Pitch perfect in Berlin: Kirill Petrenko conducts Dusapin, Zimmermann and Brahms

As a regular visitor to concert halls, I often find myself looking for the common thread that binds a programme together, enjoying the idea of having a ‘theme of the evening’. While many concerts are structured around a specific element – a composer, a style, a decade, a geographical area – for others the ‘theme’ doesn’t reside at the intersection of the pieces, but rather in virtuosity itself and the fact that it can even exist at such a level. Kirill Petrenko’s latest concert at the Philharmonie, scheduled as a part of the city’s ongoing Musikfest Berlin, was a textbook case of this variety of programmes. Despite featuring some fascinating pieces by Pascal Dusapin and Bernd Alois Zimmermann alongside Brahms’ First Symphony, the audience was invited to admire the perfectly oiled machine that is the Berliner Philharmoniker, first and foremost.

If we were to apply the good old-fashioned model of overture, concerto and symphony to Petrenko’s programme, Dusapin’s Exeo would make for a charmingly disconcerting opening. Other than its limited duration, nothing about the piece suggests an introductory nature. In fact, the composer conceived it as the fifth part of a composite orchestral cycle, Seven Solos for Orchestra. Petrenko emphasised the tension that sizzles through the entire piece through harsh contrasts between registers, with violins and low winds acting as opposite poles without possibility of conflation. Drawn-out, incessant movements in the orchestra created a space full of resonance where finding one’s footing was challenging and ultimately unnecessary, leaving the audience to float within the sound instead. Petrenko lingered on this near absence of gravity until the end, which faded smoothly into silence.

Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Oboe Concerto is eclectic in its historical references. A pleasantly antique character is evoked by its three movements of about five minutes each and scoring for a reduced orchestra that mostly accompanies the soloist. The virtuosity required of the oboist seems to be more up to date, the first movement being a self-admitted ‘homage to Stravinsky’.

For the occasion, the Philharmoniker’s own Albrecht Mayer came to the forestage. I was surprised to hear how his oboe – soft-toned and rather slim in volume – gave the concerto an entirely different character than I expected. A master of articulation and breath control, Mayer flew across the score's twists and ricochets with a lightness that smoothed out his part’s most angular moments and rhythmic extravagance. Even more than in the cadenzas, the instrument shone through when it was surrounded by other timbres, like the strings’ pizzicatos and the metallophones. After such a diabolical run, Mayer treated the audience to an encore – something “kurz und harmonisch” – which turned out to be a section of Bach’s cantata BWV 21, “Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis”.

The conciliatory conclusion came with Brahms’ First Symphony, during which the theme of the evening became unmistakably clear. Admittedly, it would be hard to imagine a better performed version of the score – a lesson in nuance and synergy with an ensemble that reacted to Petrenko’s every gesture, contracting and dilating as required. Lyrical when needed, razor-edged in its rhythmic contours, balanced in its timbres and dynamics. At surface level, Petrenko’s rendition was nothing short of a marvel, a perfect arc connecting the in-medias-res beginning with the triumphant end. And yet, to quote Mahagonny – something was missing. The interpretation didn’t seem to go much further than what is dictated by the symphony’s nickname – Beethoven’s Tenth – while occasionally steering towards a more overt Romanticism, in a polished but somewhat impersonal close of the evening.