THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 16, 2019 67
adoxically or not, his supremely con-
fident control. His performances have
struck me as too tightly worked and
lacking in spontaneity. His “Ring” at
Bayreuth in 2013 had a hammering in-
sistence reminiscent, at times, of Georg
Solti’s overbearing approach to the cycle.
A “Parsifal” in Munich last year featured
episodes of astonishing orchestral finesse,
but they drew attention to themselves
instead of propelling the drama. Like-
wise, with Petrenko’s Beethoven and
Tchaikovsky in Berlin and Lucerne, I
felt too aware of his expert management
of each passing moment. I could never
lose myself entirely in the music, even
when I averted my eyes from the con-
ductor’s ostentatious gesturing.
The missing element became clear
when, on another night in Lucerne, An-
dris Nelsons led the Leipzig Gewand-
haus Orchestra in Bruckner’s Eighth
Symphony. Nelsons, who is said to have
been in competition with Petrenko for
the Berlin post, is himself no minimal-
ist with the baton, but his grip is not as
tight: he luxuriates in certain stretches,
almost to the point of losing focus. Pre-
cisely at such moments, his Eighth
achieved the unpredictability of a nat-
ural event unfolding within a vast land-
scape. The Gewandhaus players lacked
the fiendish exactitude of their Berlin
colleagues, but the performance took
on human complexity as a result. Wil-
helm Furtwängler, the flawed genius
who led the Berlin Philharmonic in the
early and mid-twentieth century, used
to say that American orchestras had the
soulless perfection of machines. He
might make the same complaint about
his own ensemble today.
Petrenko is a skilled manager of de-
manding modernist scores, as he showed
in his renditions of the “Lulu Suite” (with
Marlis Petersen singing the soprano
part) and the Schoenberg concerto (with
Patricia Kopatchinskaja as the soloist).
The Schoenberg was, in fact, the best
offering in Petrenko’s first week of con-
certs. Kopatchinskaja’s intensely rhap-
sodic, half-wild approach counterbal-
anced Petrenko’s penchant for control.
The performance became ever more
powerful as it approached the brink of
chaos, without once going over the line.
The Berlin Philharmonic remains a
magnificent musical beast, from its pre-
cisely churning double-bass section to
its silken-toned woodwind soloists and
on to its darkly shining brass. It cannot,
however, retain a position of preëminence
simply on the basis of technical virtuosity;
it should also be serving living compos-
ers, reshaping the repertory, attracting
new audiences. Rattle has been a model
citizen in this regard—he is an engaged
artist who has never adopted the obliv-
ious attitude that music is a self-sufficient
world devoid of social responsibility. Pe-
trenko is free to follow his own path,
but his predecessor left a substantial leg-
acy that is worth preserving.T
he Lucerne Festival, which ends
on September 15th, is a favorite
destination for élite touring orchestras:
this summer will have brought appear-
ances not only by the Berlin Philhar-
monic and the Leipzig Gewandhaus
but also by the Royal Concertgebouw
Orchestra, the West-Eastern Divan Or-
chestra, and the London Symphony
(where Rattle now presides). Star solo-
ists make their rounds. Lucerne also
gives unusual prominence to living com-
posers. In 2003, Michael Haefliger, the
festival director, brought in Pierre Boulez
to found the Lucerne Festival Acad-
emy, which operates as a training pro-
gram for new-music performers. The
venerable German composer Wolfgang
Rihm is now the resident eminence,
overseeing a composer seminar and ad-
vising musicians.
No major Academy events took place
during my visit, but I dropped in on a
rehearsal by the jack Quartet and the
Mivos Quartet, both of which have long
been a part of the Lucerne community.
The players were working with the young
Russian composer Polina Korobkova
on a restlessly experimental piece enti-
tled “E-lec-tri-ci-ty: mystical thriller
for ears.” No one seemed fazed when
Korobkova related a particular passage
in her score to a cryptic hand gesture
employed by Laura Palmer, the protag-
onist of David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks.”
Elsewhere, the British composer George
Benjamin led the Academy orchestra
in a rehearsal of Rihm’s richly convul-
sive “Marsyas.” The aliveness of the at-
mosphere contrasted with the slightly
airless brilliance of the Berlin Philhar-
monic that night. In one setting, the art
was moving forward; in the other, it was
running impressively in place. 844.359.0535
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