The only absolute in music is that there are no absolutes.  "Best"
doesn't make sense.  But there is no way of getting around the *fact*
that Bartok's spooky and magnificent "Music for Strings, Percussion and
Celesta" cannot be played better than the Berlin Philharmonic did tonight
in Davies Hall.  As well, perhaps; differently, of course - but not
better.

It's been my luck, from long-ago days in Bartok-happy Budapest, to have
heard many performances of this difficult, towering masterpiece, including
some fabulous ones - the last recently with Claudio Abbado and the Gustav
Mahler Jugendorchester - but, again, none better.

Simon Rattle conducted a breathtaking performance, in the sense of the
listener's breath being held, being taken away.  This grand hymn of
despair (with the only false note in its moderately up-tempo finale, a
kind of forced laughter) opens with a quiet, restrained, strange fugue
that doesn't go anywhere but - when played right - will take you away
to a place of night-music, of something unknowable.  Berlin's 60 strings
played as a single instrument, the setting, the total effect sent shivers
up the spine.  Then the strands of music converged into a broad (but not
loud) tutti, but the legato, which began perhaps five minutes before,
held.

Through weird, haunting passages, Rattle persisted in holding dynamics
at times to the threshold of hearing, tortured melodies worked to stunted
climaxes, the listener being drawn into the guts of the music, held
captive, not released even in the whirlwind of the finale.

"An astonishingly refined, astonishingly propulsive reading," stammered
the reviewer at the New York performance, but in the San Francisco, while
the double-astonishment held true, refinement and propulsion had little
to do with the magic heard in Davies Hall.  Try boldness, commitment,
total dedication.  These musicians not only listen to each other, they
actually watch intently when other sections play, becoming part of the
audience.

The greening of the Philharmonic is amazing in sight and sound.  Where
once there was a sea of gray hair on stage, the result of Rattle's two
years is a great makeover: Young musicians!  Even younger! (A miraculous
teenager on the double bass, and numerous twenty-somethings.) Women!
Asians!  Latin Americans!  And yet, the sound is still "the Berlin
Philharmonic"...  only better, the strings silkier, the brass mellower,
the woodwinds...  there is no adequate adjective for what principal oboes
Jonathan Kelly and Albrecht Mayer, principal flutes Andreas Blau and
Emmanuel Pahud, principal clarinets Wenzel Fuchs and Karl-Heinz Steffens
accomplish.

There was a jazzy, engaging premiere, Heiner Goebbels' 2003 "Aus einem
Tagebuch (From a Diary)," and a peculiar, but enchanting performance of
Beethoven's Sixth Symphony - a gemutlich "Pastorale," a colorful, swinging,
Korngold-sweet reading of the old warhorse, which galloped here as a
baby bronco.  With iconoclastic tempi (to be nice about it) and elongated
phrases, this was an "unknown Beethoven," but made thrilling nevertheless
by the stunning quality of performance.

After four rounds of thunderous standing ovation, Rattle whispered into
the ear of concertmaster Guy Braunstein whereupon the musicians stood
up, shook hands all around, and departed.  I was trying to remember
if that's a "European way" of ending a concert, but couldn't recall,
especially about the handshakes.

Janos Gereben/SF
www.sfcv.org
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