Germany Schoenberg, R. Strauss, Wagner: Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Daniele Gatti (conductor). Philharmonie Berlin, 2.2.2024. (MB)
Schoenberg – Verklärte Nacht, Op.4 (1943 model for string orchestra)
R. Strauss – Tod und Verklärung, Op.24
Wagner – Tristan und Isolde: Prelude to Act I and Liebestod
Repertoire, orchestra, and conductor: a wedding made in heaven — or, if we’re to be Nietzschean about it, within the ‘voluptuousness of hell’ with which he identified Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. On this cleverly devised programme, Daniele Gatti and the Berlin Philharmonic took us by way of three works of express transfiguration, that transfiguration, transcendence, or no matter we wish to name it in every case following one thing darker, extra malign, extra voluptuous and sure, each heavenly and hellish — or, as Nietzsche would have it, past good and evil.
The Berliners adopted their excellent Schoenberg programme (assessment click on right here) of the earlier week, beneath Kirill Petrenko, with a Verklärte Nacht of equal distinction. I typically have my doubts concerning the model for string orchestra – what does it really add to the unique string sextet writing? – however not right here, not for a second. What it was to listen to massed Berlin strings, fantastically led by Vineta Sareika-Völkner, on this music: the tremolo of seven double basses, or the unanimity of violas in pizzicato, and unisons to place the worry of God into Bruckner. The darkish attract of its opening, taken slightly slower than common and all the higher for it in Gatti’s explicit conception, attested to a veritable symphonic poem. Flexibility was such that one didn’t discover it, all a part of a larger, coherent complete, heard – like all of the music on this programme – as if in a single, infinitely variegated breath. Violence was unsettlingly candy; transfiguration, when it got here, by no means with out shades of one thing darker. For all its tonal insistence, comparatively talking, there have been spellbinding passages that took us to liminal locations of near-suspension. And, for as soon as, we heard a real outpouring of affection, ample, fulfilling, even overflowing, as soon as the figurative tide had turned. It appeared to prefigure, maybe even to ‘appropriate’, as Wagner tried with Schopenhauer, its fons et origo in Tristan. There was rhetorical eloquence too, however by no means did it come into battle with type and construction. Put up-Wagnerian narrative, be it musical or extra-musical, seared its manner into our consciousness, albeit with all of the chamber-music motivic rigour of a composer devoted with equal ferocity to the legacy of Brahms.
One other darkish opening introduced Tod und Verklärung: one seen and felt, in its heartbeat hesitations each similarity and distinction vis-à-vis Verklärte Nacht. It was instantly clear that this was a extra tonally secure world; there was no query right here of dropping aural sight of these tonal moorings, even because the soul departed for wherever it was going (or not). The excellence of the Berlin strings was now added to by woodwind and finally others, the orchestra as soon as extra on the very prime of its sport. I must be itemizing the complete orchestra have been I to call each occasion, however particular point out ought to go to the solo flute, oboe, English horn, and naturally to Sareika-Völkner as chief. Readability and function in musical narrative have been second to none in Gatti’s studying, that there was merely no must ask the outdated query concerning the significance (or not) of the programme. The work’s advanced type – the extra so the extra one really listens, simply as in Beethoven – was dropped at life unerringly, shifting and thrilling in equal measure in a efficiency that had one really feel one was listening to this music for the primary time. The radiance of the conclusion proved each inch price of comparability to that of Schoenberg’s piece.
Because it did to that of the Tristan excerpts. Once more, I typically have my doubts concerning the knowledge of pairing the first-act Prelude to the so-called Liebestod; once more, such was the conviction of this efficiency that such doubts by no means arose, and never solely as a result of Liszt’s description is best jettisoned for Wagner’s personal: Isoldes Verklärung. The depth of the Prelude needed to be heard to be believed, vibrato however a single instance of its expressive richness at a dramatic temperature a minimum of equal to that of Karl Böhm, albeit in much less of a rush. Not solely did the music unfolded as if in a single breath; it supplied testomony to Schopenhauer’s one, all-pervasive Will, of which it stands because the closest and dearest illustration. The Prelude’s lack of ability or unwillingness to shut was so obvious that it appeared, for as soon as, a pure transfer to expunge its pantonal presentiments by way of Isolde’s transfiguration. That second half flowed as if in opposition to probably the most inviting of tides, till enveloped by them. ‘Sind es Wellen sanfter Lüfte?’ Why select? This was a miraculous lightness of being – and non-being – insufferable, likely, have been it endlessly, but for the second beautiful and vital past phrases. I’ve but to listen to Gatti conduct Wagner’s drama within the theatre, however on this proof it might be a Tristan to rival these of Barenboim and Kleiber—and his personal Bayreuth Parsifal.
Mark Berry
