I went to another concert by the Berlin Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall to hear the new York premiere of Georg Haas' "dark dreams". Exactly. The piece is powerful and intense; sounding somewhat like the Ligeti of the late 60's; but with a darker and more Germanic heft, and certainly some of the sound of the French spectralists. Enormous clouds of dissonant sound came and went; the reverberations in Carnegie Hall were like nothing I have ever heard before. Microtones buzzed, gongs rattled, and the strings ascended into the stratosphere. When you get the whole Berlin Philharmonic playing triple fortissimo with microtones, you feel it. Though it felt at times over portentous, I still like the piece a lot. Haas was there to take his bows, and there was a wonderful competition between the bravos and the boos, which almost sounded Hassian in its shifting intensity.
Presumably the boos were from the people who came to hear the rest of the program, Schumann's 3rd and 4th symphonies. The performances of both symphonies were wonderfully visceral and precise at the same time; Rattle brought out a lot of interesting harmonic and rhythmic details, and made me want to listen to the symphonies again. The last movements in both symphonies were particularly exciting, though I think in the 3rd (the last), Schumann was already becoming quite crazy.
A bit of "dark dreams" on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOsFs39rnFc
(It is worth noting that of the four programs that the Berlin Philharmonic played in this visit, only the opening gala had a concerto; the rest were concerto-free, and sold out. In North America, most orchestral programmers require a concerto in every program, along with a face to sell to the audience. How much better would orchestras be if they spent the extravagant fees paid to soloists like Wang Wang and Yo Mama on orchestral rehearsals? Not that I don't like concerti, I just wish they weren't obligatory.)
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