Something of a tangible shift divided the two halves of Vladimir Jurowski’s latest concert at Berlin’s Konzerthaus, a lesson in 20th-century repertoire offered to the audience with the aid of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. Spanning between different genres, the programme comprised Friedrich Goldmann’s Symphony no. 1 and Weill’s Concerto for Violin and Wind Instruments, and then moved on to Stravinsky’s Jeu de cartes and Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins. While not radical, such a shift consisted in what could be called a palpable change of temper: after the pensive, absorbed mood prevalent in the first half, a different tone followed, one that evoked the image of a caustic grin rather than of a meditative gaze. One might call it a strange sort of catharsis, a release of tension drawing out a laugh that is nervous rather than relieved.
Immersed in the turmoil and aspirations of the post-war music scene, Goldmann spent a considerable part of his career rethinking traditional forms and structures. Composed at the beginning of the 1970s, his First Symphony attests just that – the re-elaboration of an age-old genre. Jurowski managed to convey the complexity of a piece that is intentionally fragmented and variable. His interpretation was extremely careful to render the peculiar pace of the symphony, punctuated by frequent stops and changes in volume, timbre and texture. The impressive, if expectable, chemistry with the orchestra of which he has been Chief Conductor for years allowed Jurowski to compress and expand sounds while drawing an overarching picture, letting the score speak for itself – its harshness but also its moments of rarefied fascination, such as the beginning of the second, slow movement.
While maybe not fully representative of the “Weill sound”, the Concerto for Violin and Wind Instruments does give a sense of the composer’s maturing musical persona, which was to constantly evolve throughout his protean career. By his own admission, Weill was drawn to this particular ensemble because of its timbral potential, conceiving the piece as a dialogue between the concertante violin and the wind choir. Christian Tetzlaff made the most of such contrast by producing a razor-sharp tone which he maintained over his instrument’s entire range. Combined with the felted sound of Jurowski’s wind ensemble, this generated a captivating effect. But Tetzlaff’s virtuosity also stood out in his control over Weill’s long, ever-moving melodic arcs.
Yet another creation of a protean master, Stravinsky’s Jeu de cartes usually charms for its seductive surface, a self-aware fest of aural innuendos and gratification. However, rather than accentuating its nonchalant allure, Jurowski’s rendition revealed a sense of unrest, tainting the exterior with darker, wrier undercurrents. That is not to say that the score’s refined elegance went lost in the performance – indeed, Jurowski and his orchestra ensured to pay good homage to it – but it made all the more evident a certain tendency to stray from the pure divertissement towards a more uneasy interpretation.
Indeed, no better occasion to pursue this caustic streak than something by the Weill-Brecht enterprise. The Seven Deadly Sins’s tale of bitterness and disillusion was taken on by Katharine Mehrling, whose fame as a Weill interpreter is well-established. Using only her clothes, a table and a bottle of wine as props, the singer plunged into the scabrous world of the two Annas, teasing the audience with her defiant stage presence. Mehrling took proper advantage of the freedom that Weill’s scores often permit and demand, her voice soaring firm and magnetic over Jurowski’s rhythmically insistent orchestra and the solid harmonies of the Männerquartett des Vocalconsort Berlin.
