KIRILL PETRENKO. WHO?

Kirill Petrenko.  Not exactly a household name, I know, but it soon will be among music lovers everywhere.  Petrenko is the new Chief Conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker (Berlin Symphony Orchestra), considered by many to be the world’s finest symphony orchestra.  (I’m so happy to live here!)

My first introduction to Petrenko came via a poster in the U-bahn announcing a free open air concert by the Berlin Symphony playing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony under the direction of Kirill Petrenko at Brandenburg Gate at 8 pm on Saturday, August 24th.

Although I had never heard of Petrenko, I was very familiar with Beethoven’s Ninth (who isn’t?) and I was eager to go.  But admission to the concert was at 6 pm and attendance was limited to the first 20,000 people.  Worse, last Saturday was a very warm day in Berlin, close to 90 degrees and still quite warm by early evening.  So we reluctantly decided to opt out of standing around for two hours on hot asphalt and chose instead to live-stream the concert at home.  What we lost in person we gained in comfort, acoustics, and visibility.

It was a perfect evening, warm, clear rose-tinted skies framing a dramatically lit open-air stage with the monumental Brandenburg Gate as its backdrop and a sea of transfixed music lovers as far as the eye could see.  Petrenko, a slight, impish man, took the stage, nodded curtly to the crowd, grinned broadly at the orchestra, and raised his baton.  Then all beauty broke loose! 

The concert was very emotional, uplifting, and joyful.  They don’t call the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth the Ode to Joy for nothing.  As the camera panned the faces of the crowd, you could see that each listener was rapt and enraptured.  As the music flowed, my eyes filled with tears and I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the perfect communication between Beethoven and Petrenko, between Petrenko and his orchestra, and between the orchestra and its audience.  This was no game of telephone where each retelling loses something of the original.  This was an uninterrupted, unadulterated flow of what is perhaps the most abstract of all the art forms—music—from the creator to the listener, perfectly mediated.

And then there was Petrenko himself.  He’s a mysterious, mischievous little elf of a man who draws magic, not just music, out of his orchestra.  He feels the music.  His body paints the music.  His face tells the music.  It’s a rare and wonderful thing to behold a person who is so completely at one with his work.  There is no separation between him and the score.  He is the score.  And the orchestra knows it and responds to it in full measure.  At times it seemed that their mutual confidence was so strong that Petrenko didn’t conduct the orchestra so much as let it find its own way.  At the end of the second movement, for example, Petrenko “gave the baton” to the orchestra, letting it fall still at his side.  He leaned forward directly into the strings and the woodwinds and he just let them play.  It seemed so risky, but it was requited love and the mutual trust and respect showed in the performance.  

The bond between conductor and orchestra is uniquely strong in Berlin.  Ours is a self-governing orchestra and the only one that selects its own maestro.  When Petrenko was chosen in 2015, after Simon Rattle announced he would not renew his contract after its expiry in 2018, Petrenko had played with the orchestra just three times, but they were wowed.  So was Petrenko, saying in a statement published on the symphony’s website

Words cannot express my feelings – everything from euphoria and great joy to awe and disbelief. I am aware of the responsibility and high expectations of me, and I will do everything in my power to be a worthy conductor of this outstanding orchestra. Above all, however, I hope for many moments of artistic happiness in our music-making together which will reward our hard work and fill our lives as artists with meaning.

A musician’s musician, not a showman; rather, a fellow artist.   Here’s a video link to what his fellow artists at the Berliner Philharmoniker say about their choice: 

 

There’s not much yet written about Petrenko.  His Wiki bio is slim and he avoids interviews like the plague.  He was born on February 11, 1972 in Omsk, Siberia to a violinist father and musicologist mother.  He studied piano there and debuted as a pianist at age 11.  When he was 18, his family, Russian Jews, emigrated to Austria where he continued his musical studies, eventually embarking on a career in conducting.  He is currently the General Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich through the 2020-2021 season, although he will now appear only as a guest conductor, given that his tenure in Berlin commenced on August 19, 2019.  (Quite a birthday present to me!)  This appointment is Petrenko's first to a chief conductorship of a symphony orchestra not affiliated with an opera company.

Petrenko is notoriously shy and eschews self-promotion.  He’s more interested in the music.  As the Guardian put it:

What’s obvious for anyone who has seen him live is the incandescent intensity he brings to his performances. Unlike the more obvious stars among today’s youngish maestros, Petrenko’s depth of feeling seems connected to a searching musical intelligence, as well as an unmistakable sense of personal connection with the works he programmes.

Where Rattle brought a musical and social revolution to Berlin, transforming the orchestra’s repertoire and its relationship with its audiences and the diverse communities of the city, thanks to the continuing projects he established, Petrenko will bring something apparently simpler, but no less potentially profound: an absolute focus on the music he is conducting, and a desire to make every concert scale the heights of musical and expressive experience. If that’s enough for a chief conductor in today’s world – or the world of 2018 – remains to be seen. But in choosing Petrenko, the Berlin players are defiantly, boldly, and rightly, putting the music first.

 

It’s safe to say, then, that the people who know him best are the musicians with whom he works.  Here is what some of them have to say about Petrenko, per the New York Times:

 

“He is such a winning person, but so shy,” said Nikolaus Bachler, the general manager of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, who gave Mr. Petrenko his first job more than two decades ago, at the Vienna Volksoper. When the State Opera, where Mr. Petrenko is finishing an acclaimed period as music director, wanted a portrait of him, it went with a video installation that showed only his hands, conducting Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung.”

Behind the scenes, musicians adore working with him — the star tenor Jonas Kaufmann said there was nobody more reassuring in the pit when something went awry — but few seem to know him well.

“I once forced him to drink a beer with me,” Mr. Kaufmann said. When Mr. Petrenko wanted to chat one night about an upcoming project, Mr. Kaufmann suggested a beer across the street after the performance.

“He came, he ordered a teeny-weeny beer, and then he talked,” Mr. Kaufmann recalled. “He had maybe 10 minutes to talk, and didn’t touch the beer. Then he took the beer, drank it in one” — Mr. Kaufmann mimed a swig — “and said, ‘O.K., have a nice evening.’”

I don’t know about you, but I find this refreshing and totally endearing. 

Even rehearsals with Petrenko can be inspiring.  Here’s what a member of the Berliner Philharmoniker said about rehearsing the Ninth with Petrenko, per the New York Times:

At the first rehearsal for Beethoven’s Ninth, Mr. Petrenko made a proposal: If the players observed all the dynamic markings in their scores, they would be able to delve more deeply into other areas.

“He said, ‘Please, if we can just do this, then we can talk about the things that aren’t on the page,’” said Matthew Hunter, a violist. “Those are the things we really want to talk about.”

Mr. Petrenko moved easily between the details of the score and discussions of Beethoven and Kant, ideas of the infinite, and Mr. Petrenko’s belief that the symphony reflected not only the positive aspects of humanity — it is, of course, famous for the “Ode to Joy” — but the negative, too. He described a pause in its final movement as a moment of silence for the dead, the fallen, the murdered. And he took special care to make sure the chorus could be heard when it sang “stürzt nieder” (“fall down”).

“If I counted the number of times I’ve played the Ninth, is it 99 times?” Mr. Hunter said. “How many times can you shed a tear? I found new tears.”

  

And so did I, and it felt so good to feel so happy about something so beautiful.  For a change.  Thank you, Beethoven.  Thank you, Maestro Petrenko.  Thank you, Berliner Philharmoniker.  

If you'd like to listen to the concert, copy and paste the link below into your browser.

 https://www.rbb-online.de/fernsehen/beitrag/berliner-philharmoniker-open-air-2019.html

Keep it real!

Marilyn