Can't start a fire without a spark: Kirill Petrenko conducts Dutilleux and Bartók in Berlin

Who doesn’t fancy a little whimsy on a cold winter night? After the holiday break, Berlin’s Philharmonie hosted an evening of reveries and fairy tales featuring two works from the 20th century – Henri Dutilleux’s Symphony no. 1 and Béla Bartók’s ballet The Wooden Prince. Under the baton of Chief Conductor Kirill Petrenko, the Berliner Philharmoniker radiated the soft glow of a cosy but fragrant fireplace, brightening and warming the concert hall. And yet the embers frequently rose up in flames, blazing with shimmering, magical liveliness.

Receiving its first performance at the Philharmonie, Dutilleux’s symphony is a quaint piece that straddles the line between tradition – with its conventional four movements and use of the theme-and-variation form – and originality. The composer himself described it as a journey from the real world to an imaginary one, the unfolding of a dream. Its thematic consistency, which recurs through the entire score, is not postulated, but rather built: single cells appear and take shape progressively.

Petrenko’s placid, unrushed interpretation proved ideal. Off to a quiet start, with the double basses presenting the first movement’s passacaglia ostinato, the orchestral texture gradually grew thicker and more animated, drawing an arc that found a just-as-quiet conclusion at the end of the last movement. Petrenko achieved a rare sound mélange of mystery and playfulness, evoking an atmosphere that was indeed oneiric. By highlighting certain timbral qualities, reliant on strings, woodwinds and percussion such as the xylophone and celesta, Dutilleux’s debt to Bartók was readily apparent. Refined orchestral colours combined with a tight, but never hasty pace, complimenting the structural soundness of the piece.

Like all of Bartók’s – not many – stage works, The Wooden Prince taps into its author’s taste for fables and folk legends, which always provided him with fruitful musical inspiration. Perhaps of a more conventional style, the ballet still shares some of the elements typical of the composer’s idiom: tonal symbolism, percussive emphasis, motivic elaboration. A beginning similar to that of the Dutilleux symphony, with low strings in pianissimo, should not mislead the listener, as the piece soon takes on an emphasis that is absent in Dutilleux.

For a tale of princes and nearly thwarted love, Petrenko didn’t stop short of grandeur. His dynamics often surged in moments of suspended monumentality. However, most captivating were perhaps those sections that were most bizarre – the grotesque yet charming presence of the puppet, whose wooden musical identity infiltrates the score with wooden-like percussive elements. Again, Petrenko characterised his interpretation with a mostly atmospheric, timbral approach, which also accentuated the rhythmic drive of Bartók’s score. As the ballet came to its end with a conciliatory pianissimo, a feeling of magic lingered on in silence.