New Year’s Eve Concert 2022, Berliner Philharmoniker, streamed from Philharmonie Berlin to Sheffield Showroom cinema – 31/12/22

Kirill Petrenko conductor, Jonas Kaufmann tenor. Giuseppe Verdi La forza del destino: Overture; Sergei Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet (excerpt); Nino Rota La strada, Orchestral Suite (excerpts); Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Capriccio italien, op. 45 and arias by Verdi, Mascagni, Zandonai and Giordano
This was a very enjoyable concert. Beforehand, members of the BPO had formed themselves into musical quiz teams – the woodwind team won……Obviously this was not an evening of profound works but the following factors made for an intensely pleasurable evening:
• The way Petrenko gets his players to think through afresh some very familiar music – for instance the Force of Destiny overture had several examples of sculpted phrases which sounded newly thought through, and, as with the Mahler 7 performance in September, you heard inner voices you don’t normally hear, in a natural and unselfconscious way.
• The energy radiating from Petrenko was extraordinary, and galvanised the BPO in the Death of Tybalt, in particular, into quite dynamically dramatic and forceful playing, propulsive and tight – am intensely powerful miniature. This was also true of the Tchaikovsky
• Having Jonas Kaufman of course helps in giving class to the evening – sometimes in the past I have sensed some strain on his voice in the higher register, but here, even with some drop-outs due to ill-health in Germany and Austria in recent weeks, he sounded in good voice and in particular the Mascagni aria was very well sung indeed
• The BPO were also able to let their hair down in the Nino Rota pieces (film music, I presume – he wrote masses of film scores alongside 10 operas, 5 ballets and lots of other orchestral and chamber musi)c. These were riotously danceable-to, and Petrenko and the orchestra swung together through the syncopations and the beat

The encores were from The Godfather score (tenor aria – by Nino Rota) and some film music from the Gadfly (No 16, The Market Place) by Shostakovitch – a reminder (Tchaikovsky and Shostakovitch) that Russian music is not to be cancelled because of current circumstances. The roving camera sought out at one point what was surely a masked Angela Merkel, who I hope would agree with that sentiment. I found it very interesting to compare my memory of this performance of the Shostakovitch with the recording I have from Chailly and the Philadelphia Orchestra. The latter team of course are very good but BPO/Petrenko win hands-down on edginess, on pushing the speed boundaries, and in general creating a more exciting experience.