Berlin Philharmonic in Chicago: Once is never enough

Here is my Wednesday November 18 Chicago Sun-Times review of the Monday November 16, 2009, Orchestra Hall concert by the Berlin Philharmonic, Sir Simon Rattle, principal conductor, in music of Wagner, Schoenberg, and Brahms.

Berlin Philharmonic in Chicago: Once is never enough

BY ANDREW PATNER

The Berlin Philharmonic has been one of the world’s greatest orchestras almost from its founding in 1882.  And since the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago it has resumed its place as a national institution in a reunified city that is once again the sole German capital.

Unlike their Austrian counterparts at the Vienna Philharmonic, also a self-governing ensemble, the Berliners have based their membership on merit alone and not gender, color, or national origin.  And with an Italian, Claudio Abbado, and now a Brit, Sir Simon Rattle, as principal conductors over the past two decades, with healthy representation of women, and with the average age of players down to around 40, Berlin is truly a 21st -century international treasure.

What a shame then that Chicago has not had a chance to see and hear this sterling group in six years and that although they are touring with three programs that include all four Brahms symphonies, Monday night’s Symphony Center Presents Great Performance Series concert was their only local appearance.

That said, we might have had the best of the three programs.  Not only did it include the 1877 D Major Brahms Second but also a neglected masterwork with strong connections to the Brahmsian legacy -- Arnold Schoenberg’s revised version (1935) of his 1922 orchestration of the hypnotic 1906 First Chamber Symphony.  

For while Rattle is not always an inspiring conductor for either musicians or audiences, he has a special ability with 20th century and contemporary music and with connecting this repertoire to an elite European classical and romantic orchestra and its audience.  To hear the swirling 22-minute Schoenberg work, written less than 10 years after Brahms’s death, played with such conviction and with the rich and gleaming sound of the Berlin strings and its famously balanced wind and brass sections was a true joy and no sort of obligatory program filler.

The Brahms, too, was given a surprisingly clear and intelligent interpretation, particularly in its first three movements.  Rattle seemed to find an ability to create quiet moments and passages that reports said had eluded him in his Carnegie Hall dates in New York last week.  Only in the buoyant eruptions of the finale did he come close to indulging his tendency towards vulgar effects and contrasts.

Berlin has one of the deepest benches of any major orchestra with two or more acclaimed principals in many sections.  Still, the single performance meant that contemporary stars Emmanuel Pahud, flute, Albrecht Mayer, oboe, and Radek Baborák, horn, had the whole night off.   Co-principal horn Stefan Dohr was a special standout of those who did play.  The concert opener, Wagner’s Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, seemed a Rattle miscalculation, starting sloppily before coming together -- this despite a full hour of rehearsal earlier in the day.