Berliner Philharmoniker Present Rachmaninoff & More at Carnegie Hall

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 22 November 2024 15:57

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Rob Davidson

At Carnegie Hall’s exceptional Stern Auditorium, on two consecutive days beginning on the afternoon of Sunday, November 17th, I had the enormous pleasure to attend two extraordinary concerts of late Romantic music presented by the outstanding musicians of the Berliner Philharmoniker, under the brilliant direction of its Chief Conductor, Kirill Petrenko.

The first event started marvelously with a highly accomplished reading of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s haunting and magnificent The Isle the Dead, Op. 29, from 1909–which is one of the composer’s greatest works, arguably comparable in achievement to his Second and Third Symphonies. In a useful note on the program, Jack Sullivan provided some useful background on the piece:

Rachmaninoff’s hypnotic tone poem was also directly inspired by Arnold Böcklin’s painting Die Toteninsel (The Isle of the Dead), depicting a small boat carrying a coffin and a mysterious figure in white arriving at a sinister island. This painting, which Böcklin called a “dream image,” was enormously popular, with reproductions appearing across Europe. Rachmaninoff saw the painting in Paris in 1907; it was still vividly in his mind when he got around to composing The Isle of the Dead in 1909, conducting the premiere in Moscow himself. What he originally saw was a black-and-white reproduction, but when he viewed the color original, he was dismayed: The spell was broken, so much so that he commented, “If I had seen first the original, I probably would have not written my Isle of the Dead. I like it in black and white.”

(One version of Böcklin’s amazing painting is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a part of its permanent collection.)

An excellent soloist, Vilde Frang—here replacing the celebrated Hilary Hahn—then entered the stage for a thrilling—indeed, probably the finest I have yet heard—performance of Erich Korngold’s superb and undervalued Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35, from 1945. The annotator again offered some informative remarks:

Korngold called movies a new form of opera. He believed that at its best, film scores could hold up as concert pieces, and many of his finest concert scores are based on his film music, the most popular today being his sensuous Violin Concerto, which borrows material from Juarez, Anthony Adverse, The Prince and the Pauper, and Another Dawn.

The initial, Moderato nobile movement— which is at times incredibly beautiful—opens lyrically, quickly becoming more playful and animated—it features an impassioned cadenza—and closes triumphantly. The Andante Romance that follows has a hushed, even mysterious beginning and is more inward in character but is not without emotional intensity or free of eccentricities; it ends softly. The often dazzling and exuberant Finale, marked Allegro assai vivace, has some subdued passages and concludes jubilantly. Enthusiastic applause elicited a wonderful encore from the violinist: the lively, ultimately enchanting Giga (Senza Basso) from the Violin Sonata in D Minor by the Italian Baroque composer Antonio Montanari.

The second half of the event was similarly transporting, consisting of a sterling realization of Antonín Dvořák’s amazing Symphony No. 7 in D Minor, Op. 70, also possibly the best I have yet encountered in the concert hall. Sullivan reports that: 

Donald Francis Tovey set the Seventh alongside the C-Major Symphony of Schubert and the four symphonies of Brahms as “among the greatest and purest examples of this art form since Beethoven.”

Dvořák himself regarded the piece as a breakthrough work. It was commissioned by the Philharmonic Society of London (now the Royal Philharmonic Society), which in 1884 invited Dvořák to become an honorary member in return for a new symphony. This was Dvorak’s only symphonic commission, and it clearly inspired him. He set about the composition with great seriousness, determined to create a symphony “capable of moving the world” and conducting the premiere himself in 1885. 

The piece has developed a reputation as a “tragic” symphony, though the emotional variety does not really justify this label. Certainly, it has tragic elements in the first and last movements, perhaps attributable to Dvořák’s sadness over the recent death of his mother. The formal sophistication and largeness of design were more deliberate, an attempt to move beyond the folkloristic, “Bohemian” perspective of his earlier (and immensely popular) works. As Dvořák himself admitted, the D-Minor Symphony represented his bid to become “respectable” in the European music world.

Dvořák’s apparent model in the symphony was Brahms, whom he deeply admired and whose Third Symphony he had heard Brahms play on the piano.

He adds:

Tovey said it best when he commented that despite the work’s unusual formal strength, it offers the supreme specimen of Dvořák’s unique syntax: “The long meandering sentence that ramifies into countless afterthoughts.”

The first, Allegro maestoso movement, which is often dynamic, is brooding if exciting at the outset, while much of it has a pastoral quality; it finishes gently. The ensuing slow movement—marked Poco adagio—which, according to Sullivan, has a reference to Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde of 1859, is largely graceful and dance-like, becoming more expansive and then more forceful, although with almost bucolic moments; it too closes quietly. The thoroughly captivating Vivace Scherzo is ebullient and charming but not lacking in weight; the Poco meno mosso Trio is more tentative in expression but the movement ends powerfully. The Finale opens solemnly but is nonetheless melodious and exhilarating, although there are reflective interludes; it has a noble conclusion. 

The next evening’s concert was also stellar—it was an unforgettable account of the original version of Antonio Bruckner’s glorious Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major. Annotator Janet E. Bedell explains that, “This is the only symphony Bruckner begins with a formal slow introduction,” marked Adagio, which creates an almost religious atmosphere. Portentous music inaugurates the Allegro movement’s main body which then acquires a certain urgency that pervades it, although the emergence of its tertiary theme projects a recurring sense of serenity. Wagnerian echoes can be perceived here and the movement finishes dramatically. 

The succeeding, song-like Adagio has some of the work’s most exquisite passages; on the whole, it radiates grace but tension builds across this movement, which ends suddenly and very quietly. The Molto vivace Scherzo is energetic, even rambunctious, and not without extravagance even, and the influence of Ludwig van Beethoven is most clearly discernible here; its contrasting Ländler theme is bewitching while the delightful Trio entrances as well. The Finale—which the composer called his “contrapuntal masterpiece”—recapitulates much of the motivic material from earlier in the symphony, mockingly answered by the clarinet; it is miraculous in its fugal intricacy and has a tremendous, stunning, inexorable climax. The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.

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