Rattle and Ho-Hum

by Peter Burwasser

There are few, if any, more storied orchestras in the world than the Berlin Philharmonic. But musical ensembles, like baseball teams, change personnel and leadership. Not long into their performance of Bartõk’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, it seemed clear that this was not the same sound made famous by Herbert von Karajan in the glory days of the 1960s and ’70s. Under the direction of their new music director, Simon Rattle, phrases were left hanging in midair; pretty sounds were made, but a grand structure was elusive. The musicians could execute sharp turns on polished pivots, then land in a splash of scrappy intonation. To paraphrase the old joke, this orchestra was very good, but they were no Berlin Philharmonic.

The episodic nature of the Bartík reading tends to put the blame for interpretive shortcomings at the feet of the conductor. There were, at times, remarkable sounds to be heard, including wonderfully atmospheric glinty copper and cool blue tones in the adagio. But Sir Simon's now-minimalist, now-theatrical stick technique left a vacuum of vision. In the Beethoven "Pastoral" Symphony that concluded the program, a patrician grandeur did emerge to leave a truly memorable sound in the mind's ear. Even in this warhorse, there were problems with weakly articulated rhythms and nasal string timbres, but there was no denying the joyous swagger of the massive concluding hymn.

The highlight of the concert was certainly the local premiere of György Ligeti's Violin Concerto, which is now a little more than a decade old. What a colossal and vivid imagination this modern Hungarian master possesses, making him, especially in the context of this program, a natural successor to his compatriot Bartík. The work is, in many ways, conventionally conceived, with the soloist playing against a chamber-sized ensemble. But what a luminous texture Ligeti has created, shimmering with pinpoints of varied hues. The sly beauty of the work was captured with exquisite grace by the soloist, the charming young British violinist Tasmin Little, who also wrote the quicksilver cadenza. And as he has demonstrated in his many guest appearances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Rattle is at his best negotiating aural complexity, rendering dense and competing noises into a mellifluous whole. This gem of a concerto should be heard more often, but it is going to require music-making at this exalted level to succeed.

Berlin Philharmonic, Nov. 16,Kimmel Center