The very air of the main hall of the Berlin Philharmonie buzzed with excitement ahead of this week’s performances by the Berliner Philharmoniker. Teaming up for the very first time with Hannu Lintu for an exquisite 20th and 21st century programme heard on Thursday, with repeat outings on Friday and Saturday, the orchestra went forth to sound out performances of very special intensity and merit.
Chief Conductor of the Finnish National Opera and Music Director of the Orquesta Gulbekian, Lintu is known for his detailed musical insight across extensive arch of repertoire from symphonic cornerstones – just think of his Brahms Fourth Symphony with the Chicago Symphony a couple of years back – to numerous world premieres – especially those given during his ever-inspired tenure at the helm of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.
For their eagerly-awaited debut collaboration, Lintu and the orchestra had devised a formidable set-list featuring two first-ever performances by the Berliner Philharmoniker – that is to say Olivier Messiaen’s early orchestral tableau Le Tombeau resplendissant (1931) and Kaija Saariaho’s scintillating portrayal of celestial winter Ciel d’hiver (2013), heard as first and second half openers. Appearing in the concertante slot, Igor Stravinsky’s brilliantly crispy Concerto in D (1931) for violin and orchestra combined the talents of the orchestra and the Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang, whereas the concluding statement was assigned to the one-movement sounding monolith known as Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 7 in C major, op. 105 (1918-24). Summoning the best from everyone involved, Thursday evening’s concert marked memorable first stages of – one would assume – a mutually productive trajectory.
Premiered under Pierre Monteux in Paris in February 1933, Messiaen’s fifteen-minute tone-poem documents a young composer at stylistic crossroads between late-romantic orchestral raiment and modernist blueprint – looking forward to Turangalîla-Symphonie (1946-48) and other masterworks-to-come. However, Le Tombeau resplendissant is no mere piece in transition, but compelling orchestral essay, evoked by the composer’s personal crisis; the death of his mother, the poet Cécile Sauvage three years earlier.
Written for a large symphonic ensemble of triple woodwinds, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba timpani, triangle, tambourine, cymbal, bass drum and strings, the score is in two main parts, further subdivided into five block-like sections, shaped by repetition and juxtaposition, yielding to permuting series of suggestive sonic imagery.
There are four thematic ideas introduced and reshaped in the course of the first two sections, presented in grand manner by the full orchestra. Developed through reiteration, Messiaen’s cyclical incantation is devised with remarkable symphonic momentum. These are followed by striking Modéré central section, primed by divisi upper string fabric of first and second violins playing forte and violas in pianissimo, giving rise to organ-like textures. Out of the fabric, tranquil thematic lines are sounded out on solo flute, followed by first oboe, first clarinet, third flute and first horn. Later on, further colorist input is delivered by second clarinet, trumpet, bassoon and second horn, alongside solo violin, resulting in gradually shape-shifting clouds of timbre.
The opening material is restated in the Vif fourth section of storm and fury, raging away until its powers wind down, setting the stage for the resplendent final section of translucent misterioso for strings alone. Sublime melodic arches are unfolded on violas and celli, surrounded by sustained aura from ten solo violins, flickering on the very threshold of hearing in pppp dynamics – to a spellbinding effect.
Clad in astonishing colorist garment throughout the entire extended dynamic scale by the Berliner Philharmoniker under Lintu, Le Tombeau resplendissant was given an intense reading, one of omnipresent fine-tuned detail, relentless rhythmic clarity and expressive drama, marking yet another notable foray into the 20th century French repertoire from the orchestra.
An exact contemporary to Messiaen’s Tombeau, Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto comes from rather different musical realm. Written for Samuel Dushkin, the ca. twenty-minute concerto in four movements was given its first performance by its dedicatee in Berlin in October 1931, with the composer conducting the Berliner Funk-Orchester. From there, Stravinsky and Dushkin went on to tour the concerto in Europe and the US, teaming up again to make the premiere recording in sessions with the Orchestre des concerts Lamoreux in Paris in 1935.
Rooted in Bachian models, the Concerto in D adopts somewhat unusual formal scheme of fast Toccata and Capriccio outer movements framing two central Arias. Scored for solo violin and an orchestra of duple winds with piccolo, English horn, E-flat clarinet and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum and strings, the concerto presents us with sequences of orchestral chamber music, as Stravinsky engages his soloist and orchestral players in series of instrumental dialogues, thus shunning away from 19th century ideals of juxtaposing the individual against the collective – to put it in simplified terms.
According to the composer, there is no solo cadenza in the concerto, “not because I did not care about exploiting violin virtuosity, but because the violin in combination was my real interest.”
Opening each movement and recurring throughout the concerto, there is a signature gesture or – in Stravinsky’s own words – a ”passport chord to the concerto” for the soloist, involving a stretched-out combination of d’, e’’ and g’’’. In the Toccata, woodwinds and brass come to the fore alongside the soloist, accentuated by stings and timpani, giving rise to dexterous quasi-Baroque textures, so unmistakably Stravinskyan in their ambiance and color. Conversing with solo winds, the violinist plays almost non-stop, often in tricky alignments with the ensemble, calling forth utmost focus.
The two Arias assume different instrumental characteristics, the first being painted with mounting chiaroscuro-tinged rhythmic energy and virtuosity for the soloist and orchestral players alike, whereas the second being cast as intimately poignant meditation for violin and strings, with occasional contributions from flutes, E-flat clarinet, first trumpet and trombones.
Upbeat moods are restated in the concluding Capriccio of sparkling agility and charming mischievousness. Whirling choreographic scene for the violinist and orchestra in perpetual motion, the fourth movement provides the concerto with a finale par excellence.
Served with a remarkable outing by Frang, Lintu and the orchestra, Concerto in D was awash with virtuosic instrumental interplay, unveiled with spot-on pacing and apt bite, displaying firm grasp over the Stravinsky idiom. Embracing the musical text with full-on commitment, Frang’s inspired take on the solo part was dressed in myriad detail, responded in equal measure by the orchestral soloists. With Lintu on the podium, the musical fabric was impeccably balanced, giving rise to layered clarity rarely achieved in performances of this concerto, without compromising the sonorous intensity of Stravinsky’s orchestral writing. One for the books, everything just clicked with Concerto in D.
In the Saariaho oeuvre, the ten-minute Ciel d’hiver stands out as one of the composer’s most evocative orchestral scores. Written in 2013, the score recasts the large-scale tapestries of the Winter Sky central movement of the orchestral triptych Orion (2002) for more-or-less standard symphonic line up of duple winds, with piccolo and contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, two trombones, tuba, timpani, two percussion, celesta, harp, piano and strings. True to its title, the slowly unfolding musical landscape is imbued with frost and wintry starlight, beautifully translated into sounding reality by the Berliner Philharmoniker with Lintu.
The music opens with a pianissimo gesture from glass chimes and tam-tam, combined with Saariaho’s trademark trio of celesta, harp and piano, alongside subtle glissandi and sul tasto string textures, marked Misterioso, molto calmo. Solo piccolo introduces the refined melodic material, which is then carried over to solo violin, clarinet, oboe and trumpet, respectively, for further development, woven together with slowly rotating orchestral fabric of ever-permuting colors. As the delicate intensity mounts, the whole ensemble becomes gradually engaged in the timeless Molto espressivo, calmo, sonante ritual. In terms of timbre, metallic percussion provide some essential contribution, alongside organic continuums between traditional and extended techniques within the symphonic ensemble. On the Dolce, calmo closing pages, the music gradually fades out, with final melodic statements echoed on soliltary cello.
Following the detailed intensity of Saariaho, the orchestra and Lintu concluded the evening with a gorgeous rendition of Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony. The two Finnish works have kept appearing side by side in the conductor’s programming for a while now, their realms complementing each other in marvelous ways.
The roots of Sibelius’s final completed foray to the symphonic idiom was shaped over a long gestation period, coinciding, partially, with those of the Fifth (1914-15/1916/1919) and Sixth Symphonies (1918-23). Initially planned as multi-movement entity, the composer’s blueprint went over several redesigns, before the material from a projected slow movement took over, and the composer came up with a ca. twenty-four-minute monolith. Concealed within its arch, echoes of traditional symphonic design are heard, as the material flows organically from one section to the next.
The symphony opens with a timpani herald, followed by distilled scale-wise Adagio climb, leading to the first harmonic anchors and thematic kernels, developed in dialogue between woodwinds and strings. The orchestral line-up is characteristically Sibelian, involving double winds with piccolos, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings, used with great economy throughout.
At the core of the symphony, there is a recurring trombone theme of very special significance, its appearances marking the key points along the journey. The first iteration culminates the symphony’s opening, leading to more kinetic, scherzo-like gestures of primordial light and shadow, somewhat akin to those that would later appear in Tapiola (1926). Passages of playfulness ensue in the course of a section likely derived from Sibelius’s original sketches for a “Hellenic rondo”. Its sunlit ease, however, is of passing nature, as the composer decides to guide his symphony to strange new places.
Out of the sonorous wild, the trombone theme again comes into being, its white-heat Boreal light shining through the fabric, eventually casting its rays towards a mighty sforzato yawp from the orchestra – an Aristotelian shock of recognition in Largamente molto guise, perhaps. After that, all we hear is an enigmatic coda, featuring final melodic remarks from solo flute and bassoon, as well as fleeting dolce allusion to Valse triste (1903/1904), before the music reaches its staggering C major conclusion, scored for diminuendo brass and crescendo strings.
Joining the roster of milestone Berliner Philharmoniker performances of the Seventh Symphony, starting with Wilhelm Furtwängler in November 1935 and continuing throughout the Herbert von Karajan era to the two complete cycles performed under Sir Simon Rattle in 2010 and 2015, the orchestra’s rendition under Lintu was founded in firm symphonic logic and sonorous clarity, while displaying the full creative wildness of Sibelius’s symphonic endgame.
Berliner Philharmoniker
Hannu Lintu, conductor
Vilde Frang, violin
Olivier Messiaen: Le Tombeau resplendissant (1931) for orchestra
Igor Stravinsky: Concerto in D (1931) for violin and orchestra
Kaija Saariaho: Ciel d’hiver (2013) for orchestra
Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 7 in C major, op. 105 (1918-24) in one movement
Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany
Thursday 11 April, 8 pm
© Jari Kallio
AIM - Adventures in Music 
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