Salzburg Easter Festival (3): Das Rheingold, 6 April 2026

Felsenreitschule

Images: Frol Podlesyni
Performers: Olade Roland Rodolpho Sagbo, Delavallet Bidiefono, Roméo Bron Bi

Director – Kirill Serebrennikov
Set designs – Kirill Serebrennikov, Olga Pavluk
Costumes – Kirill Srebrennikov, Slavna Martinovic, Shaiva Nikvashvili
Lighting – Sergey Kucher
Choreography – Ivan Estegneev, Delavallet Bidiefono
Dramaturgy – Daniil Orlov

Wotan – Christian Gerhaher
Donner – Gihoon Kim
Froh – Thomas Atkins
Loge – Brenton Ryan
Alberich – Leigh Melrose
Mime – Thomas Cilluffo
Fasolt – Le Bu
Fafner – Patrick Guetti
Fricka – Catriona Morison
Freia – Sarah Brady
Erda – Jasmin White
Woglinde – Louise Foor
Wellgunde – Yajie Zhange
Flosshilde – Jess Dandy

Performer Compagnie Baninga

Actors, Performers

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

Determined to bring Wagner and Berlin Philharmonic opera to his native Salzburg, Herbert von Karajan inaugurated the city’s Easter (for the greater part, Holy Week) Festival in 1967. It began with a Ring (Die Walküre first), partly co-produced with New York’s Metropolitan Opera and directed by Karajan himself, which formed the foundation for Karajan’s Deutsche Grammophon audio recording. The Ring returned to Salzburg under Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic from 2007-10, in Stéphane Braunschewig’s production, given also in Aix. Now in 2026, with the triumphant return of the orchestra to Salzburg, the Easter Festival’s third Ring begins, in a co-production with Copenhagen’s Royal Danish Opera, conducted by Kirill Petrenko and directed by Kirill Serebrennikov. 

Fafner (Patrick Guetti)

I say triumphant, since there can be no doubting that the orchestra proved the brightest stars of all in this Rheingold’s firmament. I doubt the score can ever have been better played at the level of execution—and at this stage of my Wagnerian life, I have heard it a good few times. Depth of tone, balance, and pinpoint accuracy were second to none; and, as I have noted a few times with the BPO under Kirill Petrenko, they (or their conductor) show a greater willing to draw on the wisdom and experience of their long history, a dark, more Furtwänglerian sound, closer to that of the Staatskapelle Berlin, than tended to be heard from Rattle, Claudio Abbado, or indeed Karajan proving the baseline – sometimes even the bass line – in core Austro-German repertoire. Petrenko’s Wagner conducting has also progressed in leaps and bounds not only since he conducted the Ring at Bayreuth, but also from his Wagner in Munich. Not that the former was poor, far from it, but the theatre brings its own, notorious challenges for a director and, more to the point, the conception often lacked metaphysical and, in many ways, physical depth. There is no doubting Petrenko’s grasp of the work’s vast architecture, heard and communicated as if (almost) in a single breath – not quite Daniel Barenboim, though no one else has been this century, arguably since Furtwängler himself. With this orchestra as his collaborators, though, he can draw on a greater, multi-dimensional canvas, gaining harmonic depth, timbral variegation, and a more varied, yet always firmly directed narrative thrust. If the strings sounded as of old (or so one could fancy), the woodwind arguably sounded more variegated and characterful than ever, the brass both more tender and more malevolent as necessary (and much more). Underwhelming anvils, poorly integrated were a pity, but they often are; the technical difficulties here lie far beyond a merely ‘musical’ issue. 

Froh (Thomas Atkins), Wotan (Christian Gerhaher), Loge (Brenton Ryan)

On, then, to Serebrennikov’s vision and its realisation. A post-apocalyptic setting in the/a potential future, presumably following a cataclysm such as we shall encounter at the close, may not be ‘groundbreaking’. We have been there before in the Ring, perhaps most celebratedly with Harry Kupfer, let alone in other works. It is difficult to imagine, at least until it happens, what could, at least on that broad, outline scale could be by now, although arguably Frank Castorf achieved something of that kind in his 2013-17 Ring (conducted initially by Petrenko). It is surely, by the same token, especially apposite right now, at a time when monsters such as Trump and Netanyahu are threatening to unleash still worse than they have already. The devil and, just perhaps, the angels will of course lie in the detail, and here Serebrennikov’s conception offers much promise—as well as certain caveats. It is always difficult, indeed impossible, to tell from a single instalment, although one can always tell if all has gone horribly wrong. In so bleak a landscape, visited both on stage and above on Serebrennikov’s own film, should one start entirely from scratch or recall the before times? It may not be either/or; indeed, there will be choices to be made from which or, better, whose before times. The question nonetheless retains some validity. The gods seem bound to a past that may lie beyond recovery; arguably they do by at least the final scene of Rheingold anyway, perhaps earlier still. In light, uncoloured, perhaps even ragged robes, they affect poses, probably attempt solutions as if an Attic (more than Teutonic?) past were present. All they seem positively, promisingly to possess is the technology of a greenhouse to cultivate Freia’s apples of immortality. We do not so much as glimpse Valhalla; perhaps it does not exist. 

Rhinemaidens (Yajie Zhang, Jess Dandy, Louise Foor)

For this is clearly Alberich’s story more than theirs. Whether that will be the case throughout the Ring, we do not know, but it seems unarguable at least for this Rheingold. The film begins and continues with his quest across a barren, Icelandic landscape, both harking back to the Eddas and representing the problem, even the terror of the present. Where he is heading remains unclear, but when he appears onstage we recognise him and this doubling (like others between singers and actors, purely onstage) proves dramatically enabling and productive, without provoking confusion. This is a world in which religion, like all else, must or at least may be recreated, the gods and their heroes – viewed as ceramic memories at the close, hardly promising for the future – facing just the replacement Alberich threatens will come from him and his horde. And so, he builds a cult of his own, enthroned under a canopy, learning from those who have oppressed him, including an able trio of Rhinemaidens replete with actor-provided tentacles of the erotic urge (liebesgelüste) Wagner divined in Alberich. Film turns to fire and even  disintegrates, though recovers, possibly presaging the future's future.

Whether ‘borrowing’ from African cultures onstage is the best way to go about some of this may be questioned. Questions of appropriation or downright (neo-)colonialism – primitive or primitivism? – are complicated by the engagement of African dancers under the responsive choreography (and dance) of Delavallet Bidiefono. These artists have clearly contributed, to my eyes highly productively. So too have Recycle Group (Andrey Blokhin and Georgy Kuznetsov) in provision of materials. Matters are not so clearcut here as they might initially seem, though the suspicion of ethnographic tourism lingers even when one learns of the creditable research that has gone into the production from reclaimed materials and office rubbish of a reenvisaged Egungun masquerade dress for Loge. His colourful world, what appears to be a reinvention of magic – what else is there in such an environment – makes quite an impression. What lies within the portable hut his double guards remains a mystery, as doubtless it must. The questions it provokes may prove key to the whole enterprise. What seems to mark a remythologising of the Ring bucks recent practice. The politics remain; how could they not? They do not, bar the overall post-catastrophic setting, laudable environmentalism in production values, and the coming of the Global South, seem to be paramount conceptually. Perhaps that will change, or perhaps it is the intention: something approaching a new direction in itself in the twenty-first century. But will this be Wieland Wagner with a world tour and integrated recycling, or rather more than that? All eyes, or at least mine, lie on Alberich and Loge—rather than on Wotan. 

Alberich (Leigh Melrose)

That shift of emphasis was paralleled, less fortunately, in terms of singing. That Loge might steal the show in Das Rheingold is far from unprecedented; it is almost to be expected. Brenton Ryan’s quicksilver portrayal was nonetheless far more than a reflection of the work, vocal and stage presence combining (in collaboration with his redder ‘double’) to represent something both primal and advanced, whether instrumental reason or sham magic dramatically ambiguous. Leigh Melrose’s Alberich was again a true animating as well as animating presence, his use of words and music in Wagner’s radical alchemy not only tracing but helping form the narrative. Christian Gerhaher, by contrast, was, like many of the full gods, oddly static. This, again, was partly a matter of the production, but there were times when he seemed parted, resorting to barking reminiscent of aspects of Karajan’s Fischer-Dieskau but without his commanding presence. Gerhaher is a superlative artist as a singer, but not so much of an actor, and it is difficult to consider Wotan, even in this ‘preliminary evening’, his ideal role. Whether he will continue in Walküre and Siegfried – Fischer-Dieskau did not – we shall see. Le Bu’s Fasolt and Patrick Guetti’s Fafner were formidable giants, offering portrayals with considerable psychological depth as well as necessary force. Erdas rarely disappoint and Jasmin White was no exception; theirs was a moment that cast its shadow over all that was to come—and presumably that is still to come. Thomas Cilluffo’s characterful Mime promised well for the greater stint to come (assuming he continues in the role). Even here, then, much judgement must necessarily be provisional, but the best onstage and all in the pit augur well indeed.

 

Salzburg Easter Festival (1): BPO/Petrenko - Mahler, 3 April 2026

Grosses Festspielhaus

Images: Monika Rittershaus

Symphony no.8 in E-flat major

Jacquelyn Wagner, Sarah Wegener, Liv Redpath (sopranos)

Beth Taylor, Fleur Barron (mezzo-sopranos)

Benjamin Bruns (tenor)

Gihoon Kim (baritone)

Le Bu (bass)

Berlin Radio Chorus (director: Justus Barleben)

Salzburg Bach Choir (director: Michael Schneider)

Salzburg Festival and Theatre Children’s Choir (directors: Wolfgang Götz and Regina Sgier)

Tölz Boys’ Choir (director: Marco Barbon)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

If it initially felt more than a little strange, even heretical, to hear Mahler’s Eighth Symphony on Good Friday, this outstanding Salzburg Easter Festival performance from assembled soloists, choirs, the Berlin Philharmonic, and Kirill Petrenko swept all before it, doubts included—or perhaps better, incorporating such theological doubts into the experience of those listening 115 years on from the work’s premiere. A little under four years from the outbreak of the First World War, that age may seem, simultaneously, both strangely close to and increasingly distant from the insanity of the world’s current predicaments. Mahler was no aestheticist; this rightly offered no refuge. But nor did it hold up anything so predictable as a mere mirror. No audience member will have experienced it in quite the same way, but all will surely have been edified, exhilarated, and far more besides. The indifference, at best, in which so many contemporary Mahler performances proceed was never an option here. Petrenko’s way with the work was often surprising, yet never arbitrarily so. It was, as is typical of this artist, a deeply thought-out reading that challenged, confounded, and ultimately, dare I say, came close to that thing we may still, hope against hope, consider to be transcendence.

Beth Taylor (standing), Jacquelyn Wagner and Fleur Barron on either side

I shall admit to having had my doubts earlyish on in the First Part. The organ sound was far from ideal. More fundamentally, I wondered quite where the performance was heading, with highly contrasting blocks of material: a brisk and lithe choral section seeming almost underwhelming, followed by spacious, operatic solo singing that seemed perhaps closer to Berlioz or Verdi than Mahler. Unity of soloists and chorus intriguingly suggested something akin to the world of nineteenth-century oratorio – Dvořák’s Stabat Mater came to mind – but I began to ask myself: where is the symphonism in this? I should have known better, since Petrenko had taken a highly original view that yet proved compelling both in the moment and in retrospect. Chamber-music playing – yes, in this movement – suggested an affinity with the Berlin Philharmonic Wagner of Herbert von Karajan, reminding us of the roots of this festival, revisited this year in a new Ring, but more importantly offering a fascinating new perspective (for me, at least) on music I had thought I knew well.

Liv Redpath (Mater gloriosa)

It goes without saying, yet doubtless should not, that the Berlin Philharmonic’s chamber playing, just as much as any titanic, surround-sound barnstorming, proved superlative and indeed enlightening. When Petrenko whipped up a storm, he truly did so; when the choirs sang, seating arrangements only enhanced a musical understanding that reached back to the antiphonies of ancient polyphony. (I thought, perhaps idiosyncratically, of Wagner’s Palm Sunday Palestrina.) Where, though, was the Mahler, I might perhaps have asked earlier on. It was increasingly clear, again both in the moment and in retrospect. Ghosts from his earlier symphonies increasingly haunted the music: liminal passages from the Rückert symphonies, ecstasy from the Second and Third, and more than a little Wunderhorn later on. And when the moment of return arrived, any idea that this conception was not, among other things, symphonic through and through was dispelled once and for all. If there was something disturbing about hearing those cries of ‘Gloria!’ on this of all days, there was something utterly thrilling to it too: a tribute to Mahler’s syncretic vision, itself reimagined in further syncretism, rather than any banal blasphemy. All came together, as it must, yet in at least the last two performances I have heard of this symphony, it utterly failed to do so; moreover, it came together in a display of long-range thinking that made complete sense of the progression we had heard so far, also anticipating that to come.

The introduction to the Second Part is, of course, one of the most extraordinary musical landscapes in the entire canon. In that, it follows Goethe and, for some of us, even goes beyond him. Bar prolonged electronic interference from what I assume was a malfunctioning hearing aid, this wanted nothing. Here, Petrenko and the Berliners offered their very own – rather, Mahler’s – rite of spring, initially cold yet melting, suggestive of the snow one can still view here on the Alpine landscape visible from all quarters in the city, yet in its translucency also partaking in a further liminality already hinting at the very different heights to come. At that moment when they must, strings dug in, in a way one fancies they must have for Mahler in 1910 Munich, yet probably did not. It was, at any rate, both expertly and movingly shaped. When choir and echo entered, it was likewise as if we heard chamber choirs writ large, that translucency extended not only to song but to words and verse themselves.

 

As other persons had their say, we recognised them both as of old and quite anew, classical yet contemporary: the ideal for any performance, as Daniel Barenboim (who surely would have had the measure of this work he never conducted) might have told us—and Pierre Boulez, who certainly did on both counts, very much did tell us, both in words and music. The early stages of the rest of this part truly imparted a sense of ascent both physical and metaphysical, as if partaking in a musical-cosmological demonstration of the mediaeval Great Chain of Being. Gihoon Kim’s excellent Pater ecstaticus was, yes, ecstatic, but also clearly heartfelt, presaging the deep (in every sense) love extolled and embodied by the Pater profundus of Le Bu. The word ‘Kettenschmerz’, towards the close of his first solo, he almost spat out, without slightest sacrifice to beauty of tone or deeper meaning. This is clearly a rare talent: an artist new to me but whom I hope to hear much more from. Beth Taylor’s Mulier Samaritana revealed a fine, Erda-like contralto-like mezzo, equally at home with the alchemy that turns words into something approaching music drama. Jacquelyn Wagner offered a thrillingly, operatic turn for Magna peccatrix. First among an extraordinary team of equals in the First Part, Sarah Wagener sounded here, quite rightly, more oratorio-like in the part of Una poenitentium, without in any sense refusing the inheritance from her composer namesake. Speaking of whom, the Siegfried-like Doctor Marianus of Benjamin Bruns, rang out in uncommon harmony with the orchestra. All soloists, as well as all choirs, contributed to the greater whole in outstanding fashion, whether the Third Symphony’s Bimm-Bamm sublimation in our corps of younger angels, Fleur Barron’s imploring, inwardly strong Maria Aegyptiaca, or the pre- and post-Parsifalian voice from above, Mater gloriosa, of Liv Redpath, both necessary response and necessarily sweet.

 

All the while, Petrenko proved, after Mahler, our (pen-)ultimate guide. There was no more a weak link in the symphonic logic of this vast structure than there was in the playing of the Berlin Philharmonic or the singing of our onstage cosmogony. All took its place with a Wagnerian inevitability that belied the elements of crowd control, however unseen and unheard, which must always inform a performance of this symphony. When, heralded by a clarion-like yet tender return for Doctor Marianus, the Chorus mysticus entered, it was with a magic that seemed to lie somewhere between Mozart and Nono. Disbelief in the celebrated and/or notorious last line of Goethe could be suspended, because one felt one actually believed; perhaps even in the old canard, credo quia absurdum. There was, though, nothing absurd to a coronation of queens and princes of heaven alike, even on Good Friday. Whether or no this were the beyond we glimpsed, none could doubt that we felt we had.

 

Salzburg Festival (10) - BPO/Petrenko: Smetana, 26 August 2024

Grosses Festspielhaus

Má vlast

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

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.

Karajan-Akademie/Petrenko - Mendelssohn and Widmann, 17 May 2024

Kammermusiksaal

Mendelssohn: String Octet in E-flat major, op.20
Widmann: Quintet for oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon, and piano
Mendelssohn: Symphony no.4 in A major, op.90, ‘Italian’

Karajan-Akademie

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

The Berlin Philharmonic’s Karajan-Akademie, founded on the initiative of the man himself in 1972, is perhaps the ultimate in orchestral scholarships. Its graduates are to be found in orchestras across the world. On the basis of this evening concert whose second part was conducted by Karajan’s successor but two, Kirill Petrenko, it would seem unwise to bet against that continuing. Any good orchestra will excel in chamber music playing too. The first part of the concert, offering a work for strings by Mendelssohn and one for wind and piano by Jörg Widmann confirmed much to admire in that respect as well.

Mendelssohn’s music nearly always lifts the spirits—unless played poorly (which does not bear thinking about). The Karajan-Akademie’s Octet offered no exception. From the off, the first movement had a sense of rightness that implied spontaneity, yet doubtless entailed much preparation. Tempo, balance, poise, and sheer élan characterised the performance that mirrored Mendelssohn’s own extraordinary combination of youth and maturity. Counterpoint was vividly present without congestion of textures. Not that sterner passages, for instance in the development, were undersold. The melancholy of exhaustion and its differentiation told its own tale, as did the revival of spirits for the return. Above all, it made me smile. If Beethoven’s inheritance was not absent in the first movement, it was immediately more apparent in the second. A keen architectural grasp was combined with moral seriousness and due sense of the sublime (without a hint of pomposity). The featherlight, fairytale fantasy of a Mendelssohn scherzo held no fears for these players; their relish proved properly infections. They stepped forward and blended in ensemble like musical actors in a play (A Midsummer Night’s Dream only just round the corner). Beethoven’s influence, worn ever so lightly, also characterised a finale of vigour, rigour, and release, which seemed to delight in the very essence of music. The players’ delight both in their performance and the warmth of its reception were palpable, and rightly so.   

Next came Widmann’s Quintet for oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon, and piano, a 2006 commission from the Karajan-Akademie. The combination of piano, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon has as its most celebrated, unmatchable example that of Mozart, although Beethoven’s early work is a fine example too. Schoenberg’s Wind Quintet, op.26, and Suite, op.29 between them contain the instruments, though neither of course matches directly. It was Schoenberg’s music and perhaps also that of his alleged antipode, Stravinsky, that seemed more to haunt on this occasion, for who would dare follow Mozart’s KV 452 directly? Widmann claims to have done so, but that was not so apparent to me, and more to the point, seemed to matter. His longstanding – even then, as the recipient of the Akademie’s Claudio Abbado Composition Prize – preoccupation with German Romanticism registered strongly: not only in its Second Viennese School culmination, but also in Schumannesque (at one remove) piano writing. There was humour; there were what once we might have called ‘extended techniques’; and there was a ‘lost waltz’ that seemed to have strayed from the Vienna of Schoenberg and Berg (perhaps the Wozzeck tavern). Eighteen miniature movements in not much more than twenty minutes offered a vivid, youthful conspectus that again seemed just the thing for outstanding young performers. They seemed to enjoy it too. Piano was exchanged for celesta in the final movement, ‘Flugtraum’, casting a spell of enchantment not only over what had gone before, but also over what was to come.

Petrenko joined a full chamber orchestra (strings 6.5.4.3.2) for the return of Mendelssohn in his Italian Symphony. Lessons of chamber-musicmaking seemed very much to have been learned, both for the players in their listening and sheer responsiveness, and also for the conductor, who in his wisdom – again, one could also see and hear his enjoyment – knew precisely when and when not to conduct. If one could hear, even in the excellent acoustic of the Kammermusiksaal, this was not an especially large string section, that did not matter in the slightest: it was different, neither better nor worse, and balance with wind was impeccable throughout. The first movement got off to a fine start, as well-judged as the Octet. Fine clarinet solos deserve special mention, though there was nothing approaching a weaker link. Petrenko likewise shaped the second movement well, crucially without giving much impression of doing so. His task was to draw out the musicianship of his players, a task accomplished to a tee. Line persisted, however much the scenery changed: the procession, after all, never stops. The Minuet again gained much from the sense of chamber playing writ large; it is not the only way, of course, but it worked well. Its trio seemed all the more to breathe the air of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Presto Saltarello danced on hot coals, infectious and cathartic as a summer night’s fever. Mendelssohn at last seemed to have turned bad; perhaps it was so, if only in the moment.

Batiashvili/BPO/Petrenko - Brahms, Szymanowski, and Strauss, 15 February 2024

Philharmonie

Brahms: Tragic Overture in D minor, op.81
Symanowski: Violin Concerto no.1, op.35
Strauss: Symphonia Domestica, op.53

Lisa Batiashvili (violin)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

Image: Lena Laine

For me, the highlight of this concert from the Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko was the performance of Szymanowski’s First Violin Concerto, for which they were joined by the equally outstanding violinist Lisa Batiashvili. Almost any few bars – the sound and the direction it took – would have been enough to justify attendance; it was not, though, necessary to choose. Its opening, a fairyland in which orchestral children of Mendelssohn and Debussy took flight to the emergent strains of a silken violin line spun with longing and languor presaged what was to come, such interactions, melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and timbral the stuff on which dreams were made on—at quite a temperature. Whatever its twists and turns, there was no doubting the musical line and one’s compulsion to follow it. Metamorphoses magical, martial, and more proved gorgeously beyond good and evil in their phantasmagoria, form created before our ears. It seemed both old and new, all the while played as to the manner born, balances both perfectly projected yet constantly shifting. Fantasy became reality, or perhaps vice versa. 

Brahms’s Tragic Overture preceded it. Here I was somewhat more uncertain. It was tremendously played, of course, though perhaps driven a little hard at the beginning. (Such matters are mostly a matter of taste, yet even fate need not be quite so remorseless.) There was certainly contrast to come, not least in a charming, surprising echo of Schubert in onward tread before Brahms’s Beethovenian inheritance reasserted itself. What I never quite grasped was how the tragic pageant hung together. 

In the second half came Strauss’s Symphonia domestica. Of all Strauss’s tone poems, even Aus Italien, it is the one I know least well. Indeed, I am not sure I can claim to know it in an emphatic sense at all; I do not think I had been to a live performance before this. I was therefore hoping for some sort of ‘eureka’ moment, or at least a shift in my response to a work that has somewhat baffled me on previous hearings. Alas, it was not to be on this occasion—and that is not necessarily any reflection on the performance.  There were times, especially earlier on, when I thought it was. It is not often that Strauss is bested for great washes of orchestral sound, yet after Szymanowski he was; precision and clarity in the opening were therefore all the more valuable by way of contrast. The composer’s antiromanticism was here strongly to the fore, as it was when the music, more strongly than I can recall, presaged the operatic Strauss of a decade or more hence: Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne, even Intermezzo—which, in terms of subject matter, makes sense. Darker passages proved as ambiguous as the music at its more playful; the Mendelssohn quotation might almost have been filtered by Reger, save that it would surely have been the other way around. The sheer strangeness of Strauss’s tonal journey registered, though ultimately I am not sure I followed it, nor the work’s form (as opposed to mere structure) more generally. The ‘finale’ at times sounded intriguingly close to the enigmatic exuberance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, written at more or less the same time, yet an element of failing, as it were, to conclude here seemed less part of the narrative than, well, an inability to conclude. I am doubtless missing something and have little doubt Mahler would have relished the Berliners’ virtuoso handling of Strauss’s counterpoint. (He conducted the  Viennese premiere in 1904.) Sometimes, though, one must wait until a piece comes knocking on the door—which, judging by the reaction accorded this performance, it already had for most of my fellow concert-goers.

BPO/Petrenko - Schoenberg, 25 January 2024

Philharmonie

Chamber Symphony no.1 in E major, op.9
Die Jakobsleiter

Gabriel – Wolfgang Koch
One who is called – Daniel Behle
One who protests – Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke
One who struggles – Johannes Martin Kränzle
The chosen one – Gyula Orendt
The monk – Stephan Rügamer
The dying one – Nicola Beller Carbone
The soul – Liv Redpath, Jasmin Delfs

Berlin Radio Chorus (chorus director: Gijs Leenaars)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

Image: © Stephan Rabold

150 years on from the birth of Arnold Schoenberg, we could be forgiven for lamenting this world still does not know what to do with him and his music. The most important of twentieth-century composers, he languishes respected yet for the most part unperformed. The muted tones in which even this, his anniversary year, is being celebrated – if not now, then when? – are such that it could readily be missed altogether. There are exceptions, not least my friends and colleagues at Vienna’s Arnold Schönberg Center; I am referring essentially to the world of musical performance—and listening. And just perhaps here also in Berlin, second of Schoenberg’s three major cities. (Los Angeles, alas, has long seemed a lost cause.) Not so much in the city as a whole: we search in vain for contributions from its opera houses – surely things would have been different, were Daniel Barenboim still at the helm of the Staatsoper – and indeed from most of its orchestras, yet in the Philharmonie, home to the Berlin Philharmonic, we at least see in the foyer a little exhibition, mounted in conjunction with the ASC, and here we have now also heard the first of several contributions planned from the orchestra. 

If they continue even to approach the level of this instalment, all will not be lost. The First Chamber Symphony offered a splendid way to start. It was the first live Schoenberg I heard, travelling down as a schoolboy to London on the coach from Sheffield for my first Prom; I think it was actually the first piece on the programme, so the first notes I heard at the Proms, at the Royal Albert Hall, indeed in London, were Schoenberg’s. An attempt at comparison would be pointless: I cannot remember much other than that, even then, it impressed me greatly. But this is therefore a work with which I have lived for a while, and of which I have heard a number of fine performances since that CBSO Prom with Simon Rattle (and Maurizio Pollini), one next door at the Kammermusiksaal included (from members of this same orchestra as the Scharoun Ensemble and Pierre Boulez). Today’s Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko have little to fear from even the most exalted comparisons, but it is better simply to consider their performance on its own terms. 

In some ways the most conservative – in the proper rather than the debased, contemporary sense – of revolutionaries and surely the most revolutionary of conservatives, Schoenberg stands Janus-faced, that historical position readily conveyed here in immanent, performing terms. For a work so sunny and life-affirming, it is haunted by ghosts, many of whom cheerfully partook of this particular feast. First up, in the opening bars, was Richard Strauss, already balanced by a heightened sense that this was as much chamber music, a gathering of soloists, as symphony (or indeed symphonic poem). Brahmsian developing variation, Wagnerian melos, passage of transition that owed much to both, and of course Lisztian formal inheritance were to the fore, but through the particular material and character of this piece; it never felt like anything other than itself, though there was to be heard something of a more traditional, darkly ‘German’ sound and warmth to the ensemble than might often have been the case from Petrenko’s two immediate predecessors, Claudio Abbado and Simon Rattle, albeit without sacrifice to clarity and balance. So assured was the latter that one might almost have forgotten what an astonishingly difficult feat it is to bring off (as Herbert von Karajan, Abbado’s predecessor, freely admitted). Illuminating detail – sepulchral, Alberich-like playing from violist Diyang Mei, a snatch of Pierrot-laughter from Kilian Herold’s clarinet – was present to an extent sometimes difficult to believe, but always within a sure and malleable sense of the whole. The development truly developed, showing Schoenberg as heir to Beethovenian struggle. The ‘lightness’ of the beginning of the ‘slow movement’ offered a surprising presentiment of the ‘air of another planet’ soon to be experienced in Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet, prior to well-nigh Mahlerian ‘deepening’. No performance of this complex piece can be perfect; it contains more than can ever be achieved in a single performance. This came closer than most.   

True revelation, though, came with Die Jakobsleiter. So seldom is this extraordinary work heard that I cannot have been the only audience member hearing it live for the first time. I had thought I knew this incomplete oratorio well enough, yet such were the strength and all-round excellence of this performance that I realised I had hardly known it at all. Indeed, not the least of my realisations was that one cannot really begin to know it other than through live performance. Recordings, however excellent, can barely suggest the spatial dimension – here the hall came into its own as much as the performers – nor, more important still, the overwhelming power and conviction inherent in the work and any performance worthy of it. One felt the work’s constructivism from the off, its opening cello hexachord so clearly, powerfully generative of what ensued: musical expression first, words from Wolfgang Koch’s Gabriel next. ‘Whether right or left, forward or backward, uphill or downhill’: one felt, harmonically, motivically, conceptually the multi-dimensional Schoenbergian Idea. Just as important, its colours, not only orchestral (though the inheritance of the Five Orchestral Pieces, op.16 was thrillingly apparent) but vocal too, not least from the souls of the Berlin Radio Chorus, individual and as a mass. Instrumental lines, as if generated by the Chamber Symphony and further developed here, contributed equally to the composer’s hyper-expressivity and the sense of its absolute necessity. It was relentlessly dialectical, relentlessly communicative, already pointing to elements of the world of Moses und Aron. A well-nigh flawless cast of vocal soloists had been assembled and exceeded expectations. Again, the variety of colours and expressive gestures within a single performance, be it that of the increasingly Wagnerian Daniel Behle, the dark, rich Gyula Orendt, Liv Redpath and Jasmin Delfs’s souls in vocalise, or anyone else had to be heard to be believed. Schoenberg’s vivid imagery – or is that too representational a characterisation? – was brought still more vividly to life that was both fleeting and aspirant to the eternal.

All the while, we moved, after Swedenborg, upwards, heralded by the sweetest of violin solos from above, instruments and voices surrounding us as if truly from the heavens. This was less the air of another planet than of another dimension, music and post-Wagnerian, post-Mahlerian redemption above, beyond, around us. This was a magic unlike anything I had yet heard. Part of our world, then, does know what to do with Schoenberg and his music. May it serve as an example to the rest.

BPO/Petrenko - Mozart, Berg, and Brahms, 1 November 2023

Philharmonie

Mozart: Symphony no.29 in A major, KV 201/186a
Berg: Three Orchestral Pieces, op.6
Brahms: Symphony no.4 in E minor, op.98

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

Image: Frederike van der Straeten

As his wont, Kirill Petrenko, offered readings of three symphonic works with the Berlin Philharmonic that were in many ways refreshing, certainly rethought, beholden neither to hidebound tradition nor to fashionable novelty. First was Mozart’s A major Symphony, KV201/186a, especially interesting to hear in the light of the orchestra’s all-Mozart concert with Riccardo Minasi the previous week. Last played by the orchestra in 1997 (!) under Daniel Barenboim, it was more than time for it to return to their repertoire. Using a slightly smaller orchestra than Minasi (strings 10.8.6.5.3 to 12.10.8.6.4) Petrenko elicited warm, stylish playing and a similar display of the virtues of antiphonal violins, nowhere more so than at the opening of the first movement. He was unafraid to make small adjustments to fine-tune the balance in real time, without falling prey to fussiness. Articulation was excellent. Perhaps Petrenko was more concerned with symmetry here than overall dynamism, but that was to change in an excellent account of the second movement. To begin with, I wondered whether the playing might be too delicate, even Meissen-like, but it was a starting point for development, led as much by the miniscule wind section (just two oboes and two horns) as by the strings. The minuet successfully trod the tightrope of courtliness and one-beat-to-a-bar, Petrenko taking care over individual beats within. A slightly awkward non-transition to the trio, which itself relaxed perhaps a little too much in context, could soon be forgotten. Here and in the finale, Petrenko knew when it was unnecessary to conduct, this movement being very much what Mozart specified: ‘Allegro con spirito’, with not a little vigour. 

Musicianship at least as fine was to be heard in Berg’s Three Orchestral Pieces, Petrenko clearly having thought out both their individual and overall progress, communicating them with clarity and conviction to orchestra and audience. The opening of the first may have sounded more ominous and inchoate in other hands, but this reading had its own logic and roots, as much in German Romanticism – not only Mahler, but at times as early as Mendelssohn – as in Expressionist horror. Moreover, its considerable contrasts left a decided sense of having only just begun: just, one might think, as a ‘Präludium’ would suggest. The opening of the second was arguably more mysterious, or at least quizzical, with more than a hint of the world of Wozzeck’s Marie, perhaps even an advance flirtation with Lulu. It certainly danced as Wozzeck can and should, amidst a Mahlerian sense of ultimate danger. Was its close too carefully, even clinically calibrated, at the expense of something rawer and deeper? Perhaps, but if so it was a minor fault in largely the right direction. Balances in this work are extremely difficult both to assess and to communicate, as Pierre Boulez would always aver. The menace of that movement was picked up and developed in the closing ‘Marsch’. It was striking how much here sounded like chamber music—and only because it is. Protean yet directed, this account rightly had rhythm emerge from within, as opposed to being somehow externally applied to melodic and (especially) harmonic material. We expect that in Webern and should do equally in Berg, but it is far from always the case. There was something terrible on the horizon, and suddenly, albeit well prepared, it was well-nigh upon us. By the end, we found ourselves unambiguously in the hinterland, arguably the world itself, of Wozzeck. What occasionally I had found lacking earlier had in most cases been withheld as preparation for that transformation.     

Brahms’s Fourth Symphony could hardly be more central to the orchestra’s repertoire. Since it first performed the work in 1886, conducted by Joseph Joachim no less, there have been recordings from Furtwängler, Karajan, Abbado, and Rattle, as well as a good number of guest conductors. Petrenko himself has already performed the symphony with his orchestra, in 2020; it would be unsurprising if a recording were in the offing before long. This reading was again in some ways unexpected, though coherent and justifiable. Brahms marks the first movement ‘Allegro non troppo’. To my ears, the ‘non troppo’ modification might have been more present, but one can argue endlessly and fruitlessly about such matters. On its own terms, it worked, and that counts for more. A first movement that began (knowingly?) with a translucency that seemed to recall that in the first movement of the Mozart was in some ways curiously bright, even optimistic, for one of the most purely tragic of all symphonies. It had scope to darken, and to play with many shades in between, much of that fulfilled; yet, without sounding ‘wrong’, that was afar from the abiding impression in a reading that again seemed to owe much to Mendelssohn (more, interestingly, than Schumann). Exhaustion at the end of the development, a familiar device of Mendelssohn, could in this respect be heard in new light, preparing the way for a more turbulent recapitulation and, finally, true, desperate fury in the coda, enhanced considerably by the Berlin strings and that timpani roll (Vincent Vogel). 

An uneasy truce was called in the second movement, stentorian opening horn call and softer pizzicato response from the entire string section mediated by woodwind. The reconciliation effected was always fragile, sometimes even fragmenting, yet conceptually and emotionally necessary. The depth of string consolation in the face of attacks upon it was deeply moving, as if the spirit of a single viola had been assumed by that section as a whole, whilst maintaining chamber-like variegation. There was something of the North Sea to the movement as a whole, more full of colours and prospects the closer one listened, without relinquishing its necessarily forbidding nature. The third movement was ambiguous, as doubtless it should be: at times quite brutal, though never monochrome, always highly energetic. Its brief trio section proved almost extreme in its relaxation by contrast. 

The coming of the finale struck a proper note of, if not archaism, then of haunting by the past, at least as far back as Schütz. Bach’s cantatas seemed a constant presence, and perhaps surprisingly, a frighteningly oppressive one. Sébastian Jacot’s flute solo was every bit as desolate as it should be, but nothing was taken for granted. In Petrenko’s hands, this sounded more a sequence of variations (which, of course, it is) than a Furtwängler-like inexorable flow. Moreover, whilst undeniably climactic, it seemed over rather quickly, not so much on account of tempo as relative lightness of touch. It was, then, a somewhat classical finale: not quite the tragic pay-off many of us will have expected, but certainly of a piece with the overall conception.

Musikfest Berlin (4) – Gerhaher/BPO/Petrenko: Xenakis, Illés, Hartmann, and Kurtág, 14 September 2023

Philharmonie

Xenakis: Jonchaies
Márton Illés: Lég-szín-tér (world premiere)
Hartmann: Gesangsszene
Kurtág: Stele

Christian Gerhaher (baritone)
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

Now this is what I call a programme. To have Xenakis and Kurtág on the same programme from the Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko was extraordinary enough, yet together with a new piece from Márton Illés and Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s final work, the latter involving Christian Gerhaher as soloist, this would surely have been the envy of any hall and audience in the world; it certainly should have been.

Iannis Xenakis’s Jonchaies, premiered in 1977 by the Orchestre National de France and Michel Tabachnik, may have been receiving its first performance by the Berlin Philharmonic, but it was a performance of security, commitment, and understanding belying any local novelty. The upward string sweep, not the last arresting string opening of the evening, sounded as if an aural concrete sculpture, turned by a giant butterknife. Loneliness and excitement in the landscape painted – I may as well continue this excess of metaphors – evoked not so much another world as a world in another solar system, even galaxy. As percussion joined, this seemed to be a Rite of Spring without spring, and perhaps even without a rite. Whatever it was, it mesmerised, complex yet above stark and elemental. Wind entered almost imperceptibly, yet one knew when they were fully there. This was a performance that grabbed one by the throat and never let one go, to make Stravinsky and even the sirens of Varèse, here trumped by Berlin trombones in woolly mammoth mode, appear well-nigh fainthearted by comparison.    

Illes’s Lég-szín-tér, roughly a scene, setting or colour space for air, is the latest in a series of such ‘scenes’, this instalment commissioned by the Stiftung Berlin Philharmoniker and financed by the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung. In three short movements, it displayed an almost classical command of form. Not that there was anything formulaic or indeed backward-looking to it, but rather it sounded as natural and at home in itself, and indeed as concise, as a Haydn symphony (which might have made a splendid alternative bedfellow). In any case, the swarming string opening to this marked it out as a nice pairing with the Xenakis, though the strings were far more quickly joined by the rest of the orchestra in a first movement that was at times almost pretty, or at least delicate—though perhaps anything would be when compared with Xenakis. Accordion (Teodoro Anzellotti) here and elsewhere made its presence felt too. Indeed, at times, the string section almost sounded as if it were a giant version of that instrument. If there were something of the scherzo to that movement, that impression was still stronger in the second, which occasionally in texture, rhythm, and harmony suggested an affinity – I do not think it was more than that – to Messiaen. Throughout, the orchestra and Petrenko traced its contours as expertly as if it were a repertoire piece. The third movement opened with more string music, led by Amihai Grosz on slithering solo viola, from whom the lead was taken and dispersed. This was a movement of very different character, coming across as a necessary response to the first two, the pace of harmonic change considerably slower. Its understated, witty sign-off too was not the least virtue in a work and performance that again, albeit in different ways from Xenakis, never failed to hold one’s attention. 

Hartmann’s Gesangsszene was for me just as much a revelation. I suspect some readers will know it; I have the impression it is, or at one point may have been, more often heard in German- than English-speaking halls. If so, that is a great pity, for this setting of words from Jean Giraudoux’s Sodom et Gomorrha (in German translation) is unquestionably the real thing: powerfully moving, a fitting, if sadly incomplete, culmination to a career of honour as well as great compositional craft. I am not sure it is not the finest thing I have heard from Hartmann, though I have probably heard far too little in total. Certainly, it is difficult to imagine superior performances than those heard from Gerhaher, the BPO, and Petrenko, ideally paced and voiced. A lengthy introductory orchestral section opened with a flute solo of great quality (both as writing and in Sébastian Jacot’s supremely involving performance). One might call it Schoenbergian or post-Schoenbergian, I suppose, yet it never sounded ‘like’ anything other than itself. The orchestral writing that developed again might have put me in mind of Berg, a veritable labyrinth, yet always clear of purpose, but it did not. Here was captivating drama without a stage and, indeed, to start with, without even a voice. When Gerhaher entered, recitative-like, my immediate thought, apart from following his crystal-clear diction and pitching, was that we really ought to hear him soon in Busoni’s Doktor Faust. That moment is approaching, if someone will offer it; it came as little surprise to learn the piece was written for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. This is a different kind of warning, though, one for the atomic age, with a different, still more immediate sense of the apocalypse, and that shone through—as surely it did for Hartmann at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Death unquestionably hangs over proceedings, yet there is no self-pity, but rather dignity, the dignity of a lifetime of resistance. When Gerhaher came to speak the final words, their setting prevented by Hartmann’s death, it was a tribute to what we had heard that they seemed very much part of the same musical performance. If only our ‘leaders’ would learn; if only they would even listen. 

György Kurtág’s Stele was an earlier BPO commission, from the Claudio Abbado years (1994, when the composer was in residence), and it has been conducted by at least two others here in the meantime, Simon Rattle and Bernard Haitink, prior to this outing under Petrenko. Rattle once likened it to ‘a gravestone on which the entire history of European music is written’, and so it sounded here, a fitting aesthetic pendant to Hartmann, and just as moving in its way. In three short movements, like the Illés piece, its opening reference to the third (arguably to any) Beethoven’s Leonore Overture was as unmistakeable as it was properly enigmatic. There is memorialisation here, to be sure, yet to what end? The path taken is certainly different, not un-Webern-like. The agitation of the second movement fairly terrified, like a Mahlerian nightmare fashioned by the ghost of Webern and quite without the vistas of a better world with which Mahler might have cruelly consoled and disappointed us. Perhaps Beckett, bearing in mind Kurtág’s past and future, is present already, another ghost at the feast. For an almost dizzying array of paths opened up, without prejudice to the sole direction taken. Webern, if anything, seemed still stronger a presence in the third and final movement, without the slightest hint of imitation. Here the mode, as it were, was that of the Funeral March, though the sense of Klangfarbenmelodie sounded, if anything, more Schoenbergian. It was as simple as it was complex, returning us in a way to Xenakis, and vice versa. And how the rests, the silences, told, as musical as any sound.

BPO/Petrenko - Reger and Strauss, 25 August 2023

 
Philharmonie

Reger: Variations and Fugue on a theme by Mozart, op.132
Strauss: Ein Heldenleben, op.40

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

It had been a while. The last time I had heard the Berlin Philharmonic had been on 5 March 2020, just four days before public performances ceased in that great, monstrous silence. Now I was here for the orchestra’s season-opening concert of Max Reger and Richard Strauss under music director, Kirill Petrenko. Absence may have had the heart grow fonder, but this was outstanding music-making by any standards.

What a joy to open with Reger’s Mozart Variations, a masterpiece, yet one I had not hitherto had opportunity to hear live. They do not come around that often: Furtwängler gave the Berlin Philharmonic premiere in 1934, 21 years after its first performance in Wiebsbaden, conducted by the composer, and the BPO had not played it since 1995, under Horst Stein. (If you think Hindemith terminally unfashionable, turn to Reger. Schoenberg, though, knew his worth, unhesitantly calling him a genius.) Petrenko and the Berliners brought us a properly backward glance from the early twentieth century, a Mozart both more delicate and, somehow, more robust than we should hear now, Reger increasingly present – as through the set as a whole – in, for instance, his octave doublings and, crucially, our listening. The first variation brought clucking worthy of Haydn, Reger’s voice becoming ever more evident in toy-shop enchantment. The second and third variations sounded almost as if homages to Brahms; in a way, they are. Vertical and horizontal expansion inevitably brought Schoenberg to mind, but also (for me) Elgar too. Reger could do with a champion or two such as Elgar has; maybe he has found one in Petrenko. The third, however, also took a step back to earlier Romanticism, breathing the air of a Schumannesque forest. Why all the references to other composers, you may ask, and it is a reasonable question. Perhaps because Reger, especially when much of his music remains relatively unfamiliar, seems to invite them, but I should stress that he never merely sounds ‘like’ someone else. 

The fifth variation’s scherzo-like quality similarly brought Busoni to mind, whereas the deliciously sly modulations of the sixth reminded us of Reger’s acknowledged mastery in this field. One might think his book on the subject overly theoretical, but it served a point, here painted in vivid colour. A heartfelt slow movement followed, Wagner not a million miles away, nor Elgar, but always Reger ‘himself’. Petrenko seemed always to alight on just the right tempo, giving the illusion of permitting the music to play itself. And the BPO's playing was unfailingly gorgeous. The sly ingenuity of the fugue was brought home with clarity and warmth; detail was scrupulously yet never pedantically observed. Harmony was at least as much king as counterpoint, which returns us to Mozart...

Strauss too owed much to Mozart, though not so much in Ein Heldenleben as many other works. The tone-poem’s initial portrayal of the hero inaugurated a season-long theme of ‘Heroes’. It had everything going for it – depth of tone, the playing of those eight horns, the finest articulation, balances spot on – other than some of the swagger Karajan might have brought to it. Perhaps that slightly vulgar bombast, a necessary tone in the palette of an anything-but-vulgar composer, does not come so readily to Petrenko. This, however, was my sole, fleeting reservation and hardly a major one. Strauss’s critical adversaries were faster on their feet than usual, perhaps making their hot air all the more ephemeral. It made for a powerful contrast, highly dramatic, with the well-nigh Wagnerian gloom of string response. Concertmaster Vineta Sareika-Völkner’s solo playing in evocation of the hero’s companion was of equal excellence, her storytelling as vital as that of her orchestral colleagues. In musical congress of distinction, both sides enabled us to learn more of the other, as doubtless they themselves did too. 

True symphonic coherence, lightly worn, was readily apparent in the transition to ‘Des Helden Walstatt’, and indeed in other transitions. Here was a battle royal, its heat initially erotic, yet turning frankly military, the jangle of the battlefield approaching cacophony at times. (So perhaps Petrenko can do ‘vulgar’ after all, particularly when prepared. The opening's out-of-the-blue, cards-on-the-table stance is extraordinarily difficult to bring off; either that, or difficult to prevent overshadowing everything else.) The final two sections functioned not only as crucial staging posts in narrative and form, but also as a conspectus of Strauss’s art, recapitulating works yet to be written as well as those that had. Don Juan met Die Frau ohne Schatten in a second development actually to rival Beethoven by never tackling him head on, rather than by merely aspiring to do so in the key of the Eroica. And yet, Petrenko and the orchestra never mistook this tone poem for a symphony, still less a mere collection of scenes. Strauss may employ symphonic means, but never exclusively so. Ein Heldenleben is a treacherous work, full of traps for even the most experienced conductors and orchestras. Petrenko and the Berlin Philharmonic did it and themselves proud.

BPO/Petrenko - Mahler, 23 January 2020

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.

Die tote Stadt, Bavarian State Opera, 22 November 2019

Nationaltheater

Images: © Wilfried Hösl

Paul – Jonas Kaufmann

Marietta, Marie’s Apparition – Marlis Petersen

Frank, Fritz – Andrzej Filończyk

Brigitta – Jennifer Johnston

Juliette – Mirjam Mesak

Lucienne – Corinna Scheurle

Gaston, Victorin – Manuel Günther

Count Albert – Dean Power

Simon Stone (director)

Maria-Magdalena Kwaschik (assistant director)

Ralph Myers (set designs)

Mel Page (costumes)

Roland Edrich (lighting)

Lukas Leipfinger (dramaturgy)

Chorus and Children’s Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus director: Stellario Fagone)

Bavarian State Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

I approached this evening as something of a sceptic regarding work and director. My sole prior encounter with Simon Stone’s work had not been, to put it mildly, a happy one. Nor do I count myself a subscriber or even affiliate to the Korngold fan club, considerable in number and still more considerable in fervency. Some of Korngold's music I have responded to warmly, some less so. (It would still take some persuasion, though now less than before, to drag me to another performance of Das Wunder der Heliane.) My experience with Die tote Stadt has been mixed too. That, however, is bye the bye, for this new production and still more the performances within it, superlatively conducted by Kirill Petrenko, made for a splendid evening that more or less had me forget reservations hitherto entertained.

Petrenko’s conducting and the playing of the Bavarian State Orchestra could hardly have been bettered. There was no doubting the care taken in his preparation, nor his ability vividly and meaningfully to communicate understanding of the score in the theatre. Once the harmony becomes more interesting, during the second and third scenes, Petrenko showed himself equally alert to its shorter-term expressive potential and, score permitting, longer-term tonal implications. There is greater progress in such terms here than in, say, Schreker’s more harmonically—and dramaturgically—adventurous Die Gezeichneten, which ends up going round and round in circles, having one thank God for Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Petrenko likewise showed skill surpassing that of any conductor I have heard in communicating Korngold’s motivic working as dramatic past, present, and future. The orchestra, moreover, offered a far more variegated sound than I heard from the Vienna Philharmonic in Salzburg in 2005; if that calorific frenzy impressed in its own way, this was ultimately a more revealing sound as part of an overall dramatic conception. Where some performances of what we may broadly call ‘late Romantic’ music—a term I generally avoid on account of chronological absurdity and levelling generalisation—all too readily become congested, here was a panoply of orchestral colour that shifted before our ears so as to suggest, at least during the most skilfully composed passages, ready understanding of Straussian phantasmagoria.

For whereas in Salzburg, Willy Decker’s staging (later seen at Covent Garden too) was very much in ‘period’ keeping not only with Korngold but also with George Rodenbach’s Bruges la morte, Fernand Khnopff, et al.—and as such will I suspect greatly have appealed to enthusiasts—Stone’s production offered a welcome contemporary—to us—alternative for those who, like me, find the opera’s laboured symbolism both stifling and a little empty (as well as curiously dated for 1920). Here, Paul’s house (no.37: no evident symbolism to me, though you may know otherwise) is the focus for a cancer bereavement—as we learn when we later behold Marie’s apparition—from which he shows no sign of recovering. One room’s every wall is covered with pictures of her; he hangs her hair in his bedroom; some of the house, furniture covered, goes unused; and so on. His housekeeper, Brigitta, and friend, Frank, are clearly, justifiably concerned. However, a psychonalytical dream sequence appears to offer the route to recovery. Having at least begun to work out some of his issues with Marie/Marietta in a dream in which all manner of strange things can happen and do—the dead town comes into its own, multiplying Doppelgänger, Pierrot-troupes, accusations thrown as freely as underwear, etc.—there is perhaps some hope for the future in what uncannily looks and sounds like the morning of a fresh start. Ralph Myers’s revolving set permits the house to transform itself, almost as if it were turning itself inside out, as do the characters, their acts, and their neuroses. ‘It was all a dream’ may or may not be a satisfactory solution; if not, that remains a problem with the work itself. Stone’s production makes uncommon, if arguably reductive, sense of a text that can readily seem somewhat silly.

Vocally, this was unquestionably an evening to savour. Jonas Kaufmann’s voice is a very different instrument from that of a few years ago. Sounding more baritonal than ever, Kaufmann had lost nothing, however, of his ability to float and turn a long line, nor to forge from word and tone that particular, peculiar alchemy of song. In opera, further alchemy is required, of course, with the art of gesture; this was as compelling a stage performance—and I have seen a few—as I have seen from him. Kaufmann’s Paul remembered, lived in, and came close to final suffocation from times past, but in its final freshness, shared in the hope suggested, if only suggested, by Petrenko and Stone alike. Marlis Petersen’s Marietta proved the perfect foil, a high-spirited heir to Strauss’s Zerbinetta, albeit with the vocal reserves and finely spun line of something more Wagnerian. Her acting skills proved just as impressive, as did those of other partners onstage. Jennifer Johnston’s no-nonsense yet compassionate Brigitta, Andrzej Filończyk’s sympathetic and beautifully sung Frank, the rest of an excellent supporting cast, estimable choral forces: all contributed to a dream performance in every sense. In the intelligence of its accomplishment of values both musical and theatrical, I suspect this Munich Tote Stadt will set a gold standard to successors.