Connecticut Hears Berlin

I spent the day in Berlin. Not physically; but mentally. Connecting to the digital concert hall at 1:30 local time, I remained until 5:30. I was eager to hear Ingo Metzmacher lead a performance of the Charles Ives Fourth Symphony and later to hear Pierre-Laurent Aimard play the Concord Sonata. I had the homefield advantage. Bridgeport, CT, where I live, is close to Danbury where Ives was born, Yale, where he went to school, and is also close to Manhattan, where he worked.

The centerpiece of the program performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker was the Ives Symphony No. 4. The work was an experiment is accessing simultaneous realities projected from multiple spaces within the hall. The music always sounds too compressed in audio recordings; it has to be heard live in order to be understood. How would it translate through the Digital Concert Hall? The sound is unique to the medium; which transmits dimension and impressions enhanced by visual layering from its camera angles.

Metzmacher described the opening prelude as a “questioning.” The hymn-tune voiced by the choir at the close of the brief first movement is an encoded dialog between two “characters;” a “Watchman” and a “Traveller.” The phrases beginning with the word “watchman” are spoken by the traveller and vice-versa. At the close of the movement the watchman asks if the traveller has seen the “beautious ray.” The following three movements pose differing answers to the question—what might the ray look like? Where should we be looking for it?

Ives described the second movement as a comedy. It is about a contrast between the present; which Ives described as the loud and busy “easy life;” during which we are often distracted, and “the trials of the pilgrims through the swamps and rough country,” which progressed slowly through pain and deliberation. Had Ives lived into the 21st century he would have understood that he anticipated our playlists. The 21st century has perfected overlayed music, we soak in clouds of sometimes tinny, sometimes obtrusively loud simultaneities.
Metzmacher allowed the collisions to be sharply edged, and allowed some passages in locked ensembles to lead tempos slightly outside of his beats. This technique greatly amplified the richness of its spaces. The fourth of July celebration that closes the second movement was fabulous and as the movement stopped unresolved silence spread into the hall magnificent in itself.

The third movement was a response of the past—a fugue of hymn tunes, with additional voices sometimes voiced by horn and sometimes trombone (Ives allowed for either option in the score).

The finale had an elegant sense of procession in this performance; it became like a ritual. From the “Memorial Slow March” through the quodlibet of hymn tunes that collides and bumps together just before the entrance of the choir, there was a clarity that most orchestras give up on. The choir sang words at the closing; in prior performances I have always heard them sing wordless in this movement.

The Ives stood apart from the other repertoire on this program. I think the program would have made a better impression if the Cuban overture had been on the second half and Ives was alone on the first half of the program…the Cuban overture disappeared in the shadow of the Ives.

But the Cuban Overture, the Antheil Jazz Symphony, and the Symphonic Dances by Bernstein all featured crisp articulations and were relaxed and fun. The Berliner Philhamoniker’s performance remind us that these works are filled with traditional symphonic developments and motivic transformations. It made their orchestral influences seem as clear as their secular influences.

Two "Men of Systems" open a New Season in the Digital Concert Hall

The Berliner Philharmoniker opened the 2012-2013 season of broadcasts transmitted live through the Digital Concert Hall with a particularly tasty performance of the Symphony No. 3 by Witold Lutosławski (1913-1994); a 30-minute single movement work written for the Chicago Symphony in 1983.

I had the opportunity to meet Lutosławski as an undergraduate student at Ithaca College in October of 1985, two years after the third symphony was premiered. I asked him a very specific question about the construction of its mosaic-like structure. "I am a man of systems," he relied smiling.

These "systems" were on display in the digital concert hall. Rattle assembled complex textures with great clarity. This is no simple task in a work that built from mixtures of controlled improvisation and precise notation. But the "systems" were also voiced so that elements of subtle musical humor and playfulness were able to emerge from, and enter into, moments of great formality and solemnity. This critical quality is frequently missing from performances of Lutosławski's music, but never seemed to be missing from the composer's personality.

The Berliner Philharmoniker listened deeply into these quickly shifting and unusual textures and created a performance enjoyable to hear from start to stop. The production was also carefully considered--as an example, there was a special angle during the first three refrains that showed both clarinets and the bassoon in one frame.

The event began with the Brahms B-flat major piano concerto with Yefim Bronfman as soloist. This performance increased in interest as the work progressed. Beginning with a low string sound that was deep and powerful the second movement it caught fire. Ludwig Quandt played the cello solo in the third movement with stunning elegance, and Rattle took a tempo that was a true andante; fast enough to dance and to move with flexibility. Bronfman played with power and developed a fairly classic interpretation. But there were beautiful moments, like the nocturne in F-sharp minor that emerged half-way through the andante which was balanced beautifully with the clarinets.

Listen to the finale! What fun! It was a very special atmosphere created on the quiet side; playful and sexy.

I have always imagined that Brahms thought of himself as a "man of systems." Brahms and Lutosławski both share a fierce intensity of design, but as we heard in this program, both also enjoyed musical moments of unexpected grace and a good chuckle along the way.

Bitte um innern und außern Frieden; Missa Solemnis in the Digital Concert Hall

It means a prayer for both inner and outer peace, and Beethoven wrote the line to help focus the energy he was looking in the Dona Nobis Pacem that brings the great Missa Solemnis to an end. The work is more than 85 minutes of music and it is built with the complexity of design that often reflects both inner and outer struggle.

In a concert simulcast live in the Digital Concert Hall, guest conductor Herbert Blomstedt brought a classical clarity to this great work as he conducted the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks.

On the very edge of turning 85, Blomstedt is probably best known in this country for his tenure as music director of the San Francisco Symphony from 1985 to 1995. Blomstedt conducted from memory and without a baton and brought a delicious youthful vitality to the event.

During his prerecorded address to the digital audience aired a half-hour before the event itself, Blomstedt emphasized how all levels of this work are "charged with meaning." He handed us neatly wrapped examples of musical motives which he sang, and also unraveled some specific connections to religious symbolism contained in the work.

Soft-edged balances in the Kyrie set the mood for this performance, and Blomstedt placed the opening choral invocations without diminuendi so that the quiet downbeats were subito. This made the soloists seem to emerge from the resonances in the hall and was quite magical even over the internet. Though there were glorious moments in the celebratory Gloria it was the Apollonian quality that Blomstedt created in the Credo that was most memorable.

Guy Braunstein played the extensive solo violin writing in the Benedictus with liquid phrases shaped in lyricism, and made even more poignant by his recent announcement to step down as concertmaster of the Berliner Philharmoniker at the end of the 2012-2013 season.

The soloists were effective both in individual phrases and in blended ensembles. Soprano Ruth Ziesak was captivating with colors that could pierce any texture and rhythmic buoyancy that drew us close. Tenor Richard Croft showed how a thinking tenor can phrase and blend and still sound effortlessly brilliant. Bass Georg Zeppenfeld and contralto Gerhild Romberger both contributed magical moments to this quartet of soloists.

At the end of the Benedictus, Blomstedt allowed the final fermata to sustain longer than any others in the work. He froze, then with a sudden gesture he seemed to grab the sound with both hands and pulled it inward as the chord was released into silence. Throughout this performance the music felt cherished.

Almost suffering for the beauty of this music; Gustavo Dudamel Returns to the Digital Concert Hall

"It is such a perfection, such a simplicity, such a beautiful atmosphere," said conductor Gustavo Dudamel about Ma Mère l'Oye by Ravel, the work that opened his concert with the Berliner Philharmoniker transmitted live over the Digital Concert Hall. "Wow! How can I deal with this beauty! Almost...you suffer for the beauty of this music!”

The five movements that comprise Ravel's suite need to come across as a memory of childhood. They need to sound filled with longing for what was once ordinary and domestic. They are always a tall order to open a program because the "excitement of beginning" is the exact opposite of the emotional quality that is required.

Dudamel came to the podium in a very subdued mood and let the music spill naturally, keeping tempos quietly dancing. He connected the second movement to the first with only a breath pause, and though the pauses between other movements were increasinly longer, he maintained a continual sense of energy to unfold without the feel of starting and stopping.

The digital concert hall transmitted the Ravel with too much focus on individual soloists. The highlighting of each solo line with visual solo shot pulled these lines too far from their colorful contexts. In the fourth movement, which portrays the interaction of "beauty and the beast" with a waltz for beauty and the contrabassoon representing the beast, the constant solo shots focused only on "beauty" after the first two entrances of the contrabassoon, and so the interaction between the two was diminished.

Violinist Leonidas Kavakos joined the orchestra as soloist in the Korngold Violin Concerto. Kavakos has a commanding musical presence with razor sharp articulation. He has a wonderful, crazy, Paganini energy--he stands in very relaxed posture, in the complete absence of any showmanship, and lyrical warmness and cerebral technical precision just emanate from him.

I loved the way he voiced the second theme group of the opening movement, the so-called "Juarez complex" of material from Korngold's 1939 film. The line is filled with melodic gaps, and Kavakos edged these gaps to make us clearly aware of what they were missing. The ending gestures of the first movement were fiery from both orchestra and soloist.

The second movement felt like chamber music on an epic scale. It is music of contradiction and too often its surfaces are what attract. This performance dug much deeper into possibilities. The third movement was taken at lightening fast speed and became a jittery jig with a big Hollywood ending. It sounded cool. The work was well received, and Kavakos returned to play the opening movement of the Sonata No. 5 in G major, called "L'Aurore" by Eugène Ysaÿe.

After intermission we heard "Also sprach Zarathustra" by Strauss. The first half of this performance was tightly constructed and the interrelationship of motives was clear and powerfully developed. The extension and development of the Tanzlied lost focus but found its bearings again when the music settled in B major for the Nachtwandlerlied. Dudamel extended the silence after the final unresolved C-naturals that close the work, and he allowed us to contemplate the life out of balance that sounds at the end of this work. There was still music even in this silence.

Guy Braunstein; The Brahms Ensemble Concerto with the Berliner Philharmoniker

It should be renamed. After hearing Guy Braunstein play the Brahms Violin Concerto on the Digital Concert Hall I want to petition to rename the work the Brahms Ensemble Concerto. Perhaps it could be called the "BEC" for short.

With the advent of the Digital Concert Hall it is possible that more people now know of violinist Braunstein in his role as First Konzertmeister of the Berliner Philharmoniker than know of him as a soloist, but he was trained, and developed his early career as a soloist and not primarily as an orchestral specialist. But it was as a soloist that Braunstein performed with the Berliner Philharmoniker on this occasion, and the fascination of his performance of the Brahms Concerto for Violin was that he played the work with a sound that seemed to come from within the orchestra.

He stood further back within the ensemble than most soloists position themselves, and he leaned in toward the ensemble. He was standing, but he was also part of the sectional violins. During the opening of the development, which is the first place after its entry when the soloist does not play, he instinctively moved away from the front of the stage, nearer to the sound, to join his colleagues and share the power of this moment.

Braunstein played with technical ease and fluidity but he did not seek an untroubled ease in the sound itself. He let the struggle between dance and torment that drives so much of the opening movement find expression in metric and bow-arm frictions.

There is an unexpected moment in the development of the first movement, marked tranquillo, where a new rhythmic figure of one 8th followed by two 16ths is developed obsessively. Braunstein allowed them to carry an almost baroque dance energy, and played tautly but without exploding with the trilled sequence into which this passage dissolves. He played the Joachim cadenza. Joachim was also engaged by this passage from the development and featured it in his cadenza. Braunstein made the connection apparent, then shifted the resonance of his sound to allow Joachim's vision of it to spin into a burning con brio.

The second movement benefited even more from being approached as orchestral music rather than music for soloist with accompaniment. The opening passage was played like harmoniemusik, not as a solo for oboe with wind accompaniment--the solo oboe playing by Albrecht Mayer sparkled with an embedded context.

After intermission we heard Ein Heldenleben, which is a work that celebrates extremes. But this Heldenleben needed more focus and control in order to persuade beyond beautifully played moments. Though I enjoyed Andris Nelsons when he conducted the Berliner Philharmoniker in September 2011, his presence during this performance was often distracting. He accelerated the burn of many passages too quickly and lost intermediary colors that are possible.

Still, there were brilliant passages, especially during the music often called "reflections on youth," from"Des Helden Friedenswerke," where themes from early works by Strauss were woven together with tenderness and fun. There was also an interesting (and I think new) angle from the production crew that was a close-up shot from just above one of the harps, just before the bassoon solo. The image made us seem to float just before the music itself floated.

I did not like the pairing of the Brahms Violin Concerto and Heldenleben on this program. During the extensive "hero's companion" section, the solo violin texture (and in spite of the fact that it was well played by concertmaster Daishin Kashimoto) did not have the sonic freshness that it would have had with a different companion work. The juxtaposition of the two works produced no significant insight, and so any comparison simply distracted and made it harder to integrate Heldenleben itself.

When the work is released into the archives of the Digital Concert Hall I look forward to the opportunity to hear it again without first hearing the Brahms Violin Concerto.

Introspective Friday Music; a review of the Berliner Philharmoniker from the Digital Concert Hall

"What kind of music," asked Sir Simon Rattle in his preconcert interview, "do you write in the middle of a world war?"

He was introducing Le Tombeau de Couperin by Ravel, which opened a performance that was transmitted live through the digital concert hall and was also the second of three programs this season that will also be beamed to cinemas in Germany, London, Berlin, Prague, Dublin, and Austria. The program itself allowed the great Berliner Philharmoniker an opportunity to express warmth in a collection of works that each sought a better world during a time of personal crisis.

"Often before these great conflicts," said Rattle, "people write music full of tension. Often during the conflict people are writing music that looks back to some kind of idealized past." Ravel dedicated each movement to people he knew who fell in the great war.

Rattle found a quiet ecstasy in this performance of Ravel. He shaped textures with caresses, often looking deep into background textures to focus details. There was a brilliant awakening of sound in the codetta of the Forlane, where the Philharmoniker produced glassy clarity as they tuned the whimsical and unexpected close of this mosaic movement.

The Biblical Songs Op. 99 by Antonín Dvořák and Mahler's Rückert-Lieder, both featuring mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená, were the centerpiece of the program, which closed with Schubert's Unfinished Symphony.

Kožená was able to channel the dramatic intensity of the texts in the Biblical Songs while keeping their fragility intact. After intermission we heard the Rückert-Lieder. These songs are performed in one of several different orderings--in this program Rattle performed them as follows:

Liebst du um Schönheit
Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder
Um Mitternacht
Ich atmet einen linden Duft
Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen

Usually I prefer to hear Um Mitternacht last, because then it creates the kind of questioning in line with the finale of the Mahler's seventh symphony. In this program the quasi-religious closing of Um Mitternacht allowed it to resonate with the Biblical Songs, and its ending seemed sincere and free of paradox.

Closing with Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen was a perfect bridge into the sound world of the unfinished symphony by Schubert..

Rattle led the Berliner Philharmoniker in a performance that voiced the dynamics of this work as Schubert marked them; this is music that presents itself on the verge of the inaudible. The dynamic level changed the meaning of the music itself. The second theme group in G major often sounds joyous in performance. It shouldn't. It is marked pianissimo. It should sound like you are outside on a day like today hearing other folks being happy.

Rattle found the ache within the unfinished and sent it through the digital concert hall intact. Introspective music is especially attractive on cold, rainy days. This program allowed us to make new connections with the music itself, as we shared it live among invisible friends.

Janáček and Mahler in the Digital Concert Hall; Brothers or Others?

Beginning in August 2010, the Berliner Philharmoniker undertook a project that involved the performance of the complete major orchestral works of Gustav Mahler. These events were transmitted over, and archived within, the Digital Concert Hall. This project will come to a close on Saturday with a performance of  Das Lied von der Erde with mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter and tenor Stuart Skelton as soloists.

Das Lied will be paired with the final scene of the "Cunning Little Vixen" by Janáček. One imagines that this imaginative companion was chosen for its similarities. The brief online notes for the program indicate that the Janáček scene "reveals fascinating parallels to Das Lied von der Erde. Janáček, born like Mahler in what today is an area of the Czech Republic, creates a wonderfully delicate scene in which the Forester ponders life – and in turn bids farewell to youth and beauty."
In an essay called "The Most Nostalgic Opera," from his recent book "Encounters," Milan Kundera argues that Janáček wrote in opposition to romanticism.

To help make his case Kundera focuses on an unexpected moment at the end of the final scene where a frog jumps up onto the woodsman and talks with him. The woodsman believes this to be the same frog that led the vixen to him in the first scene, but time passes quickly for animals; this stuttering frog is the grandson of the frog the huntsman believed him to be.

"Ah, that little frog!" wrote Kundera. "Max Brod did not like him at all. Max Brod—yes, Franz Kafka’s closest friend—he supported Janáček wherever and however he could: he translated his operas into German and opened German theaters to them. The sincerity of his friendship authorized him to let the composer know all his criticisms. The frog must go, he wrote Janáček in a letter, and in place of his stammering, the woodsman should solemnly pronounce the words that will close the opera! And he even suggests what they should be: 'So kehrt alles zurück, alles in ewiger Jugenpracht! (Thus do all things repeat, all with a timeless youthful power.)' ”

"Janáček refused. Brod’s proposal went against all his aesthetic intentions, against the polemic he had waged his whole life long. A polemic that set him in opposition to opera tradition. In opposition to Wagner. In opposition to Smetana. In opposition to the official musicology of his countrymen. In other words, in opposition (to quote René Girard) to 'the romantic lie.' The little disagreement about the frog shows Brod’s incurable romanticism: imagine that weary old woodsman, his arms widespread, head thrown back, singing the glory of eternal youth! This is the romantic lie par excellence, or, to use another term: this is kitsch."

I can't imagine that Kundera would call "Das Lied" Kitsch. But his concept does create the possibility that the works are more others than brothers. I will tune into the Digital Concert Hall on Saturday to hear this event and will write about it here on Sonic Labyrinth. Join me.

Review of "Four Corners!" The New CD from The Berlin Philharmonic Horn Quartet

Thanks in part to the success of the Digital Concert Hall, the Horn Quartet of the Berliner Philharmoniker could easily be the most recognizable horn quartet anywhere. They are rock stars with embouchures.

Their new disc is called "Four Corners." The title derives from an expansion of one of its own tracks in which Michael Barnett arranged tunes from the "four corners" of the British Isles: England, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. The resulting concept became a collection of sonic souvenirs and tributes based on the touring schedule of this ensemble which takes them to the four corners of the globe.

Fully one-half of the twenty-two track on the disc are arrangements made by Berlin Philharmonic Horn Quartet member Klaus Wallendorf. The eleven tracks that he was responsible for creating give us a unique insight into his musical personality. His arrangements span from the formal in Anitra's Dance and Solveig's song from Peer Gynt to off-beat humor like his arrangement of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight."

My favorite Wallendorf arrangement is "Sous le Ciel de Paris," where a clever and elaborate figuration in fast triplets never gets in the way of the tune or the attitude of the waltz itself. Wallendorf's arrangements could easily become a compendium of possibilities for anyone thinking about sonorities for four horns.

Of the other material, I enjoyed the Joshua Davis arrangement of Walzting Mathilda with a soulful and jazzy big-band style low horn solo played by Sarah Willis.

I don't understand the concluding E-flat major chord of Florian Janezic's arrangement of Nessun Dorma--the chord forces the piece to sound like it meant to end on V. Perhaps the original context contained other Puccini arrangements that would have made this idea work, but within this context it crashes into the mysterious D minor opening of "Kalinka" on track 17. This was a rare example of discontinuity. The disc is otherwise quite effective in its tonal and stylistic design, and as a result the music flows without sounding overly segmented.

The disc itself opens like a present. The booklet insert folds out into a twelve-panel double-sided collage of photographs, tour markings and impromptu notes. In one photo Stefan Dohr is standing next to a smiling Buddha. Underneath the photo is a traditional Chinese recipe (written in Chinese) for making beef wonton soup. This particular recipe only makes twenty wontons...most horn players I know would need forty.

Wit and wackiness mix with stunning virtuosity on this disc which would make an excellent gift for any music lover with an off-beat sense of humor.

Berliner Philharmoniker; Mahler 9 in Taipei as a Sunrise Concert on East Coast

This morning, here on the East Coast of the US, we had the opportunity to hear the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle perform Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony at the National Chiang Kai-Shek Cultural Center in Taipei. The concert was simulcast live through the Digital Concert Hall.

One of the pleasures of the Digital Concert Hall is that it creates new ways of sharing performances of classical music, but it also creates new contexts in which to understand the music itself.

On the East Coast it was dark as we signed in to hear this concert. The first glimpses of sunrise began to happen just before the event itself, and as Mahler worked through this symphony often associated with goodbyes, blue color filled the skies and world awakened. On the east coast, this Mahler 9 opened in darkness and ended in daylight, instead of the other way around.

Though this performance had the same basic contours as the event broadcast from Berlin on November 5, there were enough subtle differences that I hope the Berliner Philharmoniker considers adding this performance to the archive.

The opening movement of this performance was particularly rich. The orchestra sounded at home in the hall very quickly, and procession of dark and light musics that comprise this movement seemed to dance.  Haunted passages, like the ghostly tune in G minor played muted celli during the development, or the mysterioso episode at the end of the recapitulation seemed particularly inspired.

It must have been challenging to fit this hall with cameras and to develop a plan for the high quality live images that mark performances in the digital concert hall, but the results were satisfying. A split-screen shot, not normally used in Berlin, appeared several times to frame simultaneous musics, like the horn solo and the line played by second violins just before the second theme group, or the horn and flute duet at the end of the recapitulation.

The orchestra brought joy to the second movement, and shared the humor of its gestures among themselves as they shared them with us. The complexity of the Rondo-Burleske, and the mocking atmosphere as the turn figure that shapes the final movement is first introduced, was engaging.

Rattle froze at the final gesture of the adagio and allowed silence to become part of the music at its close.

"From our hearts we thank you," said Rattle to an audience at the Taipei Arena about 20 minutes later. The event was transmitted to groups of listeners in several locations throughout Taiwan, and the pre and post celebration had the feel of Chinese New Year, with both male and female hosts and promoted audience chants that ranged from "Bravo Rattle," to "Rattle! Rattle! We love You."

It was six years ago the Berliner Philharmoniker first visited Taipei. In this return visit they brought us all with them. The event and the music both felt shared.

Pablo Heras-Casado in the Digital Concert Hall; Fabulous Berio, but Mendelssohn?

Pablo Heras-Casado led a concert of extremes in his Digital Concert Hall debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker. He positioned extremely familiar works by Mendelssohn (the Hebrides Overture, and the Symphony No. 3) to begin and end the event, and he placed two infrequently heard pieces (Karol Szymanowski's Symphony No. 4, and Berio's Quatre dédicaces) just before and after intermission.

Like a good hard candy, it was the center which was most pleasantly surprising. Pianist Marc-André Hamelin joined the orchestra as soloist in the Szymanowski, which, though it could be mistaken for a piano concerto, is actually numbered among Szymanowski's symphonies, and is nicknamed »Symphonie concertante.«

Hamelin approached the work in a chamber style and blended into the orchestra during many passages. This conception made the most concerto-like elements, like the ringing figuration of the first movement cadenza, or the brief trilled cadenza of the andante molto sostenuto, seem freshly improvised. Hamlin was also soulful in the dancing central passage of the third movement where he was able to create the isolated vortex of someone who dances to both remember and forget.

The Mazurka that he announced from the stage as his encore was actually the Mazurka Op. 50 No. 6 and is recorded on the disc of complete Mazurka's by Szymanowski that Hamelin recorded for Hyperion.

After intermission Heras-Casado treated us to the Quatre dédicaces for orchestra by Luciano Berio. The Berliner Philharmoniker is exploring a series of works by Berio this season, and this performance of these four brief, festive pieces was impressive. Heras-Casado played the four movements in the Boulez ordering.

The Fanfara was given in a stately tempo, with incredible detail in the trumpet playing. Heras-Casado extended the final tone played by the clarinets which gave the movement a dramatic close. I loved the quivering richness of texture in the Entrada, and Festum was played as a celebration of simultaneous ideas. This performance of the final movement, Encore, could easily become required material for the study of virtuoso orchestral balances.

The Mendelssohn was ok. Hebrides had a few memorable moments, and the last three movements of the third symphony were often quite good. Heras-Casado took too much time between the first and second, and the second and third movements, allowing energy to dissipate at those important junctions. The first movement missed the mark. Heras-Casado could not get the orchestra to play quietly. Listen for instance, to the opening of the development, marked sempre pianissimo. It is already quite loud, then during the crescendo it reaches maximum volume well in advance of the fortissimo marking. The only place the orchestra played quietly was the repeat of the exposition, and arguably at the opening of the recap. The result was that the first movement sounded thick and many great subtleties within the movement, like that lovely clarinet line that shadows the opening violin tune one octave lower (at the beginning of the first theme group) was completely covered.

The LA Philharmonic bested this performance in both works by Mendelssohn during their LA Phil Live in HD performance on October 9, that I reviewed on this blog.

The inner and outer portions of the event didn't harmonize well as a program either. Both works by Mendelssohn came across unfairly as a programming afterthought. It might have worked to open with Berio followed by Szymanowski with Mendelssohn on the second half. But the messaging with Mendelssohn first and last seemed all wrong.

Magical Transitions and the Wisdom of Cutting Away the Superfluous in the Digital Concert Hall

Violinist Nikolaj Znaider mentioned "the wisdom of cutting away the superfluous" during his intermission interview with Berliner Philharmoniker violist Amihai Grosz in a concert broadcast through the Digital Concert Hall.

He was referring to a saying attributed to Michelangelo, but that particular wisdom was the single most striking aspect of his performance of the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the Berliner Philharmoniker. Unlike many soloists who have matched wits with this famous concerto, Znaider chose an understated almost conversational framework, choosing to "cut away" the idea that every note in the work must be played molto espressivo. This interpretation was refreshing, and it gave him more room to lift the slowly arcing intensity curves that shape the work. When the time came for passionate outbursts the sound was welcome.

Znaider delivered this performance on the 18th century Guarneri “del Gesu” that Fritz Kreisler played as his primary instrument from 1904-1919. The instrument had an amazingly rich and varied low register and seems to sing with a choir of musical ghosts.

Bernard Haitink was the scheduled conductor, but he needed to cancel due to illness, so the young Slovakian conductor Juraj Valcuha got the call. Valcuha projected confidence and led the orchestra with cerebral elegance throughout the evening.

Valcuha did have trouble holding the Philharmoniker back in several moments of the work, like the opening of the third movement, where the dynamic level was too loud and the sound was too heavy. But Valcuha and Znaider also chose to "cut away" the sense of parody in the finale that many interpretations seek. They played the music with a soulful and sexy dance energy and when the the great dark force that closes the movement swept through it seemed a culmination rather than a contradiction.

Valcuha was able to shift around the program that Haitink had planned, which included the Eroica Symphony. The Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 1 and Weber's Euryanthe Overture were tasty choices, and seemed much more interesting than the previously scheduled fare.

It became an evening of magical transitions.

The Euryanthe Overture opened its development with whispered music for 8 muted solo violins in colors that shifted with smoky edges through several minor keys. Somehow this passage seemed to speak directly to the retransition in the first movement of the Tchaikovsky symphony where an elemental and sparse pattern of syncopated intervals emerged from an otherwise logical development section.

The finale of the Tchaikovsky first symphony has an interpretive challenge. The introduction is long...and it returns at the end of the movement. But Valcuha led us perfectly from this return through another magical transition: rising chromatic lines that slowly pulled the music away, and pointed it with great skill toward the allegro vivo sprint that ended the work in breathless euphoria.

It was a program of works that harmonized. Listen again to the opening of the Sibelius concerto, and then the opening of the first movement of the Tchaikovsky. Right?

Valcuha was not only confident onstage, through some clever concert programming he started his success even before he arrived. That was a magical transition in its own right.

Bychkov wins in the Digital Concert Hall

Conductor Semyon Bychkov returned to lead the Berliner Philharmoniker in a tasty program transmitted through the Digital Concert Hall. This is the fourth event that Bychkov has conducted that will enter the permanent archives of the orchestra, making Bychkov and Bernard Haitink the most frequently represented guest conductors in the collection of over 100 concerts.

Bychkov gets a remarkable sound from the orchestra. What is it about the way that Bychkov conducts that makes this sound? Perhaps the combination of practical gestures and transparent sincerity in his visual contact with the orchestra. Whatever it is, he won the day.

The program opened with "Rendering" by Luciano Berio. The work is a meditation on the fragments of a tenth symphony that Schubert left behind at his death. Schubert's ghost couldn't have orchestrated these fragments any better than Berio. And Berio left the fragments as they were without trying to finish them.

During the gaps Berio composed and inserted whimsical music that sounds the whispered celestial distances from our world to Schubert's. It was these passages that made the deepest impression in this performance. Led by Bychkov, the Berliner Philharmoniker explored the riches within these interludes and focused many shifting and intricate streams of sound.

It is common to hear orchestras phase out during these passages and simply present a single quiet tableau of undifferentiated sound. When that happens the differences between the Schubert style and the interlude style sounds inorganic and false.

Too much has been made of any similarity between the opening tune of the second movement in "Rendering" and the distorted music of the third movement of Mahler I. There is more difference than similarity. And oboist Albrecht Mayer played the lyrical tune from Berio/Schubert with a rich and full sounding lyricism that made this distinction clear.

The contrast between the broken fragility of the second movement and the playful joy of the third movement was something that Bychkov was great at communicating. The shift of attitudes was powerful.

Mayer returned to the stage by himself after intermission to perform Berio's Sequenza VII for solo oboe. This performance used a live (instead of recorded) drone on the pitch [B] which was played from the wings above the stage. Normally one only hears this work on chamber concerts and it was refreshing to hear it performed by an orchestral specialist in a huge space. Mayer successfully moved between the fixed and improvisatory sections that are woven into the music fabric of this work and produced richly colored multiphonics. Mayer is so musical he makes you wonder why everyone doesn't choose to play the oboe.

The performance concluded with William Walton's Symphony No. 1. During the interlude Sarah Willis talked with Bychkov about the differences between playing this work with an English orchestra and a German orchestra, many members of which had never played the work. Bychkov said that there were different kinds of challenges with all orchestras.

What he meant by that became more obvious when he started conducting the work. Bychkov has a very distinct sonic conception of this symphony--it does not sound like an unknown symphony by Sibelius in his hands. Bychkov seemed to inspire the musicians to rely on the lyrical qualities in the work, and to allow them to make the same rich but clear textures that won the day in Berio/Schubert. Surprisingly the rhythmic vitality of the work did not need to be compromised, but we often made progress through great spans of music in ways that almost seemed unfamiliar and new. Bychkov certainly knows where all the hallways lead in the haunted mansion that is the Walton first symphony.

 I can see why the Berliner Philharmoniker loves Bychkov. Bring him back soon!

Mahler 8 in the Digital Concert Hall

The Berliner Philharmoniker took on Mahler's Symphony No. 8, for only the seventh time in its history, in a performance that was transmitted live in the Digital Concert Hall. It was an event of significant magnitude that brought together a bewildering confluence of forces and efforts both in performance and in transmition.

Conductor Simon Rattle prefaced the symphony with two choral works, the Crucifixus by Antonio Lotti, and the infamous 40-part motet "Spem in alium" by Thomas Tallis. While these works felt a little elbowed-out of place by the massive opening movement of the Mahler Symphony, they served two important functions. First, their 15 minute combined duration made an intermission in between movements of the Mahler symphony seem workable. Secondly, they represented texts from the sacred tradition set within a sacred context.

This context was important. In Mahler 8, the first movement explores the secular implications of personal creativity within a sacred text, and the second movement treats a secular text with sacred implications.

Rattle produced a performance with clear goals. The lift into E major in the opening section "Accende lumen sensibus" had the energy and had the optimism of encoded aesthetic realization. Rattle prolonged the intensity of this section with terrific authority, through the marches, the double fugue, the parenthetical interlude of soloists in D-flat major, and landed back with perfect force back in E-flat major. This kind of lift and subsequent directional goals made the second movement feel increasingly operatic.

The combined forces of the MDR Rundfunkchor Leipzig and the Rundfunkchor Berlin sounded great. They were particularly impressive during the awakening chorus & echoes of their second movement entrance. Often one hears only staccato sound from singers during this passage, but these choirs created a resonant, ringing sound that made the text seem divine rather than spooky.

The soloists blended effectively in ensemble. Of the soloists, Bass John Relyea gave a vibrant and carefully conceived performance as Pater Profundus. He made us both consider, and luxuriate in, music that can sound transitional.

There were moments where the special chamber music qualities of this work came through. Examples include the music for solo strings in both movements, and that wonderful passage in E major where the harps and sectional violins take us to a different realm (just before the choir sings Dir, der Unberührbaren). But there were also moments, as with the passages for mandolin, where the sound did not carry over the wires as one would have hoped.

The chorus mysticus gave me chills. "Alles Vergängliche," whispered the choir, "ist nur ein Gleichnis." The digital age has given us new possibilities for permanence. The combined effort and spirit of this performance might well teach us to think in new ways.

Mahler Symphony No. 7 heard as "Song of the Ominous." A New Season in the Digital Concert Hall

The Berlin Philharmonic opened a much anticipated new season in the Digital Concert Hall with an impressive and spirited live performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 7, and hearing a live transmission of this event in the path of a hurricane changes the way one hears the music.

There is controversy as to how to hear the finale of this symphony, and in the program notes attached to the concert website Harald Hodeige summarized the history of a seemingly simple question: is the finale joyous music, or is it a parody of joy?

Like anyone else on the East Coast of the USA, I heard this concert in the path of hurricane Irene. Today it is sunny but tomorrow...We are all feeling rushed and distracted. We feel like the finale of Mahler 7.

The restlessness in this music has never been so apparent to me. Today it sounded like a series of grand celebrations all compressed and rushed with one eye on the window looking south. Maybe the joy/parody model is the wrong framework with which to approach this finale. Maybe instead, like so much of this symphony, it speaks with suppressed anxiety...a sense of the ominous just around the corner.

In this performance, led by Simon Rattle, the finale seemed cut from the same cloth as the four movements that preceded it, and the flow of events seemed not to stop between movements but to continue unabated from where they had left off.

Rattle also shaped the flow of energy within movements with great care. In the development of the first movement, often the place of greatest ferocity in a symphony, Mahler instead scored a dreamscape of colorful sound, framed by marches. Rattle led a series of panoramic textures into a climatic and rich presentation of simultaneous ideas...then sudden silence. Silence in the Berlin Philharmonic can have the edges of an articulated sound.


This opening movement is centered in brass, and the rich sectional horn sound was fabulous throughout but particularly during the recapitulation, and the entire brass section drew the coda to a memorable closing.

...And then it was night.

The three central movements of this symphony group together to explore sounds of the night: two Nachtmusik movement built around a central scherzo marked "Schattenhaft (shadowy)."

The section cellos produced an expressive sound during the first Nachtmusik when that Schubertian dance music broke forth in A-flat major, and the midnight tango, first articulated by oboes, and later cellos in thirds was magical. The syncopations and broken grinding of the scherzo were given with a sense of distortion and humor. Rattle took a quick tempo during the second Nachtmusik which made it seem a culmination of the set of three dark moods.

Mahler's seventh symphony has sometimes been called "The Song of the Night." Heard as such the finale stands apart as contradiction or parody. Is the seventh instead a Song of the Ominous?

Digital Concert Hall; Review of Eötvös conducting his new Cello Concerto Grosso

Hungarian composer and conductor Peter Eötvös led the Berliner Philharmoniker in a program transmitted through the Digital Concert Hall that centered on the third performance of his new Cello Concerto Grosso, which was premiered by the orchestra on June 16. The concerto was jointly commissioned by the Stiftung Berliner Philharmoniker, Tonhalle Zürich, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Bergen Filharmoniske Orkester and the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra.

The concerto is a solid 26-minute work in three movements that run together without pause. Miklós Perényi joined the orchestra as cello soloist.

Frequently playful, the opening movement begins in a conversational modality with Perényi decorating the first three notes of a D-major scale. Strong punctuation by the ensemble across a wide color spectrum accompanied each gesture from the soloist which created the impression of building a conversation.The first movement was constructed from a relatively small amount of material given how diverse the gestures sounded. Frenzied interludes alternated with jazzy gestures. But it was the sheer diversity of articulations that created energy, and the Berliner Philharmoniker is the perfect machine to make these details come across vibrantly.

The second movement opened with a gesture in two-note segments that that brought to mind the interval games in late Beethoven. This movement gave way to a central march that mixed tasty sarcasm with irreverent grooving. It ended with a lovely and rarefied dialog between solo horns and the solo cello in a texture that was not parallel to the opening of the movement, but a pleasantly surprising detour within earshot of it.

The third movement opened with a development of earlier material that broke into bubbly dance music. It ended with a series of cadenzas punctuated by brief dance interjections and ended with a sharp clap from the percussionists.

This was a well constructed concerto full of vibrant humor and clever writing. It will be a pleasure to hear this piece again as it enters the archives of the digital concert hall.

After intermission we heard the Four Russian Peasant Songs by Stravinsky in the 1954 edition that includes parts for four horns. This work was an effective palette cleanser with the pure rustic sound of the SSA choir and the wacky but charming horn lines that snake through this arrangement.

Ferruccio Furlanetto joined the orchestra as soloist in the Coronation Scene and Death Scene from Boris Godunov. They played the original Mussorgsky scoring, not the Rimsky version, and Furlanetto amazed everyone with how quickly he could capture the intensity of these moments from deep within a labyrinthine opera. He sang the death scene with a strength that could still embrace a sense of prayer, and an emotion on the very edge of tears. Furlanetto was given a thunderous ovation on each appearance after the performance.

It was also Mussorgsky that opened this event; St. John’s Night on the Bare Mountain. The orchestra sounded great, particularly at the close of the movement which creates the impression of sunrise when it is played with sensitivity. The production featured several clever camera angles, one that caught both the oboe and bassoon together as they played together in octaves in d minor at the poco più sostenuto, and there was a wonderful angle on the tolling of the bell during the coda--a sound that mixed beautifully with the low flute and cello harmonics. Too many performances toll the bell without regard for the bell's context.

While each work was of interest on this program the overall sequence from one to the next lacked the insights I have come to associate with programming for the Berliner Philharmoniker. Perhaps if Eötvös had chosen the 1867 Mussorgsky version of Bare Mountain--or even the opera scene since he had the chorus--the larger harmonies of one work moving to the next might have had even more zip.

Digital Concert Hall; Review of Jurowski conducting Stravinsky and Mahler

Vladimir Jurowski, Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, led the Berliner Philharmoniker in a kaleidoscopic program that sparkled with the colors of the unfamiliar.

The event, transmitted live in the Digital Concert Hall, opened with Stravinsky's revisioning of the Bach Chorale variations on "Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her," written in 1956.

The work is scored without violins and cellos, so Jurowski had the female members of the chorus sit in the chairs left and right of the conducting podium. The men were arranged behind the ensemble stage right, which made for a powerful motion of sound, a canonic debate, as they interacted with the female voices across the stage during the canon in inversion at the 9th in the final variation. The chorus sang while seated and used an early music sound that was mostly non-vibrato. They produced a consistently clever and engaging sonority.

Jurowski conducts with minimal motions. He projects a relaxed confidence that helped create a warm sound during a piece with the intellectual acrobatics of both Bach and Stravinsky intertwined.

The first half ended with Stravinsky's Requiem Canticles.

Jurowski imagined a soundworld that is slower than often played, but where ricocheted rhythms and echoed entrances accumulated in impact as the work progressed to through the "Rex Tremendae." The texture of the "Libera Me" was perfectly balanced with the four choral soloists blending with the four muted horns. The parlando choral part was given submerged in the background like a refracted summation of echos and ricochets.

After intermission we heard Das klagende Lied, the massive early work of Gustav Mahler, given in its three-movement format as presented in the 1997 Gustav Mahler Edition. During intermission, Chorus Master extraordinaire Simon Halsey explained that significant work was done to rethink vocal allocations in this sprawling early work that Halsey described as "fabulously impractical."

The changes were noticeable, and sometimes surprising, but they helped to create a convincing sound. Halsey should make these eloquent and carefully considered alternatives available in an amended performing edition.

A list of memorable passages in this performance would need to include the nightingale interlude in the first movement sung with sweet sound and piercing clarity by soprano Christine Schäfer. It would also include the fabulous boy-sopranos in both the second and third movements, and the richly overplayed quality of off-stage music as it began to mix with sounds from the orchestra during the third movement.

From the standpoint of production, I would have liked to see more of Jurowski during the Mahler. From a visual standpoint we often got lost within the shifting ensembles and soloists and missed the extremely varied left-hand gestures and eye-cues that make Jurowski's specific impact on music easier to understand.

This performance of Das klagende Lied is something of which to be proud. It will be its own exclamation point in the Mahler cycle that will be completed next season by the Berliner Philharmoniker.