Opening U.S tour, the Berlin Philharmonic lives up to its name in Washington
What could possibly cast a shadow on the Berlin Philharmonic making its first trip in 21 years to the U.S. capital to play the Kennedy Center Concert Hall on Friday night?
The news that Hilary Hahn wouldn’t be joining them. Hahn had been scheduled to play Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto with the Berliners and their chief conductor, Kirill Petrenko, on the U.S. tour, but she has also been unable to play since July due to a double pinched nerve. On Thursday she announced that she needed more time to recover, canceling all her November concerts.
Fortunately, the Philharmonic found Benjamin Beilman to take up the bow in her stead. Born in D.C., he grew up in Chicago and Ann Arbor before attending the Curtis Institute of Music. He has played the Korngold with several ensembles this year, and proved a worthy partner for Petrenko and the orchestra on Friday night.
Before the concerto, the Philharmonic reminded the sold-out Concert Hall—the first stop on their five-city tour—why they are regarded as one of the world’s finest orchestras with a riveting performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s The Isle of the Dead. In the quiet opening measures, with a motif in 5/8 time suggesting waves lapping at the shore, these musicians played soft without playing small, giving the music tremendous presence. Petrenko took a spacious tempo, as he does on his recording of this piece with the orchestra, but the orchestra’s collective rhythmic focus invested the music with momentum.
This orchestra also plays with stunning unanimity. At one point, the 5/8 motif starts to stir itself to a climax, and all the string players collectively reared back in their seats and bowed with strenuous motions—the arresting visual provided a visual complement to the music as if they were rowing a boat out of turbulent waters, making a purposefully rough sound.
Petrenko balanced these brilliant musicians so that everyone can be heard; hysterical violin figurations that normally get swamped by loud brass came through to heighteni the nervous effect. Often an afterthought in Rachmaninoff’s orchestral oeuvre, The Isle of the Dead sounded like a masterpiece on Friday.
Given that, it was actually a bit of a letdown how little the orchestra plays in the Korngold concerto — Korngold puts his themes, many drawn from his film scores, in the violinist’s hands, demanding both stamina and technique from the soloist. Beilman showed himself equal to the challenges, including the frequent excursions to the very top of the violinist’s register, where his tone shimmered attractively. Beilman also used his violin, the “Ysaÿe” Guarneri del Gesù, to make some beautiful woody sounds, perfectly suited to these ardent melodies; Beilman controlled his vibrato and paced his solos to wring every drop of expression from this music.
Petrenko brought Korngold’s symphony on his last U.S. tour with the Berliners, and he has clear affection for this music, shaping a gorgeous gauzy opening to the second movement and marshaling blasts of brassy exuberance during the finale. If, in the final analysis, this concerto lacks a cohesive musical argument, it boasts a ton of gorgeous moments, and Beilman and the orchestra made the most of them.
For an encore, Beilman offered the Largo from Bach’s Violin Sonata No. 3, a world apart harmonically from the Korngold, played with a supple pulse and a graceful line.
Antonin Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony, played after intermission, sounded revelatory due to the sheer quality of the playing; details that get smudged or smoothed over in other performances stood out and felt of a piece of the music. The cellos and basses sounded like a solid, stirring mass as they opened the first movement, which Petrenko expertly paced to a roaring climax in which one could still hear every desk of the orchestra. The second movement proved a showcase for the Berlin woodwinds, who took their solos with panache and joined together to draw balm from Dvořák’s pastoral pages.
In the third movement, the separation of the first and second violins produced some delightful back-and-forth effects, and the strings articulated Dvořák’s shifting accents with uncanny precision while retaining a dance pulse. From the opening thrust in the low strings, the finale burst with coiled energy, building to the sudden switch to D major in the final pages, which sounded as cathartic as it ever has with the orchestra playing with white-hot energy.
Washington Performing Arts should be commended for bringing the Berlin Philharmonic back to D.C. after a too-long hiatus. Let’s hope it won’t be another 21 years before the next visit.
The Berlin Philharmonic performs in New York at Carnegie Hall Nov. 17-19, Boston (Nov. 20), Ann Arbor (Nov. 23 and 24) and Chicago (Nov. 26). berliner-philharmoniker.de
Washington Performing Arts presents the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall on November 24. washingtonperformingarts.org
