Personal Styles

As another summer ends, so another concert season begins. Over the next several weeks, Berlin’s various orchestras and opera houses will resume active service, while the annual Musikfest will bring a number of high-profile guest artists to the concert halls of the city. But everything has to start somewhere, and that place is usually the season opening concert of the Berlin Philharmonic, traditionally held around the last weekend in August.

This year’s programme, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, offered two early works by two of the twentieth century’s great individualists, pairing Britten’s diverting Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge with Shostakovich’s ambitious and controversial Fourth Symphony. The two pieces, written within a year of one another in the mid-1930s, may differ considerably in form, style and character, but both date…