Well, that’s Berlin for you. No sooner have I pronounced a favorite performance than another leaps in to take its place. I am now in a divided state, and wouldn’t know how to choose between listening forever to Daniel Harding’s terrific version of Mahler’s First Symphony and being permanently wedded to Vladimir Jurowski’s equally wonderful one. I’d ask, I suppose, to alternate between them, as I did in real life.
Two days after the Berlin Philharmonic performed the piece I praised so highly in my last blog entry, the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, appearing at the lovely old Konzerthaus under the baton of the unbeatable Jurowski, played the same Mahler symphony to a sold-out crowd. Because I’d heard this conductor with these excellent musicians before, I knew to expect something special. In this case, the pleasure of the program’s second half was intensified by the mild disappointment of the first, in which Nicholas Angelich—billed as a Brahms expert—managed to tamp down and hold back the orchestra with his pedestrian rendering of the solo part in Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto. Oh, well, I thought, the best is still to come.
A wild understatement. Jurowski’s Mahler One was recognizably the same piece as Harding’s (even to the offstage trumpeters in the early part, and the French horns who stood up to play their final blast near the end), so a certain amount of credit must obviously go to the composer. But something special and uniquely appealing emerged from the combination of this conductor, this orchestra, and this composer. Jurowski brings out a level of enthusiasm and individuality in these musicians that is thrilling to watch and hear; he also finds things in the music that no other conductor can find. In this performance, I was particularly aware of how intensely klezmerish the klezmer parts of the symphony sounded, thanks in large part to the brilliant solo oboist, but also to all the other supporting musicians. Jurowski has spoken before about his half-Jewish heritage, and that no doubt played a role here, but I couldn’t help feeling that his expertise in conducting Shostakovich also came into play. This was a Mahler who crossed geographical and temporal boundaries, who reveled in the strength of his youthful vision, who happily stole from everything and everywhere and yet gave it all back in the end.
I was so engrossed in the music that I didn’t even notice the goings-on in the parterre section of the symphony hall, which included a man collapsing from an apparent heart-attack and being carried out during the performance. Because of my seat (I was up in the first ring), my height (I am short), and my focused attention (I was hypnotized by the symphony’s repeated surges), I had no idea any of this was going on. But Jurowski evidently did. He kept glancing around to his right side with a worried expression on his face. I thought he was concerned about the second violins and I couldn’t figure out why, because they were playing beautifully; but a friend who had a better view said he was clearly worried about the sick patron. His facial expression, according to my friend, seemed to ask, “What should I do? Should I stop playing? A terrible thing is happening, and we are powerless to help. Do we just carry on?” The answering expressions on the faces of the musicians must have said yes, because carry on he did, with all the full force of his emphatic talent. It was the only gift he could give at that point to the rest of us, and our evident approval of his decision was signaled by the wild intensity of our collective ovation at the end.