Photo of Anna Vinnitskaya by Gela Megrelidze
Saturday, March 8, 2025
Berliner Philharmonie, Herbert-von-Karajan-Straße, Berlin
For the third week running the Berliner Philharmoniker welcomed a debut conductor, this time Joana Mallwitz, who heads up the Konzerthausorchester Berlin (their work together includes a noteworthy Weill recording), following Dalia Stasevska and Marin Alsop. Why Mallwitz chose the Overture to War and Peace is a mystery; it’s a poor note-spinning piece, if recognisably by Prokofiev, but superfluous to the epic opera that follows and inconsequential to a concert even as here when given with a fair degree of gravitas.
Hindemith’s music seems to have fallen off the radar, regrettably, even the Mathis der Maler Symphony (a Berlin piece, premiered by Furtwängler) that preceded the related Opera, the subject painter being Matthias Grünewald. The concert work is a masterpiece, championed by a legion of now-posthumous maestros, such as Bernstein, Celibidache, Jochum, Karajan and Maazel, also Blomstedt (still with us). I started with Ormandy, his second Philadelphia recording made a huge impression, still does, the CBS LP played relentlessly (ditto the other side, Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances – coupled for the UK market by Robert Matthew-Walker, thanks Bob). Mallwitz, from memory, led a performance that satisfied the music’s contemplation and drama, it’s rhythmic buoyancy, expressive lines, contrapuntal clarity, and sonorous scoring, adding to something wholly meaningful.
La valse, Ravel’s response to WWI and societal disintegration, and rarely off concert programmes these days, was less successful, too frenetic early on, not violent enough come the end, superficially hysterical on the final pages.
In September 2019 Anna Vinnitskaya gave an inspired account of Prokofiev No.2 with the Philharmoniker (Iván Fischer conducting, replacing Mikko Franck). Her Rachmaninov Third was equally impressive – urgent yet poised and shapely with an electrifying first-movement cadenza (whichever of the two it was!), a burning-deep identification with the emotionally turbulent slow movement, and a fiery Finale, all part of a performance much more about scintillation and soul than technique, which Vinnitskaya has in abundance. Throughout, Mallwitz and the Berliners offered a nicely mottled accompaniment, bass drum and cymbals touched in rather than blatant in the final movement. As a charming encore, a Mendelssohn Song without Words, Opus 67/2, delightfully done.
Sergei Prokofiev War and Peace: Overture
Sergei Rachmaninov Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 3
Paul Hindemith Symphony “Mathis der Maler”
Maurice Ravel La Valse
Third (final) movement of Ormandy’s recording.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Gr%C3%BCne