Performance (online) Rihm and Bruckner

Note: This review is based on the video recording of live performances 24/09/2024 - see Berlin Digital Concert Hall (website) fees apply.

The first concert of the 2024 season for the Berliners comprised two works:

Rihm: IN - SCHRIFT (prem 1995)

Bruckner: Symphony No. 5 (prem 1896)

Rihm

Wolfgang Rihm died earlier this year so it was appropriate for the Berliner Philharmoniker to celebrate a great German contemporary composer. In Schrift is a 20’odd  minute piece (from 1995) which plays with two differing ideas in the context of shifting instrumental colours. I found it quite powerful and very beautiful though on one audition I didn’t expect to find a definitive pattern. The orchestra sounded fabulous and the recording was spectacular. I will listen to it again.  I note it was played at the BBC Proms in 2017.  It’s a complex piece with lots of low voices so no violins or violas but eerie and uncertain. Petrenko had to work hard too.

Perf 10,

Rec 10,

Interpretation (10)

Bruckner: Symphony No 5

No worries about versions of the score thankfully. A full Berlin Philharmonic should be able to do this symphony but I fear there were three things in the way. Petrenko didn’t allow for much attack or vigour, so the big blocks of writing became rather dull. Second he tried to break the scores iron grip with a few idiosyncrasies I could do without especially in the pauses. The final straw for me was the finale crippled by the lift of a woodwind passage just before the final notes. Abbado and Skrowaczewski did it and it disfigures the culmination of over an hours music.  A terrible decision.

Perf 10

Rec 10

Interpretation 6