The Sounds of the Berlin Philharmonic Beomes Unstuck In Time

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 22 November 2022 21:00

Written by Jack Angstreich

The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Photo by Chris Lee.

At Carnegie Hall, amidst an extremely strong season of orchestral music, on the evenings of Thursday and Friday, November 10th and 11th, I had the exceptional privilege to attend two superb concerts featuring the stellar musicians of the celebrated Berlin Philharmonic under the expert direction of its Chief Conductor, Kirill Petrenko.

The outstanding first program was devoted to a finally stunning account of Gustav Mahler’s monumental, challenging and extraordinary Seventh Symphony. Program annotator Jack Sullivan comments that the composer thought this was his “best work” but adds that “it is his least performed and understood.” The first movement begins with a solemn if fraught Adagio that is soon overtaken by a turbulent Allegro; the opening funeral march periodically recurs, leading to a very brief, beautiful, song-like interlude and then a return to the gloomier musical world that preceded it. The ensuing, ingenious “Nachtmusik I” starts more playfully and acquires a more propulsive character which then becomes dance-like, and reverts to the music at the movement’s outset. The Scherzo that follows is also in a somewhat populist vein, although livelier to a degree on the whole, even joyful at times. The second “Nachtmusik” movement is unexpectedly charming—if eccentric—with a few mysterious moments. And the Rondo-Finale, the most cheerful of the movements, is initially exciting—even sometimes tumultuous—and builds to a glorious, affirmative conclusion. The artists deservedly received a very enthusiastic ovation.

Also terrific was the second concert which began with the Carnegie Hall premiere of contemporary American composer Andrew Norman’s arresting, brilliantly orchestrated Unstuck. I reproduce his note on the work as follows:

I have never been more stuck than I was in the winter of 2008. My writing came to a grinding halt in January, and for a long time this piece languished on my desk—a mess of musical fragments that refused to cohere. It was not until the following May, when I saw a copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and remembered one of its iconic sentences, that I had a breakthrough realization. The sentence was this: “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time,” and the realization was that the lack of coherence in my ideas was to be embraced and explored, not overcome.

I realized that my musical materials lent themselves to a narrative arc that, like Vonnegut’s character, comes “unstuck” in time. Bits and pieces of the beginning, middle, and end of the music crop up in the wrong places like the flashbacks and flashforwards that define the structure and style of Slaughterhouse-Five.

I also realized that the word unstuck had resonances with the way that a few of the piece’s musical ideas get caught in repetitive loops. The orchestra, perhaps in some way dramatizing my own frustration with composing, spends a considerable amount of time and energy trying to free itself from these moments of stuckness.

Norman ascended to the stage to receive the audience’s acclaim.

The admirable virtuoso, Noah Bendix-Balgley, then joined the musicians for a marvelous performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s exquisite, almost Baroque, less commonly heard Violin Concerto No. 1. The opening Allegro moderato, for all its ebullience, is surprisingly serious, while the subsequent, even more remarkable Adagio is elevated, graceful and lyrical, and the brisk finale is vivacious and delightful. Abundant applause for the musicians was rewarded with a wonderful encore from the soloist: two traditional klezmer pieces—"Yismechu" and "Ot Azoy"—a genre in which Bendix-Balgley specializes.

Especially interesting, however, was the second half of the evening: a supremely confident rendition of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s striking, seldom played Symphony in F-sharp, Op. 40. The work opens very dramatically with a tension that pervades the entire movement, although there are serene passages. The Scherzo that ensues is sprightlier, if not free from agitation, with elements of grandeur, and features a more somber trio section. More Romantic is the often impassioned, but also introspective, Adagio. The finale is strange and unpredictable, with some haunting episodes, closing triumphantly. The audience responded with intense appreciation.

I look forward to the return of these tremendous artists.