Spectators in the Staatsoper Unter der Linden’s ornate hall witnessed the winning formula of a young conductor leading one of Europe's oldest orchestras. Thomas Guggeis and Staatskapelle Berlin played three 20th-century works, but resulting in vastly different soundscapes.
Ligeti’s Lontano does recall the first bars of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé or Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, works composed around the same time as the final work on the programme, Strauss' Alpine Symphony. Nevertheless, by giving up thematic development and rhythms, exploiting ambiguities of timbre and varying intensities, Ligeti creates a nonpareil musical universe, different from both traditional and atonal harmonies. Drawing attention to all these series of notes moving in the same direction but at different speeds, high glissandos or brass instruments amplifying the sound of just breathing, Guggeis and the Staatskapelle succeeded in opening the door to this innovative musical world. Helped mainly by an excellent string ensemble, Guggeis controlled and calibrated with great care the “evolution” of a structureless form, only shaped with shimmering, translucent colours that change imperceptibly. In the process, he might have suggested not that the approaching and receding sound per se is distant (“lontano”), but the listeners’ ability to comprehend a “message” or to solve the score’s mystery.
Lutosƚawski’s Cello Concerto is habitually perceived through the prism of an allegory of the conflict between an individual and an oppressive society (the key to reading the score since it was premiered by Mstislav Rostropovich). Listening to the concerto directly after Lontano, one could think of it as a series of textural transformations conceived with great imagination, corresponding to changes in the frames of mind of a story’s hero and echoed by a chorus. Nicolas Altstaedt performed with a combination of ironclad technique and expressive urgency, easily switching from the self-sufficiency of the ostinato Ds to Petrushka-like clowning or angry passages to an impassionate pleading worthy of Orpheus in the Cantilena to a conclusion which was more a sigh of relief than a celebration of victory. Guggeis let the protagonist shine, offering Altstaedt a level of support that was not just warm and colourful, but also included satirical connotations.
As an encore, Alstaedt played, with Concertmaster Jiyoon Lee, Sibelius’ tiny Vesipisaroita (Water Droplets). Bringing smiles, the chosen work could be seen as sign of reconciliation between soloist and orchestra after a hard-fought “battle”.
Guggeis approached Strauss’ Alpine Symphony with aplomb. The musical arch, describing episodes in an eventful mountain excursion, was drawn at a pace that was neither rushed nor boring, with no statement overemphasised. Even if inner voices were not always highlighted enough, this was a fine rendition of the well-trodden score. Regardless of some of the brass players not having their best day, individual instrumental contributions, such as the wonderful oboe solo on the peak, were distinctive. There are interpretations of Strauss’ tone poem that make you feel that the last three tableaux of the descent are not just about completing a successful day trip in the mountains; one can sense reverberations of the Marschallin’s monologue from Rosenkavalier and even premonitions of Im Abendrot or Metamorphosen. It was remarkable to observe a young conductor being able to sensitively bring forward those thoughts of regret and longing that others, too busy to just rein in a very complex orchestral apparatus, overlook.
