<<  -- 6 --  Bill Newman    BERLIN FESTIVAL DIARY

The spotlight was on Viktoria Mullova to make amends with Berg's heartrending Violin Concerto, the province of past virtuosi but the product of several diverging present-day interpreters. Her performance left me cold, with sharply contrasting tempi completely out of context. Nagano whipped up the tempi for the orchestral apotheosis after the start of the second movement rather like a Strauss Tone Poem, but from the Bach Chorale statement, sanity set in.

Enter Sir Simon Rattle, Director Designate of the Berlin Philharmonic. Concertgoers were arriving in their coach loads. Yes, the orchestra play like angels for him, but that is the special secret of his success. The vibrancy of tone -- sharply etched yet glowing with prismatic colourings -- was clearly evident from the very beginning of Janácek's orchestral rhapsody Taras Bulba, certainly not the more usual species of performance you hear by Czech masters such as Talich, Bakala, Neumann, Pesek or Altrichter, but re-evaluated, heightened tensions providing full sonorities to Janácek's mesmeric scoring.

I wonder whether the first oboe objected to Rattle's exact phrasing directions from the rostrum? That is his way, like it or not, and the audience lapped it up! Psychologically, one waits for the build-up to the final section of the piece to obtain that ultimate burst of glory that signifies that death should not eradicate past triumphs, but in this instance, the hero's strife sequences intermingling with love for one's homeland were spotlit as a self-contained unit from the score's outset, and set me wondering.

Glagolitic Mass featured the Prague Philharmonic Choir, soloists Elzbieta Szmytka, Marietta Simpson, Graham Clark and Michail Ryssov, with Thomas Trotter revelling in his solo role as organist. You will not hear a more exciting, more accurate performance anywhere at any time, yet somehow I thought it too overwhelming in many aspects. I wonder how Sir Simon will perform the work in years to come?

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