Europakonzert from Berlin with Kirill Petrenko
festive ..... enigmatic ..... serene …..

Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan invites the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra virtually in a digital concert format with high definition video live-streaming for the connoisseurs of Western Classical Music of Chennai. The Digital Concert Hall with excellent sound and video is the best close-to-real experience one can get.

As in 2020, the Berliner Philharmoniker and Kirill Petrenko again gave their 2021 Europakonzert in the Philharmonie Berlin, due to the corona pandemic – this time in the foyer of the building. Its special architecture is an invitation to present the music spatially: Blacher’s festive Fanfare, Ives’s enigmatic Unanswered Question, Mozart’s serene Notturno and Penderecki’s spherical Emanations consciously rely on the effect of spatial sound. Also in the Europakonzert programme: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s charming Orchestral Suite No. 3 and John Adams’s witty piece Short Ride in a Fast Machine.
 
Programme
 
Boris Blacher
Fanfare for the Opening of the Philharmonie (1 min.)
Charles Ives
The Unanswered Question (5 min.)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Notturno for 4 orchestras in D major, K. 286 (16 min.)
Krzysztof Penderecki
Emanations for 2 string orchestras (7 min.)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Suite No. 3 in G major, op. 55 (42 min.)
John Adams
Short Ride in a Fast Machine (6 min.)
 
The Europakonzert of the Berliner Philharmoniker is perhaps the most unusual concert series in classical music: every year on 1 May the orchestra appears at a location of particular significance for European culture. With these concerts, the Philharmoniker not only commemorate their founding on 1 May 1882 but also highlight Europe’s common cultural heritage.
 
Although the Berliner Philharmoniker and their chief conductor Kirill Petrenko remained in their home city for their 2021 Europakonzert due to the pandemic, the foyer of their concert hall offered the audience of the live broadcast an unusual and particularly appealing venue.

Wolfgang Stresemann, who was the orchestra’s general manager for many years, wrote about the space with its numerous staircases: ‘Nothing is static in this foyer of the Philharmonie; it only serves function. Everything is alive and seems to be in constant motion. One could almost speak of an architectural perpertuum mobile’. Ideal conditions, then, for the wild final piece of the programme, John Adams’s Short Ride in a Fast Machine, in which the music does not stand still for a second either. The unusual spatial-sound effects of the other programme items also benefitted from the specific architectural conditions of the foyer: In his Emanations, Krzysztof Penderecki allows two separate instrumental ensembles to communicate with each other, while Charles Ives allows three in the famous study The Unanswered Question, and Mozart even allows four in his Notturno, which is full of witty echo effects.

The concert started off with Boris Blacher’s Fanfare for the Opening of the Philharmonie, which Herbert von Karajan conducted at the building’s inaugural concert on 15 October 1963. The main symphonic work on the programme is Tchaikovsky’s Orchestral Suite No. 3, whose premiere was conducted by Hans von Bülow, later chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker, in St. Petersburg in 1885. In it, an elegy and a set of variations as a finale frame a waltz and a scherzo. With a programme that alternates between frenzied movement and meditation, the reflective and the dance-like, and melancholy and optimism, Kirill Petrenko and the Berliner Philharmoniker presented their audience with an entertaining Europakonzert full of hope, even in the difficult 2021.  

 
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