Posts Tagged ‘Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin’

A veteran Maestro and a DSOB Debut

Monday, December 1st, 2014

By Rebecca Schmid

Last week at the Philharmonie featured the debut of the young conductor Joshua Weilerstein with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin alongside a guest appearance of Riccardo Chailly with the Berlin Philharmonic. It was an interesting opportunity to consider the qualities that can make or break a leader at the podium.

A rumoured candidate to take over the Philharmonic when Simon Rattle departs in 2018 (although he takes over as music director of La Scala this January and remains with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig through 2020), Chailly is one of today’s most sought maestros, bringing elegance and authority to repertoire from Brahms, to Puccini, to Zemlinski.

The centerpiece of the evening, seen Nov.29, was Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A-minor with piano doyenne Martha Argerich. Perhaps today’s most seasoned interpreter of this work, she kept the orchestra in tow with hardly a glance toward Chailly. A combination of acute listening skills and perceptive body language allowed soloist and conductor to wander through Schumann’s imaginary landscape with emotional freedom but also relaxed precision.

Chailly infused the playing of the Philharmonic with fiery passion while never allowing focus to wane. The opening Allegro, vacillating between chamber-like dialogue and triumphant Romantic outbursts, captured the now playful, now demonic qualities of the work. Argerich’s gentle but incisive playing might have found a rounder counterpart in the strings during forte passages, but Chailly struck an ideal blend in the following Intermezzo, sculpting lines of beauty and tension.

In Mendelssohn’s Ruy Blas, a short overture based on the eponymous Victor Hugo play about the love story of 17th century Spanish Queen and her slave, the orchestra performed with an unusual level of enthusiasm and focus, clearly inspired by the maestro’s serene but firm air.

In Rachmaninov’s Third Symphony, which closed the program, he drew shapely phrases while maintaining incisive rhythms in this often densely contrapuntal score, now using swooping, downward gestures to keep energy flowing in the strings, now standing erect and thrusting his hands upward for blows in the brass.

While the composer’s musical ideas tend toward the long-winded, the score is a moving testament to his personal conflict in American exile, vacillating between mourning and exaltation, late Romanticism and neo-primitive simplicity. The macabre dance of the inner Adagio seethed with tension through every false cadence until the music wound down like a clock back to an earthly realm, with allusions to Orthodox church song in the plucked strings.

DSOB Debut

If the evening emphasized mature artistry at the highest level, the DSOB concert on Nov.26 was a test of young talent. Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto, as performed by the up-and-coming soloist Diana Tishchenko under Weilerstein, emerged with mixed results.

Tishchenko revealed an intuitive grasp of the work, from her dark tone and understated vibrato in the searching lines of the opening movement, to her sweet sound in counterpoint with the woodwinds in the inner Passacaglia and her stamina through the harsh harmonics of the Cadenza, even if there were occasional intonation problems.

Weilerstein, despite holding the orchestra together with crisp rhythms and drive through fast passages such as the closing Burlesque, was not as confident a presence. The strings were not as homogenous as I have heard it on other occasions, particularly during the opening Nocturne, when he beat his baton with little emotional investment.

In Schumann’s Concert Piece for Four Horns and large Orchestra, he coordinated well with the soloists (Maciej Baranowski, Peter Müseler, Bertrand Chatenet, Juliane Grepling, blending impressively but with recurrent intonation problems) and built fine climaxes in the final movement. The strings’ flowing legato in the opening Lebhaft, however, had little to do with his gestures.

The programming of Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini was an unfortunate choice, as Weilerstein—at least based on this performance—does not yet have the emotional maturity necessary to shape this profound, sensuous work. The orchestral sections were not particularly well blended in the opening Andante (the blaring brass seemed intent on showing the young maestro who is boss throughout the work), and the music only scratched the surface of the story’s hellish passion.

Matters improved in the final two movements, with moments of tenderness in the Andante cantabile and elastic phrasing in the final Allegro which finally allowed Weilerstein’s musicality to shine through. Young conductors may need of opportunities to learn, but based on his insecure expression, Weilerstein did not appear to be enjoying himself—and surely that is an important ingredient in good music-making.

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in Berlin Times | Comments Closed

At the Majestic, in Casual Concert

Friday, October 10th, 2014

Terry_Riley_224_(c)_Chris_Felver_14122461123By Rebecca Schmid

“This is not a minimalist piece,” announced Cameron Carpenter in onstage discussion of Terry Riley’s At the Royal Majestic, an organ concerto which made its German premiere with the Deutsches-Symphonie Orchester Berlin (DSO) at the Philharmonie on Oct.9. His feet laced up in knee-high converse sneakers, Carpenter proceeded to play an excerpt revealing what he perceives as the influence of late Romantic composers Vierne and Widor.

Riley’s approximately 35-minute work, as conductor Giancarlo Guerrero next demonstrated with the orchestra, wearing daily dress for the DSO’s Casual Concert series, nevertheless has passages revealing the roots of the minimalist master, with repeated, almost primitive rhythms in the strings. The composer, present to dissect the music before it was performed in entirety, said with a laughing, Buddhist air of reflection that he was interested in anything that led the way to “ecstasy.”

Riley weaves together a huge spectrum of material, from ragtime, to rock, to neo-Romanticism, into a nearly cinematic spectacle that is tailor-made to Carpenter’s virtuosity and showmanship. The opening movement is inspired and named after the drawing “Negro Hall” by Swiss artist Adolf Woelfli, whom the composer imagined encountering black American culture for the first time.

A gospel-like passage on the organ gradually ushers in the orchestra, from chimes, to percolating woodblocks, to a drum set creating an Ives-like parallel realm. The ensemble comes together briefly in atmospheric swirls of color until the music takes on sharper edges, with shifting rhythms, protesting chords from the soloist and a stand-off in the woodwinds.

The inner “Lizard Tower Gang”—named, quite literally, after a tower the composer built for the reptile creatures in his backyard—emerges with eerie glissandi, chirping winds and polytonal layers that, as the composer articulates in program notes, “juggle chaos and symmetry.” It is the shortest and most mysterious movement, ending in a cadenza-like teaser that yields to atmospheric strings and inquisitive bassoons, as if marveling at the infinity of nature.

The final movement evokes a pilgrimage to the sacred mountain of Kailash in Tibet with a winding collage of textures, culminating in a monumental chorale of organ and brass. As Carpenter noted in his introduction, however, the soloist has the last word, with a swipe across the entire top keyboard and booming pedal clusters that yield to a slinky, jazzy melody—minimalist in its utter brevity—before the instrument fades out into nothing.

The performance was all the more powerful given the intimate introduction by the performers and composer in the DSO’s relaxed setting. Downstairs in the foyer, where pink lighting lent a club-like atmosphere, the young German band Xul Kolar and the DJ Johann Fanger played for the after party. I mostly saw 40-somethings dancing rather than the younger folk presenters are scheming to attract, but still, shouldn’t every concert feel this fresh?

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Berlin Times | Comments Closed

The DSOB breaks the Mold with Roussel and Honegger

Tuesday, April 1st, 2014

untitledAHBy Rebecca Schmid

Given the range of works across the classical repertoire, one wonders how the same Brahms and Beethoven warhorses continue to dominate programming, especially in the midst of constant debate about how to keep the art form lively. The Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin manages to prove an exception. An evening of Honegger, Franck, Roussel and Ravel under guest conductor Stéphane Denève on March 29 at the Philharmonie made this particularly clear.

César Franck’s Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra (1886) uses a hybrid structure that hovers somewhere between concerto, symphony and variations’ cycle. The pianist and orchestra exchange short episodes of dialogue, with the soloist becoming more and more virtuosic. The influence of Chopin seems evident in recitative-like melodies that relegate the orchestra to the background.

The young pianist Bertrand Chamayou was an ideal champion of the music, delivering a gentle, passionate but clean interpretation in both soulful slow phrasing and racy passages in which he stayed perfectly in sync with the orchestra while Denève coaxed well-calibrated, swelling phrases. As an encore, Chamayou, who possesses a refreshingly assured but non-pretentious stage presence, offered a performance of Debussy’s Claire de Lune in which he inflected the melodies with the right touch of jazziness while also bathing them in a wash of pastels.

Opening the evening was Arthur Honegger’s Symphonie liturgique (1946), a work whose style might seem archaic against modernist developments which have claimed more social relevance. The score layers textures in strict, mostly tonal counterpoint to create a spiritual journey in protest of the “barbarity, stupidity, suffering, mechanization and bureaucracy” which emerged under Nazi occupation.

An angry Dies irae of frenetic strings and threatening brass gives way to a meditative Adagio, De profundis clamavi, whose aching, slow moving harmonies might recall Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. The final Andante, Dona nobis pacem, builds into march-like, dissonant protest until the orchestra lets out a collective scream. After a lamenting cello emerges out of the dust, a flute descends out of the sky to deliver peace. The work’s overtly Christian message may verge on the kitschy, but it is composed with tremendous skill and emotional depth. The DSOB gave an earnest performance under guest conductor Stéphane Denève.

Albert’s Roussel’s Third Symphony (1930), another example of early twentieth-century music which struggles to find its place in the canon, proved an interesting companion in terms of orchestration, opening with an explosive, staccato brass and string motive that gives way to a plaintive flute melody. The work was commissioned by Serge Kossewitsky for the Boston Symphony and premiered to rave reviews.

With colourful instrumentation for the entire orchestra, the piece remains vibrant from beginning to end without becoming superficial. The second slow movement creates reflective pools of tragedy out of which, once again, a flute summons the orchestra out of its melancholy. The inner Vivace is a tour de force of festive gaiety, while the final movement—with its twittering winds and marching brass—is not without a hint of farce, evoking shades of Prokofiev and Stravinsky, but in a thoroughly idiomatic context. The DSOB played with high energy and clean attacks.

Closing the evening was the only familiar work on the program, Maurice Ravel’s Bolero (1928). Denève built tension gracefully as the work’s circular melody was tossed through the wind instruments—including saxophone—before consuming the entire orchestra in a throbbing dance. The piece was of course premiered not in straight concert but to choreography by Bronislava Nikinska at the Paris National Opera. In a better world, we would see all the great dance works of this era—by Debussy, Stravinsky, and even Strauss—performed as they were intended rather to a motionless, half-empty hall.

For more by Rebecca Schmid, visit rebeccaschmid.info

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in Berlin Times | Comments Closed

Loss, Lust and Repentance at the DSO

Friday, April 27th, 2012

By Rebecca Schmid

Of Berlin’s seven major orchestras, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester (DSO) is beloved among connoisseurs for its innovative programming. For the past five seasons, the orchestra has offered “Casual Concerts” concluding with a DJ act in the foyer of the Philharmonie, as initiated by former Music Director Ingo Metzmacher. In what the Berliner Zeitung is calling one of the most important concerts of the season, the series most recently featured Hans Graf, principal conductor of the Houston Symphony, in a self-devised triptych that traveled through Puccini’s Suor Angelica, Hindemith’s Sancta Susanna, and Skryabin’s Le poème de l’extase. The program was also performed as a straight concert on April 22, which I had the opportunity to attend.

Hindemith’s one-acter about the forbidden desires of a nun is, according to a recent publication issued by the Hindemith Foundation, one of the biggest scandals in twentieth-century music history. The conductor Fritz Busch refused to perform it in 1921 as part of a Puccini-inspired triptych that begins with Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen and ends with Das Nusch-Nuschi. When Sancta Susanna premiered in Frankfurt the following year, religious and conservative cultural institutions broke out into protest. While the Catholic Women’s League was organizing “atonement devotions” during Holy Week, Theodor Adorno praised Sancta Susanna as not only “the best of the three pieces” but the most mature stage work Hindemith ever wrote: “the thematic pressure of the orchestral flow and widely arching vocal melodies, the sultriness of the spring night and the vehemence of the catastrophe from this single, elemental force.”

The 25-minute work based on poetry by August Stramm has enjoyed something of a renaissance this season, with a full staging at the Opéra Lyon in January and, as seen with the DSO, a well-conceived semi-staging. Graf positioned the singers in front of himself and the orchestra, using screens on which they were able to follow his direction. The concert hall was otherwise darkened, with individual lights for the musicians to follow their scores. Melanie Diener inhabited the title role with fearless dramatic force, ripping of her black cape lustily when she declares in a climactic moment to the cautioning Sister Clementia (Lioba Braun), “ich bin schön” (‘I am beautiful’). Other parts of the plotline were left to the audience’s imagination—such as the moment when Susanna rips the loin cloth of the crucifix and the apparition of a spider (a symbol of repressed female sexuality) that crawls across the altar, only to end up in the protagonist’s hair. This must be a challenging aspect even in full stagings, although Hindemith’s xylophone motive makes it perfectly clear when the creature appears.

Graf led the DSO in a powerful account of Hindemith’s score. The vocal lines are initially set to eerily sparse textures, which were kept taut and hushed. The agonized chords representing the convent’s repression surged with raw force—as Adorno noted, the vivid landscape of anger, lust and frustration reveals Hindemith at his most expressive powers. Hindemith also adopts impressionist touches, such as the sensuous melodies of a flute that hovers over trembling strings, yet in the end the orchestra repents grudgingly. The work thus functioned perfectly as a kind of purgatory scene following Suor Angelica, in which the title character drinks poison after discovering that her illegitimate son has died of a fever. Juxtaposed with Hindemith, the modernist features of Puccini’s score also emerged more clearly, such as when Suor Angelica declares “parlate mi di lui” (‘tell me about him’), setting the orchestra in unison through a jagged, furious descending motive.

Barbara Frittoli was slated to sing the title role, but health reasons forced her to cancel at the last minute. Fortunately, another Italian soprano, Maria Luigia Borsi rose to the occasion admirably with lush bel canto singing that is rare to hear in Berlin. “Senza Mamma” was quietly devastating, with the orchestra already providing glimpses into the white light of heaven. While the DSO’s strings could have been warmer throughout the score, Graf sculpted Puccini’s phrasing with depth and conviction. The semi-staging worked well, with the nuns celibately donning white, roped gowns. Braun made a stand-out performance as the frigid princess, Angelica’s aunt, who convinces her to sign off her inheritance. The American soprano Heidi Stober gave a dynamic performance as Suor Genovieffa despite some less-than-ideal diction; Jana Kurucová (La suora zelatrice) and Ewa Wolak (La maestra della novizie) impressed with their rich timbre.

Le poème de l’extase concluded the program with opulent orchestration and heaving melodies, a refreshing embrace of sensual indulgence afer the harrowing experience of Sancta Susanna. Above the shimmering strings and colorful motivic development, the trumpets herald a new realm beyond the earthly, an explosion of sound which Skryabin declared in 1905 would be “an enormous festival.” Graf led the DSO with tremendous control, steering through the contours of this unpredictably episodic score with the same dramatic sensitivity he brought to the previous one-acters. The audience was left raptured, if not emotionally spent, by this musical journey—concerts like this make it clear how the DSO is able to hold its own even with the Berlin Philharmonic in town, and how spoiled those living here are for variety.

Stay tuned for a review of the Berlin Philharmonic under Dudamel featuring Leonidas Kavakos in Korngold’s Violin Concerto (not the Golijov world premiere that was originally slated, but who’s complaining)

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Berlin Times | Comments Closed