Saturday, December 21, 2024
Berliner Philharmonie, Herbert-von-Karajan-Straße, Berlin
On July 11 Herbert Blomstedt – ‘living for music, music is life’ might be his motto – marked his ninety-seventh birthday by conducting Bruckner Nine (as below). For the third time this week in Berlin he returned to Bruckner’s left-unfinished three-movement farewell to the Symphony as a genre. His score remaining closed, Blomstedt’s long experience, his lifetime’s devotion to this composer, and the Berliners’ self-evident ‘extra mile’ admiration for the alert/focussed conductor came together for a profoundly searching performance that compelled absolutely.
The first movement was given organically, nothing overlooked yet without highlighting, intimate detailing and sonorous fortissimos an idiomatic part of a tumultuous journey. The Scherzo, uncompromisingly delivered, was inhabited by demons, with the Trio’s stalking rendered mysterious and macabre, and then the Adagio, which was disturbing, suggestive of Last Rites and the pain of leaving this existence for whatever might come next. Soulful beauty and edgy trepidation combined in the (here) cataclysmic climax, unstintingly dissonant at its peak, then a void. Blomstedt was deeply immersed (eyes shut) in the lengthy silence that followed, as significant as the music, very gradually lowering his hands, and then with the faintest of gestures he signalled ‘the end’. Standing ovation. Something remarkable had happened. I am not sure I have done it justice.
In the first half – Blomstedt entering arm-in-arm with Leif Ove Andsnes – a reading of K466 of moderate tempos and expressive gravitas. Andsnes unfailingly direct, shaping and sounding with finesse, the first movement crowned by Beethoven’s cadenza, the slow movement proceeding without affectation, and then a fiery yet articulate Finale. Characterful complementary accompaniment throughout. For an encore, a Chopin Prelude, Opus 28/17 (A-flat), from the Twenty-Four, Andsnes creating a magical singing line that suspended time.