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Continued from Part I.
The concert opened with the folksy Hungarian Sketches by Béla Bartók. Expert wind playing – both solo and paired – was prominent throughout. Below is a screenshot of the brass and tympani.
My issues with dynamic compression aside, the video quality was crisp, even in full-screen mode on a large, wide-screen monitor.
At concert time, I was pleasantly surprised by the Berlin Philharmonic Facebook page. A representative responded to user issues in real-time. This was a very nice touch.
The Bartók Sketches served as an excellent prelude to the main attraction, the epic Gliere Concerto in B-flat. As an interesting side note, this was the first time that the BPO had performed any composition by Reinhold Gliere since 1948.
The star of the show
Radek Baborak’s star shined brightly and thanks to superb camera work it was apparent to viewers he was having a good time with it. Baborak confidently sailed throughout, with master strokes both broad and fine.
One would be hard-pressed to find a superior or more convincing rendition.
Encores
After the 20-minute Gliere concerto, Baborak gave three encores – an impressive feat considering the energy and stamina required for the concerto alone.
- Bernhard Krol’s Laudatio
- A Waldhorn fantasie in D, in a French style with wider vibrato
- (Prior to the third encore, the orchestra left the stage.) Baborak played an Alphorn fantasie in F, with some multi-phonics and hand horn gestures.
The home crowd, familiar with Baborak as a former principal horn, appreciated his performance with warm enthusiasm and prolonged applause.
Intermission and 2nd half in brief
- The intermission featured a cleverly crafted PR piece of orchestra representatives discussing and summarizing the future of their organization.
- The concert resumed with Alexander Scriabin’s Symphony No. 3 in C minor (Le Divin Poème). The performance was impressive and sublime, marred only by a lone audience member’s loud disapproval at its conclusion.
Watch an archived version
Currently this concert is being edited and is not available yet in the DCH archive.
When it becomes available I would highly recommend watching it. This concert, put simply, was epic. If your computer can handle an intensive Flash site, it is worth the price.
PLEASE NOTE: All of the screen-shot images in this article are published without permission under the auspices of ‘fair use.’ They remain the absolute property of the Berlin Philharmonic.
