Berliner Philharmoniker: Closing Concert, EIF music review – 'heart-stoppingly exquisite moments'
The Edinburgh International Festival’s closing concert by the German capital's world renowned symphony orchestra always promised a powerful evening, and it did not disappoint, writes David Kettle
Berliner Philharmoniker: EIF Closing Concert, Usher Hall, Edinburgh ★★★★
With a top-name orchestra and conductor, plus two meaty works on the programme, the International Festival’s closing concert was always going to be a powerful evening. What was surprising, however, was the sheer concentration and focus of that power, as conductor Kirill Petrenko steered the Berlin Philharmonic on a clear and precisely mapped course, often using the smallest and tightest of gestures.
It proved revelatory in their opening Beethoven Violin Concerto, which showed up the astonishing richness and complexity of the orchestra’s opulent but strongly defined sound, shaped and molded with precision and logic by Petrenko. Soloist Augustin Hadelich often provided a sense of fantasy over the top, most evidently in a particularly tender slow movement, where his rhythmic and tonal freedom stood out against the orchestra’s tidier, more contained playing. Hadelich contributed brilliantly, however, to the inevitably unfolding logic of the Concerto’s opening movement, taken at quite a stately tempo by Petrenko, and the violinist’s beautifully liquid, athletic playing brought a real sense of joy to the return of the movement’s opening music. He was impishly nimble and light-footed in a sometimes fiery finale, with a solo cadenza that began carefully but quickly became breathtakingly exuberant.
After the interval, Scriabin’s heavily perfumed Symphony No. 3 – named “The Divine Poem” – made for a gloriously extravagant conclusion, and it showed off the sheer sonic depth and agility of the orchestra brilliantly. But was Petrenko’s approach a little too reserved, even polite, for Scriabin? The conductor seemed determined to demonstrate the composer’s carefully constructed architecture and internal logic when the music surely cried out for freedom, exuberance, even excess. There were some heart-stoppingly exquisite moments – not least the second movement’s tapestry of birdsong, or the conclusion’s ever greater heights of transcendental joy – but it felt like a performance to admire, albeit deeply, rather than one to capture the senses or ravish the emotions.
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