As of: March 18, 2024, 4:49 p.m
By: Markus Thiel
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Sir Simon Rattle at the podium in the Vienna Musikverein.
© Astrid Ackermann
This is what a honeymoon sounds like: The BR Symphony Orchestra traveled to Vienna for two concerts with its chief conductor Sir Simon Rattle.
And he is certain: the new Munich concert hall is coming.
A woman can mess up an entire day.
For example, when she doesn't want to let go of the encores: Martha Argerich, after Ravel's piano concerto in generous form, pushes the Vienna Music Association's schedule to its limits.
Afterwards, the Vienna Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta plays Bruckner's Seventh, and while the last movement floods the hall, the colleagues behind the stage shuffle their feet.
Actually, it would now be the guests from Munich's turn to have their face-off rehearsal.
When the top dogs from the Danube finally leave the stage, there is a lot of confusion in the narrow corridors and rooms, from which - everyone knows each other - a delighted "Servas!" can be heard several times.
In general the mood is great.
It tingles.
That's what it's like when you're on your honeymoon with your newlyweds.
After a detour to Paris, this is the second trip abroad for the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle; it takes you to the Danube for two concerts.
There are musicians whose smiles don't leave their faces even during an emergency concert.
And sometimes it gets very serious, like on Sunday afternoon when Mahler's Sixth, the "Tragic", was played.
The opus in which, including the famous two blows of the hammer, not only a life but a world is destroyed.
Which, by the way, is a kind of response to this weekend's first concert at the Musikverein.
The ORF Symphony Orchestra played Mahler's Ninth, in which everything goes out and fades away - but in a way that was as intense and otherworldly as chief conductor Marin Alsop.
Rattle breathed in Mahler's complex score
At the beginning of the season, the BR Symphony Orchestra performed Mahler's Sixth with Rattle in the Isarphilharmonie.
Now, in the golden wonder hall of the music club, where the sound pushes unhindered into the brain and especially into the stomach, a new adjustment has to be made.
“Not a big brown, please not too fast,” recommends Rattle during the rehearsal.
And: “If it gets too loud, the audience no longer listens, but waits for it to pass.” Rattle will later conduct the complex score from memory.
He breathed in this music and guided the ensemble through the 90-minute session with amazing self-confidence and attention to detail.
He was lured to the BR especially for concerts like this.
This Mahler cannot tolerate a second work at his side.
The evening before they play Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner's “Tristan and Isolde” plus “Aquifier” by Thomas Adés, but especially Beethoven's Sixth.
The performance takes off in the “Scene by the Stream”.
A wonderfully delicate web of pulsating strings and brass dialogues.
Everyone on the podium is in blind agreement, everyone is taking the initiative for the big picture.
Inexplicable minutes are something like that.
Some people get a little pang when Dvořák's seventh Slavic Dance sweeps through the room as an encore - it is one of the favorite encores of boss Mariss Jansons, who died in 2019.
“Dvořák makes everything better,” Rattle announces the ripper in German.
Questioning faces from the orchestra afterwards while eating the schnitzel.
And the clarification the next day: Rattle didn't want to pit Dvořák against Beethoven, he sees him as a sound pill in darker times.
Mahler's Sixth Symphony, among other things, was performed in the Golden Wonder Hall.
© Astrid Ackermann
Because of course there is the matter of the hall.
Of all things, Rattle allows himself to be interviewed after the black hole of Mahler's Sixth.
In the artists' room of the Musikverein after Vienna's notables have paid their respects.
The boss is sitting in a good mood in a green leather armchair, a glass of white wine in his hand.
And is the concert hall in the Werksviertel coming?
A clear yes.
“I'm a long-term optimist.” And the pause for thought that Bavaria's state government once announced around the Prime Minister, who had a limited affinity for culture?
“It's over.” Rattle, he says, had discussions at the turn of the year.
But tearing down walls is not his style. Rattle has accepted that this project will now be scaled down.
“But you can’t go below a certain size and equipment,” he adds.
And: “Nothing in Bavaria happens very fast.” You don’t have to translate that.
Ideal location for Beethoven's Sixth
There are also more important things going on right now.
The fact that an orchestra is enjoying its first season together with its leader is palpable, especially heard.
Even before rehearsals, Rattle is on the podium, chatting.
It's his mixture of charm, determination and loosely placed knowledge that gets caught up in the orchestra's work - even if a gag doesn't work.
Rattle's joke, you soon realize, is a special form of British understatement: when it comes to it, he gets his way.
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The small talk after the concert goes from stick to stick, from the concert hall to the two blows of the gavel about the music club as the ideal location for Beethoven's Sixth and the acoustics ("You have to cook slowly here."), and then there's a knock on the door .
Speech time up.
The next delegation is waiting outside.
It's a kind of crucifixion group.
After Ravel/Bruckner with Argerich/Mehta and Mahler with Rattle/BR, the Vienna Academy under Martin Haselböck is approaching its evening outing - with Bach's St. Matthew Passion.