It may not seem like Russian orchestral music would align with the Berlin Philharmonic's glossy, pristine sound, but luckily it seems that no one has ever told Simon Rattle and his band that this was the case. For the second of their four performances at Carnegie Hall last week, the German players added extra heft and attack to their sound and incomparable musicianship in—all hyperbole aside—an electrifying and emotionally wrought performance of Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances and Stravinsky's complete Firebird ballet.
The pairing of these two works showcased the best of early 20th-century Romanticism—with Stravinsky's early work, filled with vigor and a prism of endless orchestral colors reminiscent of Rimsky-Korsakov, well matched with Rachmaninov's swan song, which was written three years before the composer's death in 1943. In fact, given the state of Europe and Russia in 1940 and the fact that most composers had already left their Romantic idealism behind, the title Symphonic Dances seems incredibly trite, and could actually be classified as a complete misnomer.
The three-movement work is actually a collection of ghostly, menacing exercises in melody and texture. Rattle's interpretation was incredibly fluid, with all tempos erring on the slow side and filled with rubati that breathed life into otherwise standard phrase structures. The dirge-like march of the first movement gave way to an alto saxophone solo—a Kazakh folk melody—hauntingly played in this performance while accompanied by simple arpeggios from the principal woodwinds.
The second movement's manic waltz shimmered while never appearing flimsy, and the final movement's asymmetrical phrases were given extra bite from the Berlin strings, who ground into their bows with a fierce yet perfectly coordinated attack. The rush to the finish was heart-racing, culminating in the horn section's final iteration of the "Dies Irae" chant heard throughout the movement—with bells high in the air as the percussion increased to a final gong stroke that rang through the hall for nearly a minute.
For all of its glorious moments, Stravinsky's Firebird ballet does have a number of scenes that fall flat on the concert stage. Thankfully Rattle and the Berliners again brought a fresh vitality throughout, creating fresh color blends and providing an acute sense of rhythm to the otherwise clumsier passages. The ballet turns on a dime in terms of energy once Prince Igor makes his way into the monster Katschei's castle, though, and a magic carillon—the ADT home security system of Russian folklore—is sounded. Rattle used a set of antiphonal trumpets and tubular bells throughout the hall to amplify this incredible moment, turning to face the audience in order to conduct the musicians in the balconies in this passage, which pealed in sound so grand and menacing that it seemed almost criminal for this music to have been initially conceived for a pit orchestra.
From there the Philharmonic trumped even their best moments from the first half of the evening (they actually performed the final 15 minutes of the ballet at the season-opening gala the night before), with the "Infernal Dance of Katschei and His Subjects" perfectly executed, and the bassoon's plaintive "Berceuse" sung on top of three harps and a bed of eerie string harmonics. Compared to the past two hours of breathtaking music making, the searing, brass-heavy final bars were simply icing on the cake. Concertgoers in Berlin are a lucky, spoiled lot, indeed.
More pics on the photo page.