Hello Gentlemen,
It's Asian Nicole. I had admired the Berlin Philharmonic for a long time. When I heard that Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic took to the stage for two concerts this week at Roy Thomson Hall, as my request, my darling culture professor took me to hear one of the great orchestras in the world on Wednesday night. Wow, impressively nimble orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle’s singular purpose make for thrilling night.
Closing a 23-year gap since the Berlin Philharmonic last performed in Toronto, conductor Sir Simon Rattle closed a 60-year musical cleft between Boulez’s “Éclat” and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 to a sold-out Roy Thomson Hall.
The pieces could not be more different but, placed side by side, Boulez’s modernist math achieves a similar feat to Mahler’s psychedelic roller coaster. The Berlin Philharmonic showed us how it’s done and we are all the better for it.
The Berlin Philharmonic was great because its playing was so transparent, so clear, so approachable, with 100 or so musicians performing as an organism with one heart, one body, one brain. It’s not that the orchestra did not have power, à la the Kirov, or warmth, like Vienna. They demonstrated all these qualities, and more, when needed. But overwhelmingly, they let us experience what happens in an orchestra when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, when everything is balanced to produce a complete effect – and overwhelming is the right word to describe the result.
Wow, thanks so much for the fabulous concert, my darling culture professor! I really enjoyed it!
It's Asian Nicole. I had admired the Berlin Philharmonic for a long time. When I heard that Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic took to the stage for two concerts this week at Roy Thomson Hall, as my request, my darling culture professor took me to hear one of the great orchestras in the world on Wednesday night. Wow, impressively nimble orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle’s singular purpose make for thrilling night.
Closing a 23-year gap since the Berlin Philharmonic last performed in Toronto, conductor Sir Simon Rattle closed a 60-year musical cleft between Boulez’s “Éclat” and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 to a sold-out Roy Thomson Hall.
The pieces could not be more different but, placed side by side, Boulez’s modernist math achieves a similar feat to Mahler’s psychedelic roller coaster. The Berlin Philharmonic showed us how it’s done and we are all the better for it.
The Berlin Philharmonic was great because its playing was so transparent, so clear, so approachable, with 100 or so musicians performing as an organism with one heart, one body, one brain. It’s not that the orchestra did not have power, à la the Kirov, or warmth, like Vienna. They demonstrated all these qualities, and more, when needed. But overwhelmingly, they let us experience what happens in an orchestra when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, when everything is balanced to produce a complete effect – and overwhelming is the right word to describe the result.
Wow, thanks so much for the fabulous concert, my darling culture professor! I really enjoyed it!
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