Grosses Festspielhaus
Má vlast
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
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| Images: SF/Marco Borrelli |
This might have been less a case of taking coals to Newcastle than of bringing them back to double the journey, given I have spent most of the past year in Berlin. I was unable, though, to attend any of the subscription concerts earlier in the year when the Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko played Smetana’s Má vlast, so this Salzburg Festival offered me a welcome second chance in this, the composer’s bicentenary year. If there were times when I could not help but wonder what, say, the Czech Philharmonic might have sounded like in this music, the BPO and Petrenko gave committed, accomplished performances. There might well have been an extra tang of ‘authenticity’, given that orchestra’s unusual success in resisting international homogenisation, but no more than Janáček or Elgar does Smetana deserve to be reduced to the status of a national dish.
There was certainly nothing culinary to what we heard. Each of the six symphonic poems had its own narrative and contributed to a greater narrative. Petrenko proved a purposeful yet flexible guide. The bardic harps of ‘Vyšehrad’ offered a magical ‘once upon a time’ opening, following woodwind just as impressive. It really felt like the introduction to a series, and at times seemed even to anticipate the world of Das klagende Lied (which, after all, Mahler had begun before Smetana completed his work, let alone before its first performance). Yet that was only a hint; Smetana took a different, more Lisztian route, not least in the fugato, whose string playing was quite beyond reproach. ‘Vltava’ will doubtless always be the most celebrated of the six; it gains much from being heard in context. Here, it received an alert, colourful, directed performance, tinged with an unspoken sadness that was never permitted to overwhelm. There were occasions when I wondered whether it might have been a little less ‘beautiful’ or at least more vigorous, but I am nitpicking.
Following a few rounds of audience coughing, ‘Šarka’ emerged in almost operatic fashion, as if the opening to a new act. It proved full of surprises, even when one ‘knew’, testament to the freshness of the performance, all the way to a fiery conclusion (a massacre according to the composer’s programme). The opening to ‘From Bohemia’s Fields and Forests’ seemed to steal from still farther into the future: Mahler again, and even Janáček. These were certainly, though, Bohemian rather than Moravian lands into which the music headed. Again, there was a proper sense both of a new chapter and also of connection. String counterpoint once more was brilliantly despatched—and with a ghostly flavour at the close.
An eloquent reading of ‘Tábor’ again often put me in mind of Liszt, both in rhetoric and narrative. It had me think how welcome it would be to hear some of his symphonic poems from these same forces: maybe, dare one hope, even a complete series.’Blaník’ felt like the finale—and definitely a finale in context rather than something drafted to do service as such. Tonal and dramatic expectancy were properly heightened and fulfilled. Here was another Lisztian battle, but with jubilation that was very much Smetana’s (Czech) own. It may not be the ‘Ode to Joy’ or Die Meistersinger, but what is? An important nineteenth-century voice was given his due.