It’s almost like back in the days of Karajan’s heyday: “Search Map” queues are building up outside, undeterred hoping until the last ring; Inside, a full house, it’s buzzing and humming, even the special seats high under the roof are occupied this time. The concert in the Philharmonie starts seven minutes late.
Then, when the soloist comes into view, closely followed by the conductor; when the two carefully climbed onto the podium, where the Berlin Philharmonic had already taken their seats, in what is known as the German seating arrangement, for the sake of the repertoire, with the double basses on the left and the second violins on the right, people freaked out for the first time: That we can still experience that!
The jubilation goes to Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim. He’s eighty, she’s a bit older. The two have known each other since their prodigy days in Buenos Aires, they like to perform together, also in the Berlin Philharmonic, but never in this combination, with the Philharmonic on the one hand and Schumann’s A minor Concerto on the other.
That alone is already a sensation. Of course not the last reason for the general excitement. This was triggered in the morning by a press statement by Barenboim, stating that he would resign as general music director of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden at the end of this month, after thirty years, some of them dramatic, some spectacularly successful.
An era comes to an end. Not at all surprising. This is a farewell in installments, which was announced several times last year, in many concerts canceled due to illness. Of course, Barenboim wouldn’t be Barenboim if he didn’t grab fate by the throat. He will continue to play and conduct. But he officially resigns from office and releases “his” Staatskapelle. Which means above all: “He declares this bazaar opened”. From now on, his successor must be negotiated in Berlin.
In this way, the concert in the evening becomes, as everyone says during the break, a “historical concert”. Oh well. At least it’s a matter of the heart. As soon as Argerich and Barenboim have reached the grand piano and desk, they get going. Suddenly they don’t seem fragile anymore. Are no longer eighty and eighty-one and a half, but young and wild. Instead of Tchaikovsky’s concerto in B minor, as originally planned, Argerich plays her favorite concerto, in which Robert Schumann gave the pianist a very peculiar role.
The piano becomes the instigator, distributing light and shadow, diving deep into the orchestra and then breaking out again into new songs, each in dialogue with individual instruments. The first dominant orchestral blow like an ax blow, the opening cascade of the piano like a torrent. The contrasts are breakneck sharp, the agogics of the excessive musical speech, with which Argerich shapes her part, stretched to the breaking point, in total freedom: there is life in it! The Philharmoniker, especially the spotlessly clean Philharmonic woodwind soloists, keep up fantastically. Standing ovations.
As an encore, Argerich and Barenboim serve four hands the eleventh piece from Georges Bizet’s “Jeux d’enfant”, it is called “Petit mari, petite femme”. A funny little thing, Barenboim translates: “Little man, little woman”. After the break he conducts (instead of Lutoslawski’s “Concerto for Orchestra”, as planned) Johannes Brahms’ second symphony, which only appears to be endearingly bucolic. Wallows in timbres, bound in a soft legato, in a continuously calm pulse: Lots of sunny, beautiful passages emerge. But the wild is gone.
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