Alemania

Bruckner 200

Musikfest 4: Notable Firsts

Jesse Simon
lunes, 23 de septiembre de 2024
Christian Thielemann © 2020 by Semperoper de Dresde Christian Thielemann © 2020 by Semperoper de Dresde
Berlin, domingo, 15 de septiembre de 2024. Philharmonie Berlin. Schumann: Symphony No. 1 in B-flat major, op. 38. Bruckner: Symphony No. 1 in C minor (Vienna Version, 1890/91). Wiener Philharmoniker. Christian Thielemann, conductor
0,000218

As the weeks of Musikfest Berlin neared their conclusion, the Vienna Philharmonic made a welcome visit to the stage of the Philharmonie with Christian Thielemann as conductor. While the programme, which paired the first (numbered) symphonies of Schumann and Bruckner, offered none of the neglected masterworks, obscure composers or twentieth-century rarities that often make Musikfest concerts so memorable, the performances on this evening served as an eloquent reminder that sometimes the best concerts can arise from the simple combination of familiar works, a superlative orchestra, and a conductor with a strong vision for how the music should sound.

Certainly Schumann’s symphonies are as familiar as it gets: along with Beethoven and Brahms, Schumann’s symphonic output stands at the very centre of the nineteenth-century European repertoire, and the countless recordings made in the last hundred years – not to mention the frequent concert performances by orchestras all over the world – have probably subjected the works to every interpretive approach imaginable and teased out all the nuances in the process. The pleasure in this evening’s performance of Schumann’s First thus came less from any grand revelations than from the opportunity to hear the symphony in its fullest glory.

Much of that glory came from the string section. The first entry of the strings, answering the first movement’s opening horn call, was electrifying in part for its decisive thrust, but even more so for its luxuriant sonic breadth; and in the brisk Allegro that followed, the playing remained delicate and detailed without sacrificing any of the movement’s infectious momentum. If the strings were a source of awe throughout the evening, it is not to suggest that the other sections were in any way inferior: the woodwinds (especially the flutes) distinguished themselves consistently, the brass were beautifully rounded (and, in the Bruckner, judiciously weighted), and the timpanist added exactly the right heft to each appearance. But it was the lustre of the strings that remained the evening’s great constant.

Once one had accepted the infallible balance of the orchestra, the attraction of the evening lay with the music itself. There are few obvious links – in either style or temperament – between Schumann and Bruckner, apart from the fact that they were both working within the broad scope of mid-nineteenth-century orchestral tradition: the urbane and erudite Schumann was fifteen years older than the far-less-worldly Bruckner, and was already dead by the time the latter made his first forays into the symphonic genre. Yet in Mr Thielemann’s pacing of Schumann’s opening Andante, one could almost discern a foreshadowing of Brucknerian grandeur, while the vigorous third movement seemed to offer a possible blueprint for Bruckner’s own distinctive treatment of the Scherzo and Trio.

For the most part, however, Mr Thielemann did not seem interested in highlighting potential connections between the evening’s two works. Schumann’s symphony was played with a mixture of energy and refinement that seemed perfectly suited to the work itself: if the rhythms at the beginning of the first movement sounded somewhat rigid, the Allegro was graceful and propulsive, building steadily towards an incandescent conclusion. In the Larghetto the relaxed tempo was balanced by a subtle accentuation of the delicate string and woodwind filigree that gives the movement its own internal animation. The Scherzo and the first Trio, which followed the second movement without pause, were notable for their stateliness – it was the only part of the evening in which Mr Thielemann and the orchestra seemed to be holding back – but the second trio was fleet and effervescent. The opening of the finale was played with an arresting solemnity that appeared again in the recurring dialogue between the sprightly woodwinds and the grave strings, but it was the movement’s surrender to joyous celebration that brought the symphony to its stirring conclusion.

One of the delights of the Bruckner bicentennial has been the opportunity to hear many of the early and lesser-performed works, often in performances of the highest quality. Earlier this year Mr Thielemann lead the Berlin Philharmonic through revelatory readings of the unnumbered F-minor and D-minor symphonies, and on this evening he guided the Vienna Philharmonic – with whom he made his recent recording of the eleven-symphony cycle – through an equally compelling performance of the First. But if Mr Thielemann’s approach to the unnumbered symphonies revealed a composer discovering the building blocks of his personal style, the First demonstrated that, even from the very beginning, Bruckner’s self-contained symphonic universe bore remarkably little resemblance to anything else.

Although Mr Thielemann performed the considerably revised Vienna version of 1891 on this evening, it was nonetheless tempting to imagine what the Linz audience of 1868 must have made of the symphony’s ecstatic climaxes and terrifying brass intrusions. Certainly the strength of the evening’s performance was that, despite the great refinement of the orchestra, Mr Thielemann made few attempts to sand down the symphony’s rough edges or try to make it fit the mould of mid-nineteenth-century romanticism. After the cogent argumentation of Schumann’s symphony, the urgent opening of the first movement and its initial grandly-scaled tutti sounded almost wholly untamed. Yet there was nothing haphazard in Mr Thielemann’s reading: he found a strong continuity running through the movement’s episodes, and his tempi were consistently tailored to a deep understanding of its larger structure.

The second movement – longer on mood than melody – doesn’t achieve the same level of profundity as some of the later slow movements, although a hushed passage for flute and timpani offered clear views of the Bruckner to come. Yet the performance, with its endless streams of beauty from the first violins, was unfailingly charming and, at certain moments, something considerably more, with the final bars building to a climax of great nobility. The final two movements – the Scherzo/Trio with its inexhaustible rhythmic propulsion, and the Finale with its vaguely apocalyptic opening giving way to an ecstatic conclusion – were perhaps the most conspicuously Brucknerian, and both were rendered especially vivid by the orchestra’s finely balanced sound: the fearsome strings, the deep concentration of the brass (from which the trumpets were allowed to rise to the fore only in the triumphant final bars of the finale), the detailed woodwinds and the sturdy foundation of the timpani all conspired to create a sonic landscape ideally matched to Bruckner’s unique vision.

Comentarios
Para escribir un comentario debes identificarte o registrarte.