2023-12-22 12:54:59
The concert that the Berlin Philharmonic played under Daniel Barenboim on Thursday – it was the second in a series from Wednesday to Friday – will not be forgotten. First of all, the conductor’s appearance with his old friend from Buenos Aires, Martha Argerich, was deeply moving. The two have often performed together, but the 82-year-old Argerich now has to accompany her slightly younger but deeply exhausted sandbox comrade to the podium, and as soon as he gets there, he begins to conduct Ludwig van Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto You could sit down on the grand piano – it’s reminiscent of old married couples and their routines.
This piano concerto, one of the few that Martha Argerich still plays, resembled a memory of past games: Nobody has to master anything and prove anything, you browse through the pages of the score like through an old photo album, Barenboim turns to the secondary voices that he has so far has neglected, Argerich’s game has something of a story told a hundred times. In fact, it seems playful, as if this story contained something remarkable for Argerich and Barenboim. The Adagio becomes the epitome of the whole: unlike the witty outer movements of this very early Beethoven work – its performers are four times as old as he was when he wrote it – here the feeling of age can flow freely, and it is never sentimental , but for all its beauty and tenderness there is an exhilarating depth whose insights have detached themselves from the structure. Argerich has rarely been heard so soft and flexible.
Daniel Barenboim in the Berlin Philharmonic Berlin Philharmonic
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The second half of the concert with Johannes Brahms’ Third Symphony, however, bordered on the oppressive. The work begins with two brass chords, one consonant and one dissonant, from whose swells the main theme emerges in most interpretations. With Barenboim, this dynamic is lost, which is very clear in the beginning of the recapitulation, when Brahms once again significantly increases this beginning and its harmonic energy: the chord becomes louder, but it does not form a connection with the main theme, their connection is severed. What appears at this moment is projected onto the entire performance of this symphony: there are no more transitions, no differentiation between the main and secondary matter, nothing develops, everything is under the magnifying glass of very slow tempos – this third lasts about 45 minutes ten minutes longer than most performances. It’s tough, but strangely not without tension.
A great artistic and humanitarian achievement
As an interpretation of a text that is sensibly structured and designed with the highest degree of structural awareness, this performance may seem absurd. If you listen to them empathetically, you can hardly stand it, because you are looking into an abyss, into a tunnel at the end of the light. Here, too, you may initially notice captivatingly tender moments: the dance-like 9/4 time theme in the first movement, played so quietly and slowly as if the dancers were already transparent ghosts, small twists underneath the clarinet theme of the second movement, which too begin to speak, where the topic itself threatens to get lost in its own length, stretched out by Barenboim’s pace. But then this movement feels its way through harmonically exotic progressions with repeated individual tones that lose sight of their goal, as if they were already beyond tonality. And the famous third movement, popular because of its melancholy, is enveloped in a darkness from which even the major turns cannot escape.
How the Berliner Philharmoniker follow Barenboim and help him to enliven his ideas with meaning is an artistic and humane achievement that deserves the highest recognition. The orchestra as well as the conductor and soloist received a standing ovation.
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