Sublime Sounds

By Michael Walsh

Berlin goes to Carnegie

Of the world's great orchestras, which is the best? Some say the Chicago Symphony, for its brilliant virtuosity and blazing brass. Others nominate the Vienna Philharmonic, for its rich, burnished tone, or the Philadelphia Orchestra, for the sheen of its strings. The Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra has its champions, who admire its crisp ensemble playing. But there is one orchestra that combines all these characteristics: Herbert von Karajan's Berlin Philharmonic, which went to New York City's Carnegie Hall last week for the first time in six years, and in four sold-out concerts promptly laid claim to the laurels.

In the warm Carnegie acoustics, which can shelter a whispering flute and accommodate a thunderous fortissimo, the Berliners showed off the strengths that have made them the class of world-class ensembles. First there are the string sections, violins, violas, cellos and basses, which play together as one, producing a dark, creamy sound unsurpassed in lushness and sheer beauty. The brasses gleam like the finest gold, with especially choice nuggets among the horns. And there are the woodwinds, blending their highly distinctive sounds together like expert chamber musicians. In concert, the Berlin Philharmonic becomes a single instrument, devised by a craftsman on the order of a Stradivarius, played by a consummate virtuoso.

And no wonder. In the 100 years of its existence, the Berlin has had only four principal music directors, each a master. Hans von Buelow, an eminent pianist and one of the first great conductors, exposed the fledgling orchestra to the great composers of the day, among them Strauss, Tchaikovsky and Grieg. His successor Arthur Nikisch, who led the Philharmonic from 1895 to 1922, inspired a rapturous comment from the demanding Tchaikovsky. "He doesn't conduct," said the composer. "He seems to surrender himself to some mysterious magic force." Wilhelm Furtwaengler instilled in the orchestra a sense of musical adventure, leading mercurial performances that unfolded with an unsurpassed sense of discovery for some 30 years.

Under Karajan's fiercely perfectionist leadership, the Berlin has been refined into an infinitely supple, responsive ensemble. At first cast in the uncompromising mold of Toscanini, Karajan, 74, drilled his orchestra until its virtuosity was unquestioned. Later Karajan moved toward Furtwangler's ideal of fluidity, and his music making took on a greater spaciousness. In works from Beethoven through Mahler, Karajan knows few peers, and no superiors. In honor of the orchestra's centenary, Deutsche Grammophon in September released a six-volume, 33-disc set of memorable recordings, tracing the Philharmonic from the Nikisch days through Karajan's latest digital recordings.

The New York performances (the orchestra will also perform in Pasadena, Calif.) found both Karajan and the Berlin in peak form. The opening-night An Alpine Symphony put the orchestra's fabled virtuosity at the service of Strauss's last, underrated tone poem for an exhilarating trip up the mountain top. In the four Brahms symphonies, Karajan emphasized the richness of Brahms' sonorities in expansive readings that found room for visceral thrills when the opportunities arose; the high-spirited brass peroration that concludes the Second Symphony is probably still echoing somewhere in Carnegie Hall's rafters, joining the ghosts of performances past that inhabit the upper reaches of the historic auditorium.

Limping from a fall four years ago and suffering from a chronic back ailment, Karajan looks far frailer than he did on his previous U.S. appearance: a small, fragile man with a shock of swept-back white hair who pulls himself up to the podium with difficulty. But his command of the orchestra has never been surer, nor his conducting so infused with the wisdom that comes with age. After a century of excellence, the Berlin Philharmonic shows no signs of advancing years, only greater maturity. --By Michael Walsh

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