Report from Germany: Three Orchestras, and the World’s Most Overrated Mahler Conductor

NDR Elbphilharmonie

Sakari Oramo, conducting

Magnus Lindberg: Accused

Sibelius: Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43

Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg

December 6, 2018

Berlin Statskapelle

Daniel Barenboim, conducting

Brahms: Symphony No. 1 in C minor, op. 68

Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D major, op. 73

Berlin Philharmonie

December 8, 2018

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Andris Nelsons, conducting

Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C minor (Resurrection)                          

Berlin Philharmonie

December 10, 2018

My recent trip to Hamburg and Berlin immersed me in classical music. Besides the three formal orchestra concerts (plus one operetta) I saw, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, and Schumann flowed from nearly every corner, whether at Christmas markets or inside malls, including an excellent high school orchestra playing the Beethoven Ninth in a side hall in a museum. These prompts, plus seeing three orchestra concerts in five days provoked me to think about musical connections, specifically between the early symphonies of Brahms and Mahler. Each was trying to lay out their role in the great Germanic symphonic tradition, but in different ways. Brahms wrote his first symphony relatively late in his career (age 43) after working on it for over two decades. He was intimidated by the specter of Beethoven, and wanted his first effort to be worthy. Mahler, more audacious, wrote his first two symphonies at ages 28 and 35, and saw himself establishing a new symphonic model. But both composers clearly had Beethoven clearly in their rear view mirrors, and Mahler also was acutely aware of the importance of  Brahms. For example, Brahms in his first symphony and Mahler in his second symphony both imitate the Beethoven ninth by starting with ominous minor key beginnings and ending with triumphant “choral” finales, Mahler with actual singing, and Brahms implied with his “singing” orchestral theme based upon Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. But the thematic connections between these composers’ early symphonies are even more overt. For example, the Beethoven Ninth begins with a series of three descending leaps, a fourth and two fifths. About midway in the finale of Brahms’s Second Symphony we hear this secondary theme tossed in: a series of two descending fourths, offset by a half step, which feels like a true quotation of the Beethoven. Mahler goes one step further, quoting both composers in the opening of his first symphony, with three descending intervals (like Beethoven): first two fourths offset by a half step (identical to Brahms!), then a descending third.  Brahms and Mahler were stating that they were both indebted to their great predecessors, yet not cowed by them, as each symphony goes on to break new ground. Traveling to Germany reminds you of these connections.

Another sort of musical connection was revealed by the two symphony halls I visited. The Berlin Philharmonie was built in 1963, at the height of Berlin Wall tensions, as a (literally) golden monument to Western values and power. 

Its wrap-around plan of 2400 seats (i.e. audience sits behind and to the sides of the orchestra) symbolized a new inclusiveness not seen in the traditional shoebox halls, where the orchestra is separated from the audience by a traditional proscenium arch. 

The Philharmonie has been given architectural landmark status, prohibiting updates that might mar the archicture, but also the addition of things like true handicapped accessibility; I was hobbling around one month after sustaining a fractured femur, and was helpfully told that the accessible elevator was “down a few stairs”. This revolutionary seating plan has since been emulated in great halls like Davies in San Francisco, and Disney in Los Angeles. The new 2100 seat Hamburg Elbphilharmonie (i.e. “Elphi” or “Philharmonic Hall of the Elbe River”) is another descendant and has stimulated a buzz across the continent. The wraparound plan is even more dramatic here; the orchestra sits at the bottom of a bowl, and all seats feel close to the stage. 

The modernistic hall remarkably sits on floors 8-16, on top of an old 8 story warehouse, blending the building into the many warehouses that sit in this old Hanseatic port city along the Elbe River. 

You enter on a serpentine escalator that curves upwards 8 stories in a single run (!), feeling like being inside some reptile. This opens up to a grand plaza (accessible to non-concert goers as well) with spectacular views over the harbor and city, and featuring bars and restaurants. Then you enter the symphony hall, one of three performance venues, and you once again feel like you are inside a reptile, this time because of both the intimate curvy wrap around form and the scale-like texturing of the cement wall panels. 

The sound is warm and immediate, the equal of the Berlin Philharmonie. I sensed that many attendees were there not for Lindberg and Sibelius, but to revel in their new architectural source of civic pride--they had some trouble figuring out when to applaud, unusual for Germany!

What about the concerts? The concert in Hamburg by the NDR Elbphilharmonie (North German Radio Philharmonic of the Elbe) was well conducted and technically sound, as I expect from second tier German orchestras. US top rated orchestras are every bit as good as their Euro equivalents, but the depth of European playing is revealed in the high quality of these lesser known bands. The Sibelius Second Symphony was well played, and conveyed appropriate mystery. The Lindberg Accused (2014) was a piece for orchestra and soprano, in which long series of texts from three different inquisitions were read. First came a post-French revolution trial of a revolutionary, then a Stasi interrogation of an East German accused of disseminating unapproved Western magazines, and finally the FBI interrogation of an informant in the Chelsea Manning USMC/Wikileaks affair of leaked security documents from 2010. While an interesting idea of comparing repression across the eras, the music of the Finnish composer lacked atmosphere and did not seem well connected to the texts, either via word-painting or general affect. How could a long section of Stasi interrogation, so resonant to Germans, convey so little creepiness? This piece reminded me of the recent political art in NYC where the message is more important than the qualities of the art itself.

I expected the Mahler 2 by the illustrious Berlin Philharmonic to be the best performance of my trip. Not so. The disappointment was on two levels. First, it is now clear that any distinctive sound they once had under Karajan in the 1960s-90s has now been diffused by subsequent international conductors (Claudio Abbado, Sir Simon Rattle). On the positive side, the orchestra is now more flexible and lithe, and still projects the ultimate in virtuosic playing, but now it sounds very much like any of the top US orchestras. Even the old tradition of players sitting in their seats in varied positions, much as soloists would, has now been homogenized. This would not have been a problem were it not for the dreadful conducting of current hot maestro Andris Nelsons, a 40 year old Latvian who now is the music director of two major orchestras (Boston and Leipzig) and was the guest conductor here for the Mahler. When I saw Nelsons conduct the Mahler Sixth in Boston last year, I felt that he had some good individual ideas, but did not unify the piece. This Second was more of the same, but even more so. The piece felt like a series of extreme ideas poorly unified into a whole. Pauses in the score were lengthened to several seconds (luckily, the well-trained Berlin audience did not clap), tempos lurched around, momentum was lost. It felt like my friend’s description of his mother’s driving, jerkily going up and down on the gas pedal creating a jarring experience for passengers. Nelsons did this as well, but driving a highly responsive orchestral Porsche, so the jerkiness was even more obvious. The last two movements with alto soloist (a fine Gerhild Romberger) and then chorus (an amazing MDR Radiochorus Leipzig, blowing us away with resonant sound from only 60 singers) were best, perhaps because Nelsons could not be so indulgent here, with so many performers to attend to. But his erratic first movement was perhaps the poorest Mahler movement I have heard, and the second movement ländler chugged along without the infectious menace that Mahler intended to infiltrate the folk dancers. The audience obviously did not agree with my assessment, calling Nelsons back for several curtain calls. Sure, it is hard to fail with the last movement of the Mahler 2, given its choral calls for resurrection and huge orchestral climax. But there is more to this symphony than the finale, and Nelsons utterly failed to deliver. What a disappointment!

Now for a real German orchestra performance, we can turn to the venerable Berlin Statskapelle, who delivered a magnificent concert of Brahms’ First and Second Symphonies under “Music Director for Life” Daniel Barenboim (now there’s a title you would not see in the USA!). This orchestra’s normal gig is playing for the State Opera, but it also plays orchestral concerts. It was one of the seven (!) Berlin orchestras during the Cold War, and it resided in East Berlin, immune to western trends, so when Barenboim took over a few years ago, he said it was like a “valuable antique that had gotten a little dusty”, rather like some of the fine Baroque churches in East Germany that fell into disuse during the Communist years. He has obviously done incredible work with them. The orchestra recently returned from a world tour doing the Brahms symphonies, and then recorded them, so this was their capstone homecoming concert for these symphonies. Wow! This was the plush, bass-resonant German sound I had heard from some old recordings, now experienced up close and personal in the Berlin Philharmonie hall. I sat behind the orchestra, so could watch Barenboim (originally a top flight solo pianist) closely. He conducted as if coaching a group of 70 chamber musicians, and I could hear phrasing as a great pianist would phrase, but now done uniformly by the whole orchestra. Barenboim’s downbeat for the First Symphony was a single unprepared beat, with no indication of tempo, which was then set by the timpanist. Barenboim’s conducting was strikingly minimalist, as he often stopped moving for 10 seconds at a time, or made only subtle expressive gestures, only using his baton at big tempo changes. Of course, having recorded and toured with these pieces, the orchestra knew them cold, but it was still remarkable to see such a non-controlling conductor on the podium, in great contrast to Nelson’s bar-to-bar micro-management of the Mahler with the Berlin Philharmonic. This Brahms First was the best performance of this piece that I have heard, melding plush resonant sound with forward momentum to enormously exciting effect. I want to check out their recently released recording. My only real critique of the overall concert was that after such a First Symphony, it was hard to follow it with the Second. The Second Symphony has always been a harder sell for me, a bit like ambling in Alpine meadows with lambs for three movements, then having to suddenly negotiate icefalls and avalanches for the last part of the hike. I think they should have played it before the First. But all-in-all this concert was why I came to Germany to hear symphonic music. It is wonderful that the time capsule that apparently trapped these players in tradition during the cold war has still been maintained as a unique and wonderful orchestral sound and tradition, even in a new century.

Random orchestra observations: All three orchestras come out onto the stage together, rather than warming up in front of the audience. That said, the young Hamburg group had a fair number of players out on stage early warming up, and the Berlin Phil had most of the bass section out there (understandable, since their big instruments were not available for backstage warm-ups). However, the hyper-traditional Berlin Statskapelle had only a lonely single bassist visible to the audience beforehand, and came out together in the most martial way. Interestingly, neither the NDR Erbphilharmonie nor the Berlin Statskapelle had the typical influx of Asian string players seen now in virtually all top symphonies, including the Berlin Philharmonie, whose concertmaster is Japanese. They seem to be more reliant on locals, perhaps seeking to establish a more characteristic “German” sound. Hamburg/NDR was about 40% women, including a few players in brass. The Statskapelle was about 25% women (all strings and woodwinds), and the Berlin Phil about 20% (only strings except for one horn).