Attending a concert of the Berliner Philharmoniker is always a festive event and especially so with a concert featuring pieces and artists that are not part of the standard repertoire. This particular programme had a decidedly Nordic bent – conductor and soloist hail from Finland and Iceland respectively and one of the pieces was also by the Finnish-born composer Esa-Pekka Salonen, whom most of us know best as a conductor. His ten-minute piece Helix, composed in 2005, is well named – think of an old-fashioned phone cord or the Italian pasta in the form of a spiral – with the main theme starting imperceptibly in the violins, then expanding to the other instrument groups and becoming louder and faster, truly creating a circular sensation and tension that only bursts at the end.
The second work on the programme has a title that goes back to a phrase supposedly uttered by Martin Luther – “Why should the devil have all the good tunes? – which caught John Adams’ fancy and resulted in him writing a devilishly challenging concerto for piano and orchestra, which was premiered in 2018 by the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Yuja Wang and Gustavo Dudamel. The three interconnected movements carry fun tempi indications such as “gritty, funky but in strict tempo; twitchy, bot-like; obsession/swing”. At 38, Víkingur Ólafsson still looks like a gangly teenager, albeit elegant in his navy suit and signature buttoned-up white shirt. He is no stranger to the Berlin audience, having been artist-in-residence with the Konzerthausorchester in the 2019–20 season.
Adams requires his pianist to literally attack the piano with diabolical virtuosity, hammering out chords almost non-stop, interacting with the orchestra in an almost hide-and-seek manner. It was a good thing that the page-turner used an electronic device, so intense was the beat, requiring Ólafsson's fingers to be constantly in action, often repeating patterns with only imperceptible changes. Adams relies heavily on percussive, rhythmic changes that are anything but easy. This is a piece that is equally intense for the orchestra – the Berliners clearly relish this type of challenge – especially with a conductor such as Santtu-Matias Rouvali, who gave clear signals.
After very warm applause for the Adams, Ólafsson turned to the orchestra and thanked them for making a dream that he had since he was ten years old come true: to play with them. With an encore of the slow movement from a sonata by Bach, he showed that this, for all the virtuosity required by the Adams piece, was really his spiritual home.
The pièce de resistance of the evening was Sergei Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, premiered in 1945. Although not part of their core repertoire, the Berliners clearly identifed with the symphonic colours and musical landscapes painted here, crafted by a composer who had a dynamic message and knew how to bring it across. Rouvali coaxed the strings and encouraged the woodwinds and percussion to convey the directness of this message and its climaxes, especially in the first movement, which elicited spontaneous applause. There is good reason why Rouvali is part of the top league of today’s young conductors from Finland – his precise, elegant style communicated his intentions to both orchestra and audience.
