Daniel Barenboim is at Carnegie Hall with the Staatskapelle Berlin conducting a Bruckner Symphony Cycle. So all is well with the world, except for the choice of music. Which is only to say that, of the three composers famous for writing nine symphonies, Bruckner would be our third choice. But I was in attendance for Bruckner’s best, or at least most likeable symphony—the seventh in E major. And the concert began with Mozart’s incomparable Sinfonia concertante, which could have redeemed anything short of a major disaster. (And there was fortunately no Schoenberg on the program.)
Thanks to the extraordinary generosity of a friend, I found myself in the first box of the first balcony—right above the stage, within easy throwing distance of Barenboim directly off his right shoulder. I could see Barenboim’s every gesture and expression. He was dressed, von Karajan-style, in lapel-lacking tailcoat and tie-lacking white collar, and resembled a nineteenth-century Midwestern preacher who had forgotten his hat. He is seventy-four years old, with gentle tufts of white hair, but his energy and command on the rostrum would have been extraordinary for a young man. He teased things out of his orchestra—crouching and crumbling the music in his hands like a giant cookie, or laboriously pulling hand over hand and then shoving everything he had received back at his players. Watching Barenboim conduct was such an experience by itself that one wishes he would give his future performances facing the audience, as Leonard Bernstein once did pedagogically in his Young People’s Concerts.
The Mozart was so enjoyable that even the orchestra had a good time—the strings chuckled and giggled for an instant at the conclusion of the first movement. (The French horns were somewhat more taciturn, but perhaps felt out of place in a German orchestra.) The Sinfonia concertante is for chamber orchestra and features of pair of soloists, violin and viola. The viola is deeper and more luscious but less prominent than the violin, so Mozart wrote the viola part in D and instructed the soloist to tune up to E-flat, which puts extra tension on the strings and adds bite and brilliance. The violist, Yulia Deyneka, gave a superbly spirited performance, somewhat outshining the principal violin. The final movement was a bravura rendition, as up-tempo as I have ever encountered, and brought out every ounce of brisk, Mozartian joie de vivre.
Bruckner is anything but brisk, but he does have impressive feel for the depth and tonal quality of a symphony orchestra. The ensemble expanded to its full size for his Symphony No. 7, adding the powerful brass section to which Bruckner was devoted following his overexposure to Wagner. The Staatskapelle brass is particularly memorable for having a tuba player who is shaped exactly like a tuba. (My friend remembered him from the Staatskapelle’s last tour in New York, which may well make him the most memorable tubaist of all time.)
Bruckner’s seventh symphony is stately, at times intensely beautiful, often verbose. The scherzo has wonderful, if rather un-Brucknerian drive, somewhat reminiscent of Schubert’s great scherzo from his “Death and the Maiden” string quartet in d minor. The Staatskapelle performed it with exceptional panache.
The most memorable moment may have come, oddly enough, at the first movement’s tremulous emergence from silence: The opening chord was interrupted by a late cough from the audience. Barenboim lowered his baton in exasperation and the orchestra lowered their instruments. He turned around, pressed a white handkerchief to his mouth, and coughed—to the apparent delight of the crowd. He is a felt force in the concert hall, and his overwhelming personality as much as his conducting was subsequently awarded a standing ovation and five curtain calls. I later heard a Brucknerphile complain that the performance failed to “catch fire.” I didn’t think so. It was probably the most enjoyable concert I ever attended, and one of the best.
Daniel Gelernter is CEO of the tech startup Dittach and an occasional contributor to The Weekly Standard.
