The Elbphilharmonie concert hall celebrates a triumphant first five years

When the Elbphilharmonie opened on January 17, 2017, Germany was still reeling from the shock of the terrorist attack on a Berlin Christmas market that killed twelve people on December 19, 2016. Five years later, the The country wakes up alarmed day after day with the shocking figures of deaths that the coronavirus continues to leave. In Hamburg, all bars, restaurants and nightlife venues have to close by law at eleven o'clock, and even before that time hardly a soul is seen on the street. To access the interior of almost any site, they require a certificate with three or two vaccinations plus a negative test carried out in the last 24 hours.The impressive police deployment of the inauguration in 2017 (which was attended by the then Chancellor Angela Merkel and the then Federal President Joachim Gauck, who exclaimed in his speech "Listen now everyone, everyone!") has given way in these first bars of 2022 to suspicious glances, and even warnings (“

”) of the most fearful, if they think that someone approaches them more than necessary during the long queues generated by the controls: not police, like the very strict ones after the attacks, but health workers.

In the midst of this strange atmosphere, the Elbphilharmonie (or

, as it has been popularly renamed for short) has wanted to celebrate its fifth anniversary with the dual purpose – it seems – of remembering its achievements and cheering people up. The first translates into indisputable figures: more than 2,500 concerts held until the world stopped in March 2020, with almost three million spectators. As its open-access vantage point, La Plaza, offers spectacular views of the city and the Elbe (if you look out over the horizon from above, the auditorium seems to be literally floating on water), it has become a magnet for visitors. tourists and it is estimated that in March this year there will be 15 million visits, at a rate of three million per year.

The room is also located in what is probably a unique example of urban redevelopment and regeneration of a long-deprived area, now known as HafenCity (Port City), so the irresistible pull of Elphi has been compared to the effect it has had in Bilbao the construction of the Guggenheim museum: a strictly cultural building that becomes, overnight, the quintessential tourist icon of a city that until then lacked it. Since the construction of the Elbphilharmonie, overnight stays by tourists in Hamburg have increased by more than 15%. The former coffee and cocoa warehouse, a simple and nondescript brick building, is now a tall ship moored on the Elbe that attracts all eyes: “the most beautiful ship that has ever been put to sea”, as its quartermaster declared. ,Christoph Lieben-Seutter, at the opening ceremony.

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A portentous auditorium docks in the port of Hamburg

The celebration could not be carried out, however, according to the initial designs: nothing new in these times, moreover.

Two performances of

, the extraordinary oratorio composed expressly for the opening week of 2017 by Jörg Widmann, have had to be canceled for fear of contagion in the gigantic staff of singers and instrumentalists it requires, just as the April an installation with hundreds of illuminated drones surrounding the building designed by the Drift studio (Dutch artists Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta), conceived as a choreography of the slow movement of the

by Thomas Adès, one of the works chosen for the opening commemorative concert, offered on Tuesday, the exact day of the anniversary, and repeated on Wednesday.

Its title,

, inevitably refers to the film by Lars von Trier, although the truth is that the keel of the Elbphilharmonie seems to make its way towards the North Sea breaking the waves of the Elbe: rare is the day that the wind does not blow here strong wind.

Appearance presented by the Elbphilharmonie in the commemorative concert of its fifth anniversary.Daniel Dittus

No one could have predicted then, in 2017, that the first music that would sound in such a room would be that produced by an oboe playing solo from one of the upper galleries

, the first of the

by the British Benjamin Britten. Five years later, not only has no German work been performed, but the four scheduled pieces have been created by living composers: two of them at the end of the 20th century and the others in the first two decades of the 21st. In addition, none of its authors, director or soloists is German and even the last composition was born in its day closely linked to another no less emblematic space: the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the great auditorium designed by Frank Gehry that rivals in modernity with the Elbphilharmonie by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. It could also be argued that the chosen program seems more suitable to show the acoustic benefits of the building (with its walls covered with more than ten thousand plaster fiber panels or "white skin", designed by Yasuhisa Toyota,responsible for the acoustic design of both buildings) than for any celebratory purpose.

For starters, the NDR's Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, as the old North German Radio orchestra has been renamed, played two short fanfares by the American John Adams:

, composed for the sesquicentennial of Texas in 1986, and

, dated that same year and commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony. Although of similar duration, about four minutes each, they are very different from each other and the initial

indication says it all: in the first,

and white equal to 56; in the second, instead,

and a speed almost three times greater, white equal to 148-150. As its title indicates,

It has two solo trumpets, far apart from each other and located “on opposite sides of the stage”.

Alan Gilbert, the director, decided to place them at the top of two facing galleries in the room.

Everything the orchestra plays is a tapestry of sound to envelop the dialogic writing of the two trumpets, and the work progresses with a slightly increasing dynamic until it gently fades away with the very long F sharp of the first trumpet, with a final regulator gradually leading to full orchestra to silence: “

”, writes Adams in the last bar.

Alan Gilbert, Principal Conductor of the NDR's Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, during the concert.Daniel Dittus

Also doing justice to its name, the "brief ride on a fast machine", with a much larger orchestra, is a frenetic journey, beginning with an almost constant rhythm played by a Chinese box and marked

and that, four minutes later, has ended up tripling its dynamics. Gilbert used the two optional synthesizers that the score marks and conducted a work that he knows very well (he has also conducted it, for example, for the Berlin Philharmonic, as can be seen in the Digital Concert Hall) with that adrenaline rush that Adams desires, which was inspired by a personal experience, “exciting and intimidating”, when his brother-in-law invited him for a ride in his Lamborghini: “Do you know what it feels like when someone takes you for a spin in an impressive sports car and then you wish you had said no?"

Alan Gilbert, the son of two New York Philharmonic violinists, has grown up with this repetitive, nightmarishly obsessive music, and feels very comfortable conducting it. John Adams is perhaps the most intellectual of the American minimalists, and his music is often inspired by modern objects: the player pianos in

, the atomic bomb at the end of

, the oil tanker in the first movement of

. Life is, without a doubt, not as symmetrical, nor as regular, nor as consonant as this fanfare presents it, but the public applauded its explosiveness, its conciseness and its ability to put the acoustics of the very young honoree to the test.

Next, the

by Thomas Adès, premiered by the Boston Symphony in 2019 with the same soloist who played it in Hamburg, Kirill Gerstein, although then conducted by the composer himself, it seemed, after the geometric symmetry of Adams, much more complex music than it already is. The British composer writes unmistakably modern works using classical molds and procedures. In his concert, first and second themes, development sections, restatements, cadences (the extraordinary confluence of the piano with two horns at the end of the first movement), imitative contrapuntal passages (the canon of the

ending), jazz influences, passages of an undisguised romanticism, opposing rhythms or an almost chamber orchestration in the second movement. And the work, from the start as a kind of evolved Gershwin, catches you from the first to the last bar. Brilliant and demanding for the soloist, Gerstein, who did not need to look much at the score on an iPad discreetly inserted into the piano, plays the work with a passion, familiarity and involvement rare to see in the performance of contemporary works. Adès is his friend, he knows his music very well and they have frequently collaborated together, but he makes it very difficult for future interpreters of the score. It is hard to believe, for example, that Adès himself, a magnificent pianist, can play it at a level even close to Gerstein's.

Kirill Gerstein appreciates the applause of the public after his extraordinary performance of the solo part of the 'Piano Concerto' by Thomas Adès.Sophie Wolter

Before the enthusiasm of an audience that was undoubtedly listening to the work for the first time, the Russian-American pianist chose a perfect tip:

, by György Ligeti, who lived for years in Hamburg, a city that has an additional connection with this particular piece. After his virtuosic display, Gerstein no longer had anything to prove and played the work as Ligeti requested, slowly, “with elegance and with

”, which bridged part of Adès's musical style, especially in the first movement. , until closing it with those very sharp notes at the very end of the keyboard, almost inaudible, in a quintuple

that ends up getting lost in a “

”, which added a surely involuntary wink to the closing of

that had opened the first part.

In the second, a single work,

, composed by Esa-Pekka Salonen when he was the chief conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Then, in 2004, it served to showcase the wonders of a concert hall, and now it has served the same purpose. It does so in a double way: by the overwhelming sound volume that the orchestra produces and by the use of two coloratura sopranos as instruments that sing from changing locations in four of the ten sections of the work. The singers were the same as the premiere, the Finnish twins Anu and Piia Komsi. The first is closely linked to contemporary music: he recently sang in Madrid the

with her husband, violinist and conductor Sakari Oramo, and it was she who premiered the soprano part of George Benjamin's first opera,

The facility of both to climb the upper register (Salonen makes them rise to a F and it is common to hear them Sis and Dos attacked without preparation and sometimes prolonged for several bars) is constantly exploited by their compatriot.

Anu Komsi, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Piia Komsi, Alan Gilbert and the Elbphilharmonie Orchestra of the NDR wave to the stage at the end of the concert.Sophie Wolter

The problem with this

is that it is more about illustrative music than it is about substance. Instrumented with the wisdom that comes from having conducted orchestras all over the world for a lifetime, Salonen uses metaphors of water and wind, uses the sound of a fish (the big-headed toad) common in the eastern Pacific, makes sound —sampled— the voice of Frank Gehry, uses extreme registers (contrabass clarinet, contrabassoon, bass flute) and seeks special effects, with the use of two

in two opposing galleries. But the purely musical interest, with clear minimalist remnants, is relative. Alan Gilbert conducted it with enormous rhythmic authority and diaphanous gestures. He looks for, and gets, a final tumultuous applause, despite the fact that his tremendous

, culminating in the full orchestra blasting out a frenetic dance beat, is followed by a short epilogue

in which the sopranos—now in their fourth different location, atop the Elbphilharmonie— they sing a simple sustained chord (F-B) before the music fades (again a

) with a timpani roll and Frank Gehry's voice, both almost inaudible.

In the live broadcast of the concert (which can be viewed free of charge on the Elbphilharmonie website) images of the long construction process of Elphi were offered during some sections of the work, as effective as it was dramatic.

Whoever made the decision was totally right: as a soundtrack, as complementary music, it works much better than as a concert piece.

But Salonen, present in the audience, as well as the soloists, the orchestra and the conductor, received enthusiastic and prolonged applause.

The room itself, which had successfully passed the test of absorbing such a sound discharge without impairment, was also being applauded.

Simon Rattle conducts the London Symphony Orchestra at the Elbphilharmonie last Thursday.Daniel Dittus

No orchestra wants to miss out on the experience of playing at Elphi. The first exceptional guest in 2017 was none other than the Chicago Symphony with Riccardo Muti and now the chosen one has been the London Symphony with its chief conductor, Simon Rattle. His concert presented an unusual program, almost a thesis, very much in line with the exploitation of marginal and little-frequented repertoires that Christoph Lieben-Seutter has imposed here. It opened with

, the slow movement discarded by Gustav Mahler for what would become his

. Rattle left his orchestra to do, with several new faces and in excellent shape despite the long months of inactivity, with special brilliance of the trumpet (which carries the lion's share) and oboe soloists. It was an effusive version, without exaggerations or delays, which faded with the same sweetness with which it had begun with the arpeggiated chord of the harp.

Next, the

by Anton Webern, which were part of the famous

held at the Vienna Musikverein on March 31, 1913 and which had to be suspended before the end due to the brawl that was organized in the room. The work is dedicated by Webern in 1909 to the director of that concert, Arnold Schönberg, “my teacher and friend, with the greatest affection”. It is, as always with the Austrian composer, short musical aphorisms: only the third piece has 11 bars, while the fourth, the spiritual center of the series, is limited to 40. In this exercise of containment and essentiality, there is no misses nothing. The five descending notes played by the trumpet at the end of the first piece traced an imaginary bridge with

, just as they would shortly after, in the last five bars of the sixth, the solitary triple piano chords of the celesta and, again, the harp.

Rattle feels very close to this music and achieved a version that is both extremely analytical (almost in the vein of Boulez) and warm (in the manner of Abbado).

Rarely have such extraordinary timbre combinations been imagined as those invented by Webern in this masterpiece.

The London Symphony during their Thursday performance at the Elbphilharmonie.Daniel Dittus

Few of those who filled the room on Thursday will have heard live the

by Hans Rott, a forgotten composer, Mahler's youth friend and Anton Bruckner's student. It seems that the latter was what caused the disapproving comments on his music by Johannes Brahms, the natural antagonist —more by someone else's decision than his own— of Wagner and Bruckner himself. Rott, in failing health, went mad (as would Hugo Wolf and another Mahler youth companion, Anton Krisper) and died at just 25 years old. Rattle has unearthed the

from his

, original music, with foreshadowings of the future Mahler, with traits of the more Viennese Bruckner and also with a surprising anticipation of Richard Strauss's waltzes. As if he wanted to demonstrate everything he was capable of in his first symphonic creation, Rott includes in this impetuous, youthful and at times effervescent music, elements as antithetical as the aforementioned waltz and a fugue near the end. Rattle highlighted his Mahlerian connections, although, according to what was heard, the young Rott had more original ideas than those that sound in the works that the author of

composed at his age .

Compared to the magnificent and risky first part, the second had something of a disappointment. Not because the chosen work was more conventional, Antonín Dvořák

, but because it offered a somewhat monochromatic reading, with an excessive tendency to get carried away by momentum (to the detriment of clarity in the different sections of the orchestra), by an often excessive dynamic and at times (especially in the final

) that bordered on precipitation. It lacked singability, rest, lyricism, calm, although it caught the public's attention so much that its enthusiasm led it to applaud at the end of the first two movements; Rattle avoided the ones that were going to burst for sure after the

by tackling with an

not written

.

With identical fire, the

, also by Dvořák, which the British conductor, who knows it all, preceded by a brief speech mimicking the congratulations made by the conductor on duty and the Vienna Philharmonic at the New Year's Concert.

“The London Symphony and I wish you...”, this time with a slightly changed ending: “

”.

Simon Rattle addresses the audience to wish, along with the musicians of his orchestra, a happy birthday to the Elbphilharmonie.Daniel Dittus

In the festive week there was also room for other music, as is usual in the Elbphilharmonie. Last Sunday the saxophonist Charles Lloyd's quartet played and this Saturday John Scofield will play: nothing less. The Berlin Staatskapelle and Daniel Barenboim will arrive this weekend with Robert Schumann's four Symphonies. The commitment to contemporary creation is resolute and on Wednesday the Ensemble Resonanz (the local group specialized in the music of our time) played in the Small Room with the director Emilio Pomàrico, identical performers to those who inaugurated it five years ago, now with the added luxury of violist Tabea Zimmermann as soloist of the

by Friedrich Cerha and a much more avant-garde program than the one heard at the Symphony Hall, with a premiere by Sarah Mentsov, Milica Djordjević's

, and a version for string orchestra of the

by Anton Webern, natural partner of the

directed the next day by Simon Rattle.

In a private conversation with EL PAÍS, Christoph Lieben-Seutter stated that his main objective remains the same as in 2017: "That no one who enters the Elbphilharmonie leaves disappointed."

He admits that the pandemic is being an unforeseen "accelerator" of trends that were already underway in society as a whole and in the cultural field in particular, while being fully aware that, despite the power exerted by the magnet of the building remains intact, there is still much to be done.

It is the same idea that expresses, in another way, part of the publicity that has been conceived for this unusual event, with photographs of five-year-old boys and girls (you have to imagine that they are from Hamburg) accompanied by the following slogan: “The fifth birthday is not it is more than the beginning”.