Europe

The third stage of Berlin life: falling in love with the Phil

Berlin Letter: The music played through war and dictatorship, division and unification

Herbert von Karajan. Photograph: Lauterwasser/ullstein bild via Getty

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Derek Scally
Thu Aug 26 2021 - 20:00

Goldie Hawn described in The First Wives’ Club as follows the three ages for the Hollywood actress: babe, district attorney and Driving Miss Daisy.

Life as a blow-in Berliner has three stages, too. Stage one is optimistic: everything seems possible, Berlin is so cool. Stage two is fatalistic: nothing seems to work, Berliners are so ignorant. Stage three, which I have entered, is philharmonic: an idle dinner conversation that has now ended with a hallowed “Abo” – subscription – to concerts of what locals lovingly call the Berlin Phil.

Considered the world’s best orchestra – or very close – the Berlin Philharmonic and its chief conductors have, for nearly 140 years, offered Berliners a high-end mix of music and drama that not even the Kardashians could keep up with.

Like that reality TV family, today’s modern glamour masks the orchestra’s scrappy roots: a rebellion of 54 players against their conductor’s plan to send them to Warsaw with fourth-class train tickets.

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The musicians walked out and, under their current name, gave their first Berlin concert on October 17th, 1882, in a converted rollerskating rink, followed by performances in beer gardens and a regular summer gig at a Dutch spa town.

The orchestra’s rebellious birth still defines the self-managing musicians who, despite a public subsidy, still choose their own players and chief conductors.

In an intriguing psychological pattern, however, successive generations of orchestra members have been drawn to strong-willed, even tyrannical musical directors.

The first was the idiosyncratic Hans von Bülow who, after losing his wife Cosima to Richard Wagner, concentrated on polishing up what he called the orchestra’s “goody two-shoes mediocrity”. At performances of Beethoven’s Eroica symphony, he delighted concert-goers during the second, funeral march section by switching from white to black gloves.

Accidentally shot

The era of Wilhelm von Furtwängler began in 1922 but was dominated by the Nazi dictatorship. He refused to fire Jewish musicians or avoid “forbidden” composers such as Mendelssohn and Hindemith, but eventually he and the musicians yielded to the Nazi promise of guaranteed funding. In exchange, Furtwängler and the Berlin Philharmonic provided the musical entertainment at Nazi party rallies, even a Hitler birthday concert.

The orchestra’s hopes of a new start in 1945 ended tragically when their talented new conductor, Leo Borchard, was accidentally shot by a US soldier. It was another decade before the orchestra appointed the man many Berliners view as the greatest-ever chief conductor: Herbert von Karajan.

With a love of fast cars, silk scarves and self-staging, von Karajan used his 33-year era to build a global brand as the dramatic, temperamental modern conductor. Concert audiences and stereo LP buyers alike lapped up the Berlin Philharmonic’s full, lush sound under Karajan’s baton, playing his preferred classical-romantic repertoire.

Their new home from 1963, a golden circus tent-like hall by architect Hans Scharoun, offered perfect acoustics amid growing tensions over who – the orchestra or its chief conductor – was the real star.

The fiery von Karajan once stormed out of rehearsals, telling his shocked orchestra he was going to a Louis Armstrong concert instead, to hear a musician who could keep time.

Rows over power, appointments and money saw an embittered von Karajan retire in 1989, three months before his death, opening the door to the beloved Claudio Abbado.

Transparent sound

Ushering in a new era in the united Berlin, the Italian conductor dispensed with Karajan’s “maestro” theatrics – in person and on the podium. Aided by a new generation of musicians, including more women, their dozen years together shifted from heavy Bruckner and Beethoven towards a lighter, more transparent sound suited to Mahler.

His British successor Simon Rattle won over Berliners by showing how a light-hearted approach to music can still be heavyweight. He told Der Spiegel in 1999: “Most music is tremendously pleasurable; it can’t stand a funereal expression.”

When I finish writing this, I’m heading to the Waldbühne, Berlin’s equivalent of the Hollywood Bowl, for the greatest Berlin Philharmonic tradition: their open-air concert to start the new season.

Anticipation is high given this is many Berliners’ first post-pandemic concert and the orchestra’s first Waldbühne outing with its new chief conductor, Kirill Petrenko.

Music lovers are abuzz over what to expect from the new man: more Abbado luminosity, a return to the more robust Karajan sound?

Listening to these conversations, and inspecting my subscription tickets for the season ahead, I finally understand why this orchestra means so much to people here. Through war and dictatorship, division and unification, Berliners were abandoned by everyone else. But the Berlin Philharmonic stayed, the music played on.