Grosses Festspielhaus
Berg:
Lulu-Suite
Beethoven:
Symphony no.9 in D minor,
op.125
Marlis Petersen (soprano)
Elisabeth Kulman (contralto)
Benjamin Bruns (tenor)
Kwangchul Youn (bass)
Berlin Radio Chorus (chorus director: Gijs Leenaars)
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Kirill Petrenko (conductor)
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| Image: Salzburger Festspele / Marco Borrelli |
Leave aside recorded
comparisons, at least for now. If I have heard a better Berg Lulu-Suite in the concert hall, then I
have momentarily forgotten it, which seems unlikely. The first time I heard
Kirill Petrenko was in 2006, at Covent Garden, conducting a Schoenberg-Bartók
double-bill (Erwartung and Bluebeard’s Castle). He greatly
impressed me then; he impressed me just as greatly in Berg here. Beethoven, as
in last year’s Seventh Symphony, again with the Berlin Philharmonic, was
considerably more mixed – at least for me, though the Salzburg audience once
again reacted with great enthusiasm, indeed a standing ovation.
Petrenko’s emphasis on line, or
rather on lines, was what struck me most of all in the first movement. Thinking
of his Berlin predecessors, I imagined both Herbert von Karajan and Claudio
Abbado, in their very different ways, appreciating this (not that others would
not have done). Its flow seemed ideal, but so too did its translucency. There
was less to the bass line than I imagine in my head, but this is surely a work,
surely a composer, in which one performance can give only a taste of the
possibilities inherent. Workings were certainly clear, without pedantry. Not
that it was anti-Romantic, or un-Romantic: how could it be? It was loved,
clearly, without being smothered. In the ‘Hymne’ section, serial processes
seemed to become all the clearer, vertical and horizontal more equal. Had this
been a deliberate strategy, to help the audience orient its ears? Who knows? I
suspect it helped, anyway.
The second movement offered
contrast that was riotous yet related, with an unmistakeable, highly welcome,
whiff of Weimar to it. If the first movement seemed to have edged closer to
Boulez as time had gone on, this went closer still, making me wonder whether
Petrenko would continue the orchestra’s tradition in Boulez’s own music,
whether from the composer himself or Simon Rattle. Let us hope so. Wonderful
liminal passages as phantasmagorical as anything in Strauss prepared the way
for Marlis Petersen’s entrance. Petersen’s uncommonly verbal approach – with no
discernible loss, at least to me, of accuracy of coloratura – enabled a shift
in balance and thus character for the ‘Lied der Lulu’. A slinky fourth movement
seemed especially to relish the tonal implications of Berg’s music, whilst
remaining very much in the line of what had preceded. An evocative musical
wasteland duly moved for the final movement’s opening: third-act Parsifal in Whitechapel? Yet as the
wasteland become more overtly urban, I speculated as to Petrenko’s Varèse as
much as his Weill. How Berg’s phrases were turned, moreover: with meaning,
never mannerism. Mahler (at last?) came to mind, the Mahler of the Tenth
Symphony, in that chord and its
aftermath. The music – music ‘itself’ – stopped with a wondrous, Wozzeck-like chill.
D minor was always a special
key for the Second Viennese School. It was hardly less special for Beethoven,
nor indeed for Mozart before him. I should love to hear a brazenly modernistic
Ninth, but have yet to hear one; even Michael Gielen, so refreshing, so
inspiring, in the other Beethoven symphonies seemed to lose his way here. It is
surely not impossible, however much we may theorise and fantasise about a
certain Romantic resistance. If truth be told, almost no one seems able to
bring it off; the only living conductor I have heard do so is Daniel
Barenboim, though Bernard Haitink has also come close. There was much of
interest in what we heard from Petrenko, but it was doubtless asking too much,
too soon.
It was striking how
non-mysterious the opening of the first movement sounded, though it was not
without defiance: materialism rather than metaphysics, then? Perhaps, there was
certainly plenty of Berlin precision. It was very different from how I imagine
the music, but that is no bad thing: I was intrigued enough to want to hear
more. (Just as well, at that point!) At its best, this perhaps came closest to
Abbado’s ‘designer Beethoven’; it has its admirers, I know, though his Vienna
Beethoven from earlier decades has always seemed to me more convincing. I
tried, and, as I said, found much to admire, but ultimately Beethoven, still
less the Ninth, without meaning – and that may ‘mean’ all matter of things,
verbal, musical, or otherwise – does not seem to me really to be Beethoven at
all. Much was skated over, however great the clarity and rhythmic definition. The
coda was magnificent, but where had it come from? It was as if an unexpected
ocean-liner had sailed in.
The scherzo, however, was much more
like it: clear, driven (not too hard,
and transparent. Conductor and strings alike relished Beethoven’s antiphonal
play, here refreshingly ludic. The problem was more coming after a first movement
such as that; again, where had it come from, and where was it going? The trio,
alas, veered dangerously close to the glib; a little relaxation, and a great
deal more stress on harmony, would have been of benefit. Likewise, of course
far more so, in the slow movement. It opened with genuine, almost Schubertian
sadness, but its depths went resolutely unplumbed. Sometimes cheerful, even
amiable, often pretty and sometimes beautiful, it again felt quite bereft of
meaning. If Beethoven trying to be Mendelssohn and not really getting there is
your thing, you would probably have liked it more than I did.
The finale, taken attacca, opened with fury, Beethoven’s
ensuing cello and bass recitative marked by a depth of tone previously missing,
even if wind sounded at times merely petulant. Ghosts of earlier movements were
vividly apparent; indeed, they often seemed more ‘real’ than the ‘real thing’
had been. Petrenko’s basic tempo for the main theme was very much on the swift
side, but such is his prerogative; if only he had not driven it so hard,
however beautiful the playing of the BPO. Again, harmony seemed weirdly
minimised; thank goodness it had not been in the Berg. Kwangchul Youn set the
scene for other soloists and indeed the chorus, in eminently musicianly singing
that yet rarely ventured – the excellent Benjamin Bruns a striking exception – beyond
the precise and pleasant. Taken in isolation, a good part of what we heard
might have moved in a different, more consequent performance; here it beguiled
yet ultimately baffled. A jubilant close delighted many. Where had it come
from, though, and what did it mean?
