Saturday, January 25, 2025
Berliner Philharmonie, Herbert-von-Karajan-Straße, Berlin
Orchestras don’t come much larger than for the three works in this concert that opened with scrapes of sound, including tinfoil being waggled, then becoming animated and dense, brimful with notes and colours (six-person percussion section), finally catastrophe: Brett Dean’s Komarov’s Fall. Given the ensemble-size then increased, I assume Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra (Opus 16) was played in the original scoring (premiered at the Proms in 1912 under Henry Wood). Daniel Harding and the Berliner Philharmoniker gave a meticulous account that analysed the music for its dramatic, painterly and enigmatic expressive qualities. Gustav Holst was at that Proms premiere and a few years later unveiled his own set of character-pieces, known as The Planets, if omitting Earth and with Pluto then unknown. Harding’s deliberate tempo for ‘Mars’ undid somewhat its war association, whereas ‘Venus’ was luscious-sounding in its serenity. ‘Mercury’ was a delight in its articulacy and clarity, yet ‘Jupiter’ lacked jollity and the hymn-tune was dour. ‘Saturn’ was an over-slow processional; ‘Uranus’ swaggered maliciously, Rite-influenced(?), the organ glissando sort of audible; whereas ‘Neptune’ was icily mysterious, the Women of Rundfunkchor Berlin calling from afar and becoming ever-more distant, beautifully judged into silence. If Harding’s interpretation might be thought inconsistent, there was no doubting the consistently fabulous playing.
“Daniel Harding undertakes a visionary musical journey through our solar system with Gustav Holst’s atmospheric orchestral suite The Planets. From rugged Mars to mystical Neptune, each planet has its own character. One work that Holst greatly admired was Arnold Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, which fluctuate between late Romanticism and Modernism. Brett Dean’s Komarov’s Fall was commissioned by the Philharmoniker in 2006 as a companion piece to Holst’s Planets.“
https://www.boosey.com/cr/music/Brett-Dean-Komarov-s-Fall/47876