Orchesterfest
Berliner Philharmoniker
125th Anniversary Season
November 4, 2007

A.J. Goldmann

BERLIN

The Berlin Philharmonic and its musical director Sir Simon Rattle perform near-consistently to a sold-out house. For visitors to Berlin, the quest for tickets can often be either futile or very costly. Earlier this week, however, the Philharmonic was giving great music away, completely free of charge.

This past Sunday, over 4000 people attended the nonstop music marathon Orchesterfest, part of the orchestra’s 125th-anniversary season. The curious, the initiated and the fanatical crowed inside Hans Scharoun’s celebrated Philharmonie to experience a long and varied program that ranged from Vivaldi to Henze, with everything in between.

The Berlin Philharmonic will continue its anniversary celebrations next week in New York as part of Carnegie Hall’s Berlin in Lights Festival. Many of the ensembles that took part in the Orchesterfest will also be playing at Carnegie. The 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic, for example, performed several works that will also be featured in their November 12th program at Zankel Hall.

The festival featured a steady rotation of half-hour-long concerts in all the complex’s three concert-halls – the main hall, the chamber music hall and the recital hall. The programming revolved around three themes: music that had been in the repertoire of the Philharmonic from its founding in 1882 onwards, such as Wagner, Brahms and Tchaikovsky; n the second was music that had either been composed or arranged especially for the orchestra’s various ensembles and music considered “degenerate” by the “Third Reich.”
 
One concert in the Hermann Wolf Recital Hall, “Cabaret in Theresienstadt” performed music that Jewish camp inmates cultivated as a survival strategy. This focus had a link to the orchestra’s ongoing investigation into the Philharmonic under the Nazi regime.

All told, there were nearly 30 open seating concerts to choose from over a nine-hour-long period. The tightly packed program went a bit awry here and there, but everyone was back on schedule for the closing concert by Sir Simon and the Philharmonic.

Towards the beginning of the day, the crowd control was rather difficult to maintain. The concerts were so tightly scheduled that there was scarcely time to break between performances.

Outside the main hall the lines to enter were especially long.

The usher at the Hermann Wolff Recital Hall was apologetic as she turned people away from a 2:00pm concert of Spanish music. She said that the turnout had been greater than expected and confessed that whatever crowd control was going on was pretty much improvised.

Surprisingly, tourists did not predominate. There were many families with young children and the Philharmonic even provided a daycare service.

Aaron Beasley, 24, a recent graduate of the New School, appreciated how much of a family event it was. “I like seeing parents change baby diapers in the corner and kids running all over the place. It’s great. You certainly wouldn’t find this in New York.”

Platinum blond youngsters listened fidgeted in their seats. One five-year-old girl did an interpretive finger dance to Brahms’ String Sextet in G.  At other concerts, periodic shrieks and the crying of babes was amplified by the hall’s miraculous acoustics.

There were many children present for the 3:30pm performance of Mozart’s Divertimento in F, “A Musical Joke” in the main hall. The world-famous clown Dimitri joined the musicians of Divertimento Berlin onstage, and caused all sort of mischief during the performance, pulling rats out of the horns and balancing a cello bow on his nose. Laughter and applause erupted in the packed hall and people leaned over railings and against walls.

A much lesser known divertimento for piano and contrabass by the film-score composer Nino Rota played to capacity in the recital hall. The pianist Rhodri Clarke was pleasantly surprised by the large turnout for such an obscure work.

Over at the Chamber Music Hall, string quartets by Schubert and Beethoven were prefaced by Hans Werner Henze’s gripping “Being Beauteous” for soprano, harp and four cellos. The powerhouse soprano Anna Prohaska sang the killer role with expressiveness and accuracy. The challenging piece claimed its causalities but also attracted newcomers, who exited and entered the hall in the casual yet respectful atmosphere.

Leading up to the final concert, the Ensemble Berlin performing a chamber arrangement of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Scored economically for winds, strings and a horn, it had a warm, clear and transparent quality that was a welcome departure from Ravel’s famous orchestration.

The full orchestra regrouped in the main hall at 8:30pm for The Rite of Spring, which was preceded by dances from Shostakovich’s ballet The Golden Age, a work whose introduction was heard at the opening concert.

Dimitri the Clown followed Sir Simon onstage and stole his tuxedo jacket. Dimitri reached into the pocket and handed the conductor his phone.  Sir Simon dashed out to take the call and Dimitri assumed the podium. The comedy ended and Sir Simon returned – sans phone – for an incisive and adrenaline-pumping account of the Stravinsky. Even after a long day of music making, the orchestra was fresh as a daisy.

Techno beats were heard at Carnegie Hall during a concert by the Pittsburgh Symphony’s Orchestra concert on Tuesday night. The unexpected beats were a “pre-recorded intrusion” in Sofia Gubaidulina’s otherwise astonishing and powerful “Feast During a Plague,” which was being given its New York premiere. 

It was one of two mains works on the program (the other being Brahms’ Violin Concerto) conducted by Sir Andrew Davis, the orchestra’s Artistic Advisor (they currently lack a single musical director). The premiere was prefaced by a muscular performance of Beethoven’s “Coriolan Overture..” Davis led with very British style: refined, crisp and a little jesting. The orchestra played with seamless unity and appropriate dramatic flair.

“If the Coriolan Overture can be considered theatrical, then ‘Feast During a Plague’ is positively apocalyptic,” Davis stated in an announcement made before performance. He called the premiere “a piece with a tough message.” He delivered on the promise that the performance would be the “surprising and shocking.”
   
The Russian-Tatar composer Sofia Gubaidulina is known for her idiosyncratically spiritual music. Yet there was nothing at all religious about “Feast During a Plague,” a cacophonous and menacing piece that sounded through-and-through profane. Fleeting melodies, chilling harmonies and unexpected orchestral couplings combine in a sinister work with starkly alternating textures.  Jaunty and Charivariesque, it is a thoroughly wicked display of theatrical dissonance and experimentation: Basses snapped back their strings while harps provided inconstant solace; cutthroat violins played with ironic glissando, and twined in and out like a phonograph.  The thoroughly engaging work is full of nightmarish arpeggios, cackling trumpet and wailing horns and often builds to moments of incredible tension. Thrilling in its dramatic force, it, the work seemed almost like a modern-day “Sacré du Printemps,” until the unexpected – and unsuccessful, in my view - techno beats. The audience seemed thoroughly confused.
   
    After intermission, came the Brahms, with soloist Joshua Bell. This was a performance to savor, full of wild lyricism and dazzling pyrotechnics. Bell tore into the piece with fearless energy. It was a sharp, direct performance, both technically assured and interpretatively sophisticated and full of coloristic variety. The cadenza was full of intricate amblings and subtle variation in tempo. In the Adagio, Bell showed his more lyrical side, which was tasteful and refined in spite of pervasive vibrato and occasional flourishes. Davis led the orchestra in a clear-headed reading that softened the tension often felt between soloist and conductor. The appreciative crowd rewarded Bell with ovations after the first movement and at the piece’s proper end.
 
    The  final piece, Richard Strauss’ “Till Eulenspiegel” seemed almost an afterthought. (A steady stream of visitors made its way to the exits after Mr. Bell’s final bows). Remarkably, though, the orchestra succeeded in injecting new life into this popular and over-played tone poem. The Pittsburgh musicians proved they had energy in them yet and gave an engaging and playful performance. Davis had a great sense for the work’s drama. He jumped about excitedly and nearly doubled over while describe a descending figure in the horns. It was a satisfying close to a musically rich and programmatically helter-skelter evening.