Philharmonie
Symphony no.6 in A minor
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Kirill Petrenko (conductor)
‘Keine Pause’ (‘no interval’),
announced the programme booklet for this Berlin Philharmonic performance of
Mahler’s Sixth Symphony. Uncontroversial performance practice, one might have
thought. Far more controversial, of course, is the ordering of the internal
movements. I shall admit my heart initially sank on noting that Kirill Petrenko
intended to follow the common recent practice of Andante-Scherzo rather
than vice versa, yet told myself that
this would be an opportunity once again to revisit my judgement on the matter,
a judgement that is in any case entirely pragmatic. Were I to hear a
performance ordered Andante-Scherzo that convinced me, I should be
delighted, for it would be perversely dogmatic to reject any performance on
textual grounds alone. If it works, it works.
So, did it work? There could be no doubting the musical, not merely technical, excellence on display from
Petrenko and his orchestra. (Does one ever hear from the Berlin Philharmonic the
kind of Schlamperei in which its
Viennese counterpart might occasionally indulge?) This was, by any standards,
an impressive performance. However, it was only truly in the finale that I felt
everything came together, both intellectually and emotionally. That was not
simply a matter of the movement order, although I am sure that played a part. Ultimately,
I think, Petrenko hears much of this music differently from the way I do. There
is nothing wrong with that: certainly not for him, at the helm of the Berlin
Philharmonic; nor, I hope, for me either. Mahler is big enough to take a
variety or, to use a more Mahlerian word, a world of approaches. I ask that any
reservations noted here should be taken in that spirit, as trying to explain
why I felt – or did not feel – the way I did (not), and not as mere carping.
It began as a quick march, monstrously metronomic: by design, of course. Timbre was hard-edged too,
harder than one can imagine it ever sounding in Vienna, closer to Shostakovich
than to Berg, though certainly not to be heard reductively in any respect. The
chorale proved as inscrutable as I have heard. Only with the ‘Alma’ theme did the
music finally yield, its echoes yielding further still. On the exposition
repeat, I was struck by how the strings seemed to dig in deeper still: no ‘mere’
repeat, then, in this unusually ‘Classical’ practice for Mahler. The wandering
strangeness of Mahler’s voice-leading likewise registered all the more strongly
this second time around. The development scored highly on percussion-led
mystery: not only cowbells, but celesta and glockenspiel too. Was that
Shostakovich’s Fifteenth we heard before us in the distant - or not so distant –
future? Even when not playing, those instruments’ shadow and that of the
chorale too loomed ominous: in, for instance, the duet between horn and violin
or the collision between second violin pizzicato and celesta. How eerie in this
light did the sped-up chorale sound in the recapitulation, like forlorn running
on the spot. And how desolate, how emotionally spent was the coda’s announcement.
Next came the Andante, its contours drawn lovingly,
yet never too lovingly. Schoenberg’s celebrated analysis suggests he would have
thought well of Petrenko’s way with this movement (if not, necessarily, with
its placement). It was meaningfully shaped, above all in its climaxes, with
none of the overt interventionism that can so disfigure much contemporary
Mahler performance. Mahler’s music truly developed, as one realised upon
looking back. The return to A minor for the Scherzo, however, unsettled – and not,
for me at least, in a good way. This has yet to sound right for me, for all
manner of reasons, analytical and hermeneutical. Perhaps one day it will; for
now, I remain in the camp of Mahlerians such as Pierre
Boulez, Bernard Haitink, and Michael Gielen. That said, Petrenko proved more yielding than the first movement
had led me to expect. This certainly was ‘good unsettling’. The Scherzo emerged
more sardonic than brutal, especially in its liminal passages. Tutti passages again had more of a
Shostakovich than a Central European sonority to my ears. The way, however, it
petered out, exhausted, was quite something: not only different from what we
had heard before, but also clearly a prelude to the ultimate tragedy of the
finale.
Its opening cry instilled fear of God, followed by some of the most extraordinary, now unabashedly
Bergian sonorities I have heard here. Malice and fear sounded on both side of
the subject/object divide. There was defiance too, though, in necessary
reaction: just as frightening in its way, when a motif passed from violas to
second violins to firsts; or when the wind attempted to take us where the
material demanded, yet could not. There was also relief of an almost
Mendelssohnian variety, rendering what was to come all the more cruel. Once the
first hammer blow had fallen, its trauma could never be escaped. The sweetness
of strings in its wake was almost too much to take. After that, let alone the
second, there could be no doubt of where we were heading. The recapitulation
could hardly have opened in greater despair: musically earned, not hysterically
whipped up, as a lesser conductor might have done. Mahler – and we – tried to
hope, and how, yet it was in vain. So much so, indeed, that I found myself wanting the third hammer blow, its
denial perhaps as cruel as its fall would have been. The blackness of the close
spoke for itself. Aftershock, rather than the Scherzo’s nihilism.
