Rattle on fire, even if you can't hum Bruckner

British concertgoers had the chance, earlier this week, to bid farewell to the partnership between the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and it’s conductor since 1999, Sir Simon Rattle.

Two concerts at the Southbank Centre over two nights offered the hallmarks of Rattle’s tenure in the German capital – programmes combining classic works and new ones. The Other Half and I were fortunate enough to have been able to book decently-priced tickets just a few days earlier, having struggled to find anything that seemed affordable some months earlier.

The first concert saw the UK premiere of Hans Abrahamsen’s Three Pieces for Orchestra, followed by Bruckner’s ninth symphony.

The former was really short, but fascinating. The composer was influenced by Steve Reich in particular, and it certainly reflects such minimalism, while also involving incredibly complex rhythms – particularly in the third piece.

Understated in so many ways, it was a fascinating piece – and one that will make me look up the composer.

Bruckner’s ninth is … well, it was unfinished and it is big (arguably overlong) and is loud. Those were my impressions last year when we saw/heard Bernard Haitink conduct the LSO at the Barbican in the same work. Context: oddly (or perhaps not) that was just after my mother’s funeral. This concert came as I am arranging my father’s funeral. Which will doubtless ensure that it sticks in my mind in terms of this music.

Last year was a performance that seemed merely loud. This had far, far more nuance – though it’s still overlong as piece. I am not knowledgable about relative acoustics, so I cannot know whether those of the Royal Festival Hall or the Barbican are better.

But one thing was clear, though – the orchestra’s sound.

On both the contemporary and the Romantic, the Berlin’s sound was simply superb. British orchestras have historically been let down by the string playing, but have improved greatly in recent years. Yet when you hear a band like this, you experience something that is a step into something special. And shimmering strings are an enormously important way to judge an orchestra.

Rattle’s German years come with mixed results – his recording with the Berlin of Orff’s Carmina Burana is pretty dreadful – but he is happy to experiment with new music and with the interpretation of less-new music.

Classical music should not be an ant encased in amber – it needs the likes of Rattle to make it live in the here and now, so personally, I’m ready to deal with the negative results of that.

This Bruckner gave me a sense of the piece being worth the effort. It was also a good moment to remember that Rattle had, as a precondition of his appointment, ensured that all the musicians got a wage rise after years of declining pay; that he took the band into schools and that he gurned it into a foundation, to remove it from all political control.

Rattle might not be a Karajan (who could be?), but his legacy in Berlin will be a very long and important one. The English in particular might have a suspicion of anything intellectual/high cultural, but Rattle is someone we should celebrate and hopefully, his tenure at the LSO will help further boost classical music on this side of the Channel.

Uchida and Haitink prove a massive hit

Mitsuko Uchida – musical genius

There are too few days and too few hours and two few minutes, of course, but having said all that, I don’t go to enough concerts.

It was 2008 when we managed to catch one of Daniel Barenboim’s cycle of Beethoven sonata concerts at the Royal Festival Hall.

As the music began, everything else simply disappeared: imagine being at the centre of a leap to warp speed in an episode of Star Trek. There was just Barenboim, his piano and me.

It was the most personal experience that I have ever had – and light years away from listening to any recording, no matter how good. It took Beethoven away from the polite academics and restored to him the passion and the fire that saw him build the bridge that led from the Classical period to the Romantic one.

Last night, at London’s Barbican, the experience was not much different, as the London Symphony Orchestra, with Bernard Haitink in charge and Mitsuko Uchida at the keyboard, gave us old Ludwig’s piano concerto 3 in C minor.

Penned in 1800, it was first performed in 1803 with the composer as soloist. In three movements – conventional at the time – but when it was premiered, the composer had barely sketched in the final stages of the final movement and played them from memory.

Thus it was an ‘unfinished’ work.

Here, Uchida gave us a performance of exquisite playing: firm and yet light of touch; music to set the nerves tingling; perfect phrasing and a glorious sense of the ebb and flow of the piece. And alike absolutely heaving with emotion.

The second movement in particular was simply sublime.

And the orchestra, with which I have been less than enthralled on previous occasions – not least during during Valery Gergiev’s time, as he actively wrecked his own reputation as some sort of conducting ‘great’ – was on very fine form under the vastly more restrained but powerful baton of Haitink.

At 88, there are no wasted gestures from the maestro. If he has to take it slow moving between podium and back stage, it is without doubt clear that he retains the knowledge and musical understanding of decades.

That really is the best that I have heard from the LSO – and that was a band that, during the second half, need a bunch of its horn players top switch to Wager tubas.

Bernard Haitink – musical genius

Note: they’re not really part of the tuba family but they are fabulous in tone.

Acoustically, incoming director Simon Rattle has supported a new concert venue for the capital and the LSO, on the grounds of the acoustics, being not great.

For the Beethoven, in my opinion, they were superb. For the Bruckner – one could tell he has a point ; certainly when a full-blown Romantic sound is required.

It was a really fine performance. This is big music. We have eight French horns that become four – and then four Wagner tubas (which are mis-named), but which, irrespective of name, have a fabulous richness of tone.

Bruckner, dying as he was, dedicated this work to God. Yet it has a sense of raging against the fading light, before the sweet and calm resolution with which we are left (this too was unfinished).

Fabulous stuff, certainly, though one could be forgiven for having a sense that the composer enjoyed a certain post-Wagner sense of creating ‘noise’ rather than ‘music’.

Not that that is bad under the circumstances, but it does suggest a dying of the romantic light.

Still, we are left with only one conclusion – that in such a venue, Beethoven, played by one of the world’s greats, sounds better than a lesser work.

And if you ever needed an incentive to get to a concert – take it from this. Because the experience is beyond what most get to know.