Status: 12.01.2024, 15:00 PM
By: Markus Thiel
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Thomas Hengelbrock conducted the BR Symphony Orchestra in the Herkulessaal. © Astrid Ackermann
The BR Symphony Orchestra also started its Brahms cycle - with stand-in Thomas Hengelbrock, who took over for Herbert Blomstedt. It sounded juicy and powerful, sometimes puzzling.
For decades, he didn't dare. He remained in hiding, tried his hand at other genres – until Johannes Brahms sat down to write his first symphony in the oversized shadow of Beethoven. As is well known, it bursts loose with a merciless timpani rhythm, above which a long gesture of despair in the strings. If you want, you can read autobiographical information out of it. Thomas Hengelbrock doesn't care about this throbbing rhythm. In the Hercules Hall, he prefers to occupy himself with the shaping of phrases and developments, in other words, with the big picture. Pilot signals and precise interventions, which this attitude also signals in the further course of the evening, is hardly needed by a noble troupe like the BR Symphony Orchestra.
Tight tempos and a hot-running finale
The fact that Hengelbrock comes from the early music scene is not necessarily evident in the first and second symphonies here. The tight tempos are most likely to speak for this – which goes so far that the finale of the second runs hot in an overflowing furor. Hengelbrock aims to degrease the sound. But the result is not necessarily delicate: this Brahms comes from the music booth. The guest gives space to the solos, but also pauses in tasteful rubati. Otherwise, Hengelbrock brings quite a train into the evening, the graceful Allegretto of the First sounds like a loose trot across a meadow of flowers. In the finale, he gladly accepts the offers from the orchestra, and the famous anthemic melody is allowed to unfold quite naturally. In any case, it is rare for the first to be played with its theatrical final cracker before the break. But the BR is relying entirely on the correct sequence for its Brahms cycle, which was originally to be conducted by Herbert Blomstedt – in the coming week, Simone Young will be in charge of numbers three and four.
In the meantime, his colleague Hengelbrock is also puzzling: as vehement and substantial as Brahms sounds, much of it is fleeting to the point of unsteadiness – which is largely due to the percussion technique. Only rarely does Hengelbrock appear centered and grounded. It is a sudden, selective sorrow that one pursues. Even for the BR Symphony Orchestra, this is not always easy. Even with repertoire hits like these, such a weatherproof ensemble would need more orientation and structure. Or Buddhist sovereignty, as Zubin Mehta is cultivating in his Brahms cycle with the Munich Philharmonic.