Classical Music Forum banner

Who would you pick to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic?

15K views 55 replies 19 participants last post by  Becca 
#1 ·
Instead of the incumbent.
 
#2 ·
Tough job, so I'm led to believe - the prestige and glamour is second to none but any candidate is on a hiding to nothing. If so, then I'm reminded of Tiberius Caesar when he described the role of being emperor of Rome as akin to 'holding a wolf by the ears' - and of course the ghost of Herbie von K. still looms large at the Philharmonie.

I haven't a real preference but I reckon Gustavo Dudamel will be offered it some day seeing he's becoming serious box office as his star continues to rise. I'd like to see Marin Alsop get a crack at it but I don't know whether her reputation for conducting as many - if not more - American works than European ones would go against her - and I'm not entirely sure if the Berlin PO would be a strictly Equal Opportunities Employer when it came to the podium. I gather some musicians had 'issues' with her appointment as musical director at Baltimore but I hope that kind of nonsense (if it WAS that kind of nonsense) wouldn't hinder her chances at Berlin or anywhere else. The fact that she isn't strictly speaking A-list (or at least not yet) perhaps would, though.
 
#3 ·
Chailly???
 
#4 ·
I forgot about him - he's still a free agent since ditching Leipzig, isn't he? Plus he's got notches on the gunbelt with recording Mahler, Brahms and Bruckner. And as long as the Berlin PO haven't got a contractual tie-in that would prevent them recording for Decca...
 
  • Like
Reactions: itywltmt
#5 ·
he's got a new Beethoven set coming out , too.
 
#6 ·
Has he? It'll be interesting to read the reviews bearing in mind the stick he took in some quarters for his Mahler cycle - 'clinical', 'inorganic', 'dull' 'emotionally uninvolved' etc. - and if there's a body of work you can't hide behind if you're guilty of all this then it's Beethoven's symphonies! It's a packed field where competition is particularly fierce, so I wish him luck. Incidentally, I've got Chailly in Mahler's 2, 3, 4 and 8 (as well as his Bruckner 0, 2 and 7) and I haven't a problem with any of them.

Another free agent is Ingo Metzmacher - he left the Berlin DSO mid-contract about a year ago. He also has the added advantage of being German but again I don't know whether his track record would go against him - he seems a bit of a modernist.
 
#17 ·
...Another free agent is Ingo Metzmacher - ...I don't know whether his track record would go against him - he seems a bit of a modernist.
Or he's interested in music that's younger than the pyramids, that counts against him with the Berlin Phil...:lol:...I've got him doing some great Ives, Henze & Martinu, instead of those in Berlin he'd probably be doing, well, guess, it's not hard...
 
#7 · (Edited)
#8 ·
I suppose with Mahler you're damned if you do and damned if you don't - if you want to let the music largely speak for itself then you get moaned at because you aren't putting enough of yourself into it (Chailly). On the other hand if you concentrate on the searing intensity aspect then you get criticised for being self-indulgent (Bernstein) or riding the orchestra too hard (Solti). Only one man can say who's correct, and he died in 1911.
 
#9 ·
and he probably would like different interpretations too. I think Bruno Walter new him and look at his Mahler. Mild. Sensitive. I think composers can like diverse views within reason.
 
#10 ·
I like to think that's how Mahler would see it, otherwise there would be little point in anyone conducting his works other than Mahler himself! Part of the enormity of the task is due to the fact that a conductor has to work hard with every bar in an effort to second-guess what Mahler the conductor would have done and what Mahler the composer was actually thinking/feeling - and it's fun to compare different interpretations.
 
#11 ·
Rattle's the world's best living conductor, in my opinion.
I don't think any orchestra is better than the BPO.
They belong together. They played Mahler 1 here 12 months ago and it was spellbinding.

It's not Karajan's band any more. Nearly half the orchestra turned over during the Abbado years. Average age of the players is somewhere in the early 40s, I think.

If I had a single choice of any conductor/orchestra combination to hear (in a decent-sounding venue) it would be Rattle/BPO.
And I write as someone who heard the Vienna Phil 6 weeks ago...
cheers,
GG
 
#12 ·
Maybe, but his recordings haven't done much for me.
 
#13 · (Edited)
I didn't want to ask Itullian if his question was based on any dissatisfaction with Rattle seeing we had a nice little chat! I was basing my own thoughts on who could follow him as opposed to who I'd have instead, in which case I would say no-one seeing Rattle's doing fine.
 
#14 ·
yeah, i didn't mean taking Rattle out. after he's out, I meant.
 
#16 ·
To tell you the truth, I don't really care, this orchestra is great in terms of many things but not really the things I value. Eg. getting away from warhorse repertoire, promoting new or newer or lesser known music (even if by mainstream composers), etc. When they came here to Australia, the newest things they played was Berg. What a joke. I think Rattle is doing a good job, but as far as I know, he put down much more interesting things on disc with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orch. Not just the same old same old. Eg. younger British composers of the time. It doesn't seem to be happening with the BPO now, what are they doing for/with new music in particular, or at least what's available of that on international release. What hope do we have if the latest thing they play on tour is Berg, and even that a kind of token, sandwiched between a couple of warhorses?

So I think the likes of Marin Alsop and Gustavo Dudamel are better serving their immense talent staying where they are, doing what they're doing now, which is much more interesting than what they'd probably do with this old and stale band, same old same old, cookie cutter.

It's a world class orchestra for sure, but what are they doing with that high level of playing? What are they actually playing? The same old things we've heard hundreds of times. Cliched?...
 
#20 ·
Polyphemus - Chailly had recorded Varese so it least it shows that he can mix it. Someone else asked about Vanska but I don't think I've heard anything done under him.
 
#19 ·
Hello Sid - according to Wiki, Rattle made it a condition in his contract that the BPO and himself would be responsible for their own decision making as regards artistic direction. As a previous poster noted, the musicians themselves are younger now, so isn't there a chance that they may want to break away from some of the 'old chestnut' repertoire anyway? To be fair, the BPO during Rattle's tenure have turned their hands to newer material from the likes of Ades and Turnage (as you mentioned young British composers) which predictably divided critical opinion but even long before him they were recording newer and challenging material like Henze's first five symphonies (under the aegis of the composer rather than HvK, no mean feat when we consider that Henze was a committed communist and the recordings were made during the height of the Cold War). The upholding of die-hard tradition will always be a factor in maintaining the lustre of the BPO but on balance I think Rattle and the BPO are going to some lengths in blowing away as many of the cobwebs of reaction as they may dare - and maybe it's being done incrementally in the hope that some critics and the more conservative BPO watchers don't actually notice. I agree with what you say, but maybe there's a certain tightrope that Rattle and the BPO need to continually walk so as not to alienate too many people from either camp - perhaps we can thank Rattle and his 'slowly slowly catchy monkey' overhaul that whoever follows him will at least already have a foot in the door in this regard and will hopefully make his (or her?) new job a little easier.
 
#21 ·
Maybe Paavo Jarvi... But not now .... We should wait for several years... He made a great Beethoven set and his video of Mahler Third is good, but we should wait...

Chailly is good, though I am not a big fan of his Mahler set, he seems to became more interesting during his Gewandhaus tenure. From his Concertgebouw tenure I prefer his recordings of XX century music (some of them -DELETED by Universal morons) to his big box-sets.

Vanska should stay in Minnesota and make a great orchestra out of them. They have a conract on BIS, and it is great to finally hear a great American orchestra on a great audiophile European label.

I must admit, I've never heard Dudamel live, but I really don't understand why he is so popular.

Maybe, Berliners should invite more conductors as Ingo Metzmacher or Gerard Schwarz, who are into XX century music. Maybe some day Metzmacher will be their chief-conductor.

It is good that they also invite Blomstedt. He is very intelligent and clever man (his interview about Mahler is one of the most interesting) and he conducts Bruckner.

I don't like that the Berliners lost their contract with DG. But I'm not sure they should change Rattle now. They can invite as lot of guest conductors as they want.
 
#28 · (Edited)
...Maybe, Berliners should invite more conductors as Ingo Metzmacher...
I was wrong about Metmacher, partially. The Ives and Martinu recordings I have with him at the helm were done with other groups, but the Henze symphony I have was done with the Berlin Philharmonic. I guess that Metzmacher was guesting in that recording session with the BPO. In any case, Henze is virtually establishment now, much like guys like Hindemith became after the World War II. Henze after the Cold War, Hindemith after de-Nazification. So probably it's no big deal the BPO doing Henze, he's like in his eighties now, it's similar to von Karajan's posterboy Blacher, who was not really cutting edge by that time either.

...Maybe some day Metzmacher will be their chief-conductor...
It would be a waste, imo. The BPO is a straightjacket as far as I know. Maybe it is changing, as elgar's ghost says.

But interesting the mention of Gerard Schwarz, who did very interesting things with a much less hyped orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, putting out a lot of recordings of USA repertoire in particular. It's that kind of commitment I'm talking about, but it doesn't necessarily have to be regionally based.

One of our finest conductors of recent decades, the late Stuart Challender, promoted our own Australian new or newer music, as well as formerly underplayed things from the rest of the world, from R. Strauss to Mahler, to Berg, Bruckner and Carter. He also did warhorses, which is okay, I heard him live in a family concert. The man was a powerhouse and is sorely missed, it's been about 20 years since his passing.

Bottom line is, if you play, promote, etc. your own or the host country's new or newer music, then inevitably you will do the same with other countries' music that people there have not heard, both old and new. It creates a buzz and excitement. What we have with a number of the big name flagship orchestras is an element of stagnation and conservatism, serving various agendas. It is changing but at this rate, we will all be dead before things really get off the ground, or worse still (if we are very pessimistic), classical music as we know it will be dead, or close to it.

Getting a celebrity big name conductor to lead an orchestra is one thing, but if he or she is rendered impotent by the things I'm talking about, esp. conservatism, then it's like he's a puppet, or nothing more than that...
 
#23 ·
I was not much impressed with Dudamel in Mahler Fifth with Bolivar Orchestra and even always enthusiastic Amazon reviewers gave three stars to his Bruckner and Nielsen. Solti (whose work I mostly admire and love, but not always) was also a choleric, but he had Kodaly, Richard Strauss, Adorno and his own wife (Hedi) to improve his temper :) I am afraid, Dudamel became too much popular in his youth and he do not have Richard Strauss to tell him: "Warum fuchteln Sie so"?
 
#24 ·
Any Russians available? who are your best?
 
#25 · (Edited)
A good guestion :) I suppose the situation inside Russia is very BAD, whe need more young and talented conductors to work INSIDE Russia. :) So, let them stay in Russia...

If the situation in culture will not improve we become something like Greece: a third-world country, but with memories of the gloriuos past.

Wladimir Jurowski will have a lot of job in Russia (and in London). I hope to hear him more here, in Moscow. He is a RARE Russian conductor: he conducts not only Tchaikovksky and Shostakovich, but some XX century music.

So let Rattle stay until 2018 or something and then replace him to Jarvi the Junior, Chailly or Metzmacher. When wait until 2038 and replace him to Dudamel :)

But it seems to me that 2/3 of their concerts are with quest conductors. So does it really matter those days?
 
#27 · (Edited)
I took a brief look at Simon Rattles recordings on Amazon and I'm somewhat surprised how many I have. I really don't see a huge difference in what he recorded with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and what he recorded with the Berlin Philharmonic. With the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra he recorded:

Britten
Walton
John Adams
Szymanowski
Janacek
Stravinsky
Grieg
Mahler
Elgar
Williams
Bartok
Schoenberg
Tchaikovsky
Shostakovitch
Prokofiev
Kurt Weill
Beethoven
Ades
Bernstein
Haydn
Sibelius
Debussy
Nicholas Maw
Vaughan-Wiiliams
Rimsky-Korsakov

With the Berlin Philharmonic he has recorded:

Mahler
Britten
Schoenberg
Orff
Brahms
Gershwin
Duke Ellington
Liszt
Stravinsky
Berlioz
Shostakovitch
Dvorak
Beethoven
Schubert
Henze
Ravel
Prokofiev
Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimer & Reinhold Heil
Richard Strauss
Debussy
Borodin
Haydn
Holst
Messiaen
Sibelius

He is big on Mahler with both orchestras, and his focus is largely big, romantic 19th and 20th century orchestral works. If there is a difference it is in that he stressed more English composers with the Birmingham, and more of the German tradition with the Berlin Philharmonic... as would be expected in either instance. Of course the big symphonic "warhorses" from Mozart and Haydn through Shostakovitch are the life's blood and raison d'etre of such orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic. It seems pointless to criticize them for not performing Xenakis or Grisey or Boulez any more than to criticize them for not performing Monteverdi, Palestrina, or even Handel and Bach. The big symphonic orchestra exists to perform a certain symphonic repertoire... and to do it very, very well. If I am after work outside of this repertoire, I turn to other orchestras/performance groups: John Eliot Gardiner's English Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir, Jordi Savall, Ton Koopman, La Venexia etc... for earlier music, Marin Alsop, Paul Hillier and the Theatre of Voices, the Houston Opera, and other "smaller" ensembles etc... for newer repertoire. By the same token, I don't go to the Metropolitain Museum of Art or the Louvre if I am seeking out cutting-edge "low-brow" painting or Post-Modern installations. It is incredibly expensive to mount and support an orchestra like the Berlin Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic, or the Metropolitan Opera and whether we like it or not, these orchestras are not likely to survive performing a repertoire of modern music that has a comparatively limited audience. For this reason, many smaller orchestras have been more adventurous in what they have recorded for the simple reason that they are not likely to be able to compete with the Berlin Philharmonic or Vienna Philharmonic in producing a new recording of Beethoven or Mahler or Brahms... but they can be competitive and assured of a descent audience for new works by Golijov, Daniel Catan, Joan Tower, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Per Norgard, Kalevi Aho, etc...
 
  • Like
Reactions: vasysm and jalex
#29 ·
Bottom line is, if you play, promote, etc. your own or the host country's new or newer music, then inevitably you will do the same with other countries' music that people there have not heard, both old and new. It creates a buzz and excitement.

Does it? You and I and many others may look forward to music that breaks outside of the confines of the symphonic warhorses from Mozart through Shostakovitch but a large majority of the audience doesn't appreciate the like. I think the HIP movement and the movement toward "early music" as a whole as well as the shift toward Modern and Contemporary music outside the usual Romantic/Early Modernist realm among many smaller musical "groups" is part of the same trend toward specialization. Gerald Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony are not likely to rival the Berlin Philharmonic or the Vienna Philharmonic in the performance of Wagner, Bruckner, or Mahler... but they can succeed in recording a repertoire that the BPO wouldn't touch.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sid James
#30 ·
I agree with the gist of the rest of your post but I question this part -
...
Does it? You and I and many others may look forward to music that breaks outside of the confines of the symphonic warhorses from Mozart through Shostakovitch but a large majority of the audience doesn't appreciate the like ...
It's a chicken and egg thing. How do you know if they don't appreciate it if they don't know it. About 30 years ago, I doubt anybody knew Arvo Part's music here in Australia (I'm talking about listeners of classical music, of course). Now he's the most played composer here in live format and also on radio as far as contemporary music goes. Basically you have to be living under a rock if you don't know him, at least a couple or a few pieces of his, if you're into the classical. Now people know him but it's been like 30 years of his music being played live here, esp. in say the last 10 years. A thing kind of obscure here 30 years ago or maybe even 20 years ago, is now almost cliche. This is what I'm saying. If orchestras don't put less warhorsey things out there, it's like Rumsfeld's famous quote of "known knowns, unknown knowns, and unknown unknowns."

(of course there's other issues, eg. it's cheaper to play things out of copyright, but as with the Arvo Part example goes, it can become good for business, it can sell cd's like hotcakes, but it does take time and effort, a bit harder than just playing the same old same old things, year in year out, and on tour)...
 
#31 ·
There is a video of an open-air concert with Jansons and BPO. When they start playing Bartok's Suite from Miracleous Mandarin some members of the auditorium had facial expressions: "what's this?"

***
I am more dissapointed with the fact that Metzmacher left DSO-Berlin. He should make THEM an orchestra playing XX century repertoir. I am afraid Sokhiev will not do it DSO is an excellent orchestra and it will be bad if they will turn to Tchaikovsky or something. I want to hear more XX century music, at least at my trips to EU.

***
Still, I was quite serious telling you about Ari Rasilainen. He lives in Germany, he has expierence in non-standart XIX century and XX repertuir, he is not busy and his is not old.
 
#37 · (Edited)
There is a video of an open-air concert with Jansons and BPO. When they start playing Bartok's Suite from Miracleous Mandarin some members of the auditorium had facial expressions: "what's this?"...
Well I'm not surprised, but to give them credit the BPO have done some newer things live and it was recorded for the cinemas in their HD series that came here, eg. Takemitsu & I think things like Nino Rota as well, if my memory is correct. But these things were more in-between tokens of the warhorses. If they're the worlds finest orchestra or whatever, why don't they play something like Carter's Concerto for Orchestra? Maybe on a program with older works in the genre, eg. by Bartok or Lutoslawski, that would be interesting programming. A similar thing happened here 20 years ago, but on the whole our flagship groups, as far as I can tell have gone predictable and conservative (I tuned out of the big name groups years back, I now support the smaller & groups with lower profile with my patronage, they do more interesting, imaginative and let's fact it BETTER programming, not just warhorses).

So basically, if you're "the best," then prove it. Otherwise you're not "the best" but just resting on your laurels, aren't you? & I think relevance is an issue, not just being the top of the pile, or the top of the conservative's pile or list, more like it...
 
#32 ·
I don't recall hearing that Chailly "ditched" the Gewandhaus orchestra; he seems
very happy there and the orchestra and conductor have a good rapport .
There are, however, rumors that he might be the next man for the Boston symphony
after Levine's unfortunate but necessary decision to resign there .
If Christian Thielemann were not about to become general music director in Dresden ,
he would be a good choice for the B.P.O.
 
#33 ·
You're quite right, superhorn - my mistake. On checking things a second time I find he only left Leipzig Opera (hopefully I'm not wrong here either!).
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top