Saturday, October 11, 2025
Berliner Philharmonie, Herbert-von-Karajan-Straße, Berlin
Daniele Gatti is currently chief conductor of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and Staatskapelle Dresden, artistic advisor of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and music director of Orchestra Mozart.
This Berlin concert opened with Webern’s student work for string quartet, titled simply as ‘Slow Movement’, not representative as his thirty-one Opus Numbers, here a nod to Richard Strauss, eloquent and impassioned, played richly in Gerard Schwarz’s arrangement for string orchestra, which retains solo spots and also anticipates his teacher Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, which would also be geared-up for orchestra from string sextet.
The first movement of Stravinsky’s Symphony in C (for Chicago,1940) was given an athletic, sprung-rhythm workout, incisive, even Rite-ish. If this work is only about the notes, the second movement was expressive and poignant. Symphony in C can be difficult to follow structurally (I find), although Gatti’s conducting went a considerable way to a lucid exposure of the whole (four movements) bringing out anticipations of Symphony in Three Movements (which came first to New York in 1945), and there was a powerful momentum that gave the Finale a sense of arrival – and breakthrough – neoclassicism and potency in league.
Just as Classical Brahms didn’t preclude fire and fervour, or subtle depths of feeling, the first movement (with exposition repeat) quicker and more emotional than can be the case, and the middle ones uncommonly inward, Brahms’s soul evident without signposting, while the Finale was transcendental in turning Summer into the Autumn that is often bespoke for this work. In the contemplative concluding measures, something happened that I can’t explain, a moment of being engulfed into a tenderness that offers no words of explanation, nor would one want this mystery solved. Music over, visually Gatti was statuesque, somewhat hunched; inspired into motion by the warmth of applause he moved to concertmaster Noah Bendix-Balgley to embrace him. Cheers rang out: the Symphony’s quiet ending no barrier to enthusiastic response. Even though I wasn’t there, I certainly shared this mysterious occurrence. Whatever it was, it’s still here, invisible and silent, yes, but I feel its palpable presence.