Proms 55 and 56: Berlin Philharmonic/Petrenko – spellbinding magic

Double bass pizzicatos that land hushed and heavy like the start of a summer rainstorm. Upper strings creeping in with the slow squeeze-and-release of repeated suspensions. Then silence. A massive blast of full orchestra, brass-heavy and gut-throbbing. Then more silence. Each statement left to hang as the Royal Albert Hall’s dome worked its weird magic.
It’s the tone quality that hits you first with the Berlin Philharmonic: like a shot of adrenaline if you’re in the direct firing line of the superb lower brass. More subtly as woodwind soloists breathe life into the smallest melodic fragment and the string sections cohere as if born to play as one. This is the stuff the orchestra’s reputation is made of. In the fragmented opening of Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony, the payback was obvious – its stoppages all the stranger for halting such sumptuousness.
But pacing is also crucial to make sense of this symphony’s sprawling architecture. There were moments when chief conductor Kirill Petrenko simply stood back and watched, only to catch the end of a phrase and drive it onwards. He found an elegant dance hidden deep in the slow revolutions of the second movement and a Mahler-ish suavity in the Austrian folk-oompah of the third. In the counterpoint-strewn finale, Petrenko kept Bruckner’s fugal small print in perspective – all of it part of the long journey to the work’s monumental close.
The composer’s 200th birthday has made for more Bruckner than usual at this year’s Proms, although the first of the Berlin Phil’s two Proms was this season’s only outing for his direct contemporary Smetana, also celebrating his 200th. Saturday’s concert was a rare opportunity to hear Smetana’s cycle of symphonic poems Má vlast in its six-part entirety.
The second movement Vltava – easily the best known in the UK – was a masterclass in delivering a big tune and another moment at which Petrenko stepped back to let the orchestra do its thing. The opening flutes were liquid, their dialogue seamless. The strings surged in waves crested by luminous brass. But it was in the less familiar movements that the orchestra came into its own, the balance grounded in velvet foundations of tuba and double bass. Throughout, Petrenko controlled the dynamics and intensity of tone as if using studio sound controls not a baton, the orchestra acutely responsive to his gestures. At times, he moved on the podium as if dancing with them, swept along by one of Smetana’s many polkas.
Both concerts began in another soundworld. The second, with three of Bruckner’s unaccompanied motets performed with exquisite taste by the BBC Singers under Owain Park. The first with Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor with Víkingur Ólafsson, the orchestra playing with the nimble airiness of an entirely different ensemble. Ólafsson grappled with the work’s cascading octaves and fistfuls of figuration with ease, turned towards the orchestra in an intimate, joyous exchange. His encore – the Adagio from Bach’s Organ Sonata No 1 – was spellbinding: his absolute control met by absolute silence from the auditorium.