Ruhevoll,” the instrument climaxing with the horns and timpani. In the final “Sehr behaglich,” the harp flowed along with the other sections into a state of great relief. 

The orchestral surge that indicates the culmination of the “Ruhevoll” into the “Sehr behaglich eilen” resulted in a peak of great panoramic sonority, leading into a "Das himmlische Leben" (The Heavenly Life) of unabashed splendor. 

“No music on earth could be compared to ours,” narrates Lauren Snouffer, a beautiful singer with a vocal and personal demeanor designed for this music. The speaking quality of this soprano’s singing in German is a highly intelligible pleasure to hear. Together with Honeck and NWS, Snouffer’s narration is an exponentially satisfying resolution to Mahler’s 4th.

Pythagoras’ findings are basic to the understanding of music through math, of this there is no doubt. Yet, in The Golden Encyclopedia of Music, Norman Lloyd finds the relationship more than failing to account for the unexaminable nature of how music touches the human experience: “[I]f mathematics ever really proved anything about the nature of music – much as it has been applied in efforts to rationalize what has needed no rationalizing to the human ear – the mathematicians either have kept their secret to themselves or buried it in calculation.”

Mahler: Symphony No. 4 - Lauren Snouffer, Manfred Honeck, New World Symphony - New World Center, Miami

Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)
Overture to Die Fledermaus (1874)

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Symphony No. 93 in D major (1791)
    Adagio – Allegro assai
    Largo cantabile
    Menuetto – Allegro
    Finale: Presto ma non troppo

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Symphony No. 4 in G major (1899-1900)
    
    Bedächtig. Nicht eilen (Deliberately. Not rushed)
    In gemächlicher Bewegung. Ohne Hast (In easy motion. Without 
    haste)
    Ruhevoll (Serene)
    Sehr behaglich (Very leisurely)

Narrator: Lauren Snouffer, soprano
Manfred Honeck, conductor
New World Symphony
New World Center, Michael Tilson Thomas Performance Hall, 
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Stage
Miami, Florida
Sunday, December 14, 2025 at 2pm

New World Symphony

The New World Symphony (NWS) is an American orchestral academy based in Miami Beach, Florida. Founded in 1987 by Michael Tilson Thomas and Lin and Ted Arison, NWS has helped launch the careers of nearly 1,300 alumni worldwide. In fall 2022 Stéphane Denève was named Artistic Director of the New World Symphony.

NWS is a training ensemble for young musicians in preparation for professional careers in classical music. Since 2011, the New World Symphony has its headquarters in the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center in Miami Beach, Florida. The orchestra presents a season of concerts from September to May at the 756-seat concert hall of the New World Center, including full-orchestra concerts, a chamber music series, a new music series, percussion consort series, small ensemble concerts, a family series, and special festivals and recitals. 

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