The incredible sound of the Berliners made the first impression, as the orchestra usually does. At once warm, broad, and deep, the string timbre was a sonic marvel. With the first and second violins positioned across the front of the stage, their glossy sheen seemed anchored by the violas and cellos in the interior. The woodwinds, especially the clarinets and oboes, declared themselves with straightforward, unforced confidence and not a hint of shrill insistence. The horns gave off an amber glow. Again and again the trumpets and trombones summoned an almost frightening unity of purpose in an instant. Fortissimos thundered. Pianissimos whispered intimately, yet urgently.
Tempting as it might be to pour on the special effects, these artists never sat back and reveled in the raptures they can conjure with such apparent ease. Emanating a becalmed, focused intensity, Rattle seemed always to be pushing for more, probing deeper, going beyond technical mastery to the music’s hot and volatile core. He found a lot of it with a remarkably expressive left hand, which quivered to hold back a torrent here, pointed and sought out a more pungent expression there, or dug deeply into midair, as if a phrase had the tangible reality of moldable clay.
This kind of music making is not without its perils. The second-movement Intermezzo blurred uncertainly before it found its whirring, cloudlike atmosphere. An overeager woodwind entrance scuffed the opening Allegro. The forces teetered off balance now and then.
But the risk-taking yielded stunning results, from the dashing panache of the woodwinds and scolding edge of the strings in the first movement to the drive, exhilarating glare, and mounting velocity of the climactic Rondo. That’s what brought the packed house to their feet — an exciting fusion of Gypsy schmalz and Keystone Kops propulsion. But it may have been the great excursion of the third-movement Andante that listeners remembered even more keenly later — the powerful dotted rhythms in the strings, the stamping tread and bandstand flourishes, the ferocity and humbled acquiescence of the strings. All seemed to answer to a higher power.
Rattle On
Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68 filled the second half of the program. Rattled (so to speak) as they may have been by the Schoenbergized Quartet, the Davies audience wasn’t about to be offered a comforting warm bath for the rest of the night. With a first movement that eschewed the customary shafts of redeeming light in the foreboding gloom, this performance found the symphony’s meaning not in a play of contrasts but instead in a sense of internal dramatic necessity. That’s what powered this sometimes raw, borderline claustrophobic, and finally unnervingly strong reading.Unlike the Quartet, which invited listeners to pause and marvel at the details, the Brahms First compelled you to submit to its powerful undertow. There were, to be sure, ravishing things along the way — the veering transverse motion of the strings in the second movement, the restive brasses in the third, Concertmaster Guy Braunstein’s verdantly rising solo.
But Rattle and his players never lost sight of the whole, never sweetened, or compromised their intentions. The ominously leaden pizzicatos in the final movement recalled the sense of enveloping, enclosing mood of the first. Even the famously lush theme that seems to promise spiritual restoration did so without diminishing the very serious business this performance addressed from beginning to end.
You could feel it before a note was played in Davies on Friday: The heightened air of excitement signaled that music really and deeply matters. But to know just how deeply and in what unanticipated ways, on this particular night, the audience had to venture where Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic led.