GOAT claims leave me cold, whether applied to athletes or orchestras. Nonetheless, it seems to matter to many people that the Berliner Philharmoniker be discussed as if they are, or were, or should be, the foremost musical outfit of their age – and perhaps preceding eras too. Let's park the GOAT fetish and consider what a (naturally) sold-out Royal Albert Hall heard last night.
Kirill Petrenko led the orchestra and soloist Augustin Hadelich (pictured below by Chris Christodoulou) through a masterly, often exquisite but (to my ears) not always electrifying account of the Beethoven violin concerto. Then came the evening’s real challenge: Scriabin’s sprawling Third Symphony from the early 1900s, entitled “The Divine Poem”. It looked like an unwieldy hard sell even for this ultra-persuasive ensemble, but (oddly) one that Petrenko’s namesake Vasily, along with the Oslo Philharmonic, has successfully marketed in recent months.
Here the Berliners had a case to make and a point to prove – much more so than with the impeccably polished and well-weighted Beethoven. Although some musical jurors will want to stay out about the piece, Petrenko (K) lifted each squad of his huge forces to tremendous heights of instrumental eloquence, sharply perceptible even in this often muddy-sounding hall. GOAT? Who cares? But the Berlin band can still race, trot and (when required) jump like an absolute thoroughbred.
Expectations ran high for Beethoven. Hadelich, expertly steered and positioned by Petrenko, did not fall short. From the visceral tug of the opening low strings and the sculpted clarity of the woodwinds in response, each voice had a deep, unshowy power: unquestionable authority marked every gesture, every entrance. Above them, Hadelich’s silvered grace of line built into a measured, confidential poise, above all in quieter passages. Maybe he made too much of this inner glow; Petrenko didn’t push, and the tender serenity – interspersed with shocks of power – in the allegro was certainly “ma non troppo”. From my seat, I never worried about balance, even with an outfit of this muscle. Not only did Petrenko (pictured below by Lena Laine for the BPO) create space for Hadelich’s lovely inwardness, but we heard the precious elements that made up tutti moments. Flutes cut through, for example. And, both here and in the finale, Hadelich aced the famous Kreisler cadenzas.
Yet this all sometimes felt more magisterial than magnetic. Breath truly stopped when we came to the Larghetto, the violinist’s softest, most private voice conveyed with rapt delicacy, a fine-spun web of gentle yearning. Hadelich’s filigree, time-suspending phrases found their match in creamy horns, polished woods (the stellar bassoons in particular) and that impossibly lavish string sound that makes you wonder whether the BPO somehow play with longer bows than anyone else. Again, no one bothered with much haste, but it hardly mattered,
Besides, the closing rondo had bustle and sparkle to spare. If we caught more than a whiff of emotive, heart-tugging Romantic violin virtuosity in Hadelich’s approach, he confirmed that tendency with the encore: his own arrangement of the “Träumerei” from Schumann’s Kinderszenen. It was shameless, and delectable.
Even reading about Scriabin’s programme for his “Divine Poem” may exhaust you: the individual’s lonely struggle to discover the divinity within him (definitely him) against the conventions of formal belief, and much more post-Nietzschean esoteric guff of the sort that addled many artists’ minds in the years around 1900. Ignore the foggy metaphysics and treat it as orchestral drama: an expanded Straussian tone-poem of a sovereign individual’s strife through life from struggle to pleasure and final triumph. I wasn’t surprised at all to learn that the Russian maverick had studied Ein Heldenleben during its composition.
Petrenko deployed vastly swollen forces in comparison with the concerto’s Classical-era ensemble, with eight horns and a phalanx of basses on the other side (pictured below by Lena Laine). Between them his terrifying brass horde gleamed and boomed. No doubt the work has its longueurs, when even this conductor struggled to impose shape and momentum. However, the episodes excited and dazzled in rapid succession, as one desk after another rose to and despatched the challenge of making sense of music that sometimes threatened to dissolve in muddy sludge.
Petrenko doesn’t do sludge: strings (especially the lower ones, basses above all) had an exhilarating tonic force. Of course, the Berlin brass shone in every sense; you waited for the next super-smooth charge of the horn cavalry or wall-smashing burst of trombones to galvanise the crowd. Nervelessly secure and expressive flutes and oboes pierced even the most thunderous tutti.
Alexander Von Puttkamer’s tuba launched the campaign in style; David Guerrier’s trumpet regularly anchored this heroic (or melodramatic) soul’s journey, and Vincent Vogel’s timpani brought the soul’s flights crashing gloriously to earth. Fine solo violin passages (concert-masters Daishin Kashimoto and Noah Bendix-Balgley) added some Mahlerian lyric ambiguity, even irony, as Petrenko let us hear each blossoming tree within the overwhelming sonic wood.
You might thrill to this unrelenting panoply of epic effects and still wonder whether it all counts as super-sized, high-grade, fin-de-siècle kitsch. In any case, Petrenko gave the Divine Poem a spectacular scenic outing in his bespoke luxury saloon. You may quarrel with the route and the destination. But what a vehicle, what a driver – and what a ride.
