Rattle leaves Berlin with a British tenor in residence
mainAnnouncing his final season this morning as music director of the Berlin Philharmonic, Sir Simon Rattle ran through some of his desert island repertoire and artists by way of farewell.
One of them, the tenor Mark Padmore, will be artist in residence across six concerts through the season.
Rattle also let it be known that one of his innovations – late night concerts – are being discontinued, for reasons he could not specify. He will play the series out as pianist in Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps.
Full programme here.
The Messiaenic choice of the farewell concert seems to be a bit harsh on Petrenko.
I could spend the whole evening in the Philharmonie on December 9.
And September…
Janowski with Pfitzner and Bruckner,
Gatti with Hindemith and Brahms.
Showers of blessing, indeed.
And in April along comes Kirill Petrenko with Liadov, Prokofiev and Franz Schmidt’s 4th Symphony. Wunderbar.
On Youtube there is a rendering of the Schmidt 4th by Petrenko and the WDR orchestra. It’s a radio broadcast and somewhat constricted sound in the climaxes, but comparing this to other performances and recordings leaves me in no doubt why the BPO picked Petrenko. That and his extraordinary Tcahikovsky 6th on the Digital Concert Hall. Sarah Willis described it as “life changing” and, while I’ve heard the piece hundreds of times I would agree with that. Quite extraordinarily moving. Made me realize why Furtwangler conducted the piece. I could grow to love him like I loved Tennstedt and Carlos Kleiber…………..