Who will get the Berliner Philharmoniker gig?

[jlaurson]

I remember reading several raves at the time (I'm not sure which) his Ring came out.  I haven't kept up too closely with his career but my overall impression has been positive regarding Wagner, Strauss and the rest of the big German rep, except for some reason Mahler.

Thielemann & Mahler:

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/alex-ross/thielemann-confesses

http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2010/11/ionarts-at-large-mahlers-eighth-under.html

http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2010/03/mahler-cycle-and-uncomfortable-silence.html

I think he's the best Wagner conductor around, easily... no one has a greater sense for the moment.
(Tannhaeuser, Bayreuth: http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2012/08/bayreuth-2012-tannhauser-is-gasser.html
Dutchman, Bayreuth: http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2012/08/bayreuth-2012-dutchman-faltering.html


Equally, he makes of Schumann great music, even where the ingredients aren't (Requiem)...

His Strauss is usually superb; whether Songs (http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2011/12/diana-damraus-strauss-sublime.html) or opera...

as his Rosenkavalier (orchestral performance, Munich) or Frau ohne Schatten (staged, Salzburg) or Elektra (orchestral, Munich)

...even contemporary music: http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2010/06/ionarts-at-large-world-premiere-of.html

That's not to say I've not heard a few good clunkers or so-so concerts. But that happens with all conductors, really.

http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2012/09/christian-thielemanns-inauguration.html

or sometimes both in one concert: http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2011/03/ionarts-at-large-beethoven-between.html

Here's an indepth review from a respected opera publication of Thielemann's live ring from Vienna on DG.  And while I wouldn't call it a "rave" it is balanced and positive on many counts.

I know I am not happy with it -- and I know he wasn't. But I'm glad for anyone who loves the set; it's not mine to take bones away from a dog. But I'm still hoping, perversely, for a third Ring of his, in which he gets everything right and up to his (impossible) standards.

[kishnevi]

I still shudder at odd times when recalling his Mozart.

Karajan's Mozart....think of it as the antiHIP ideal.  It is certainly a fun alternative approach.

I have Theilemann's Beethoven cycle.  Struck me as Meh and boringly conventional. 

[Karl Henning]

Karajan's Mozart....think of it as the antiHIP ideal.  It is certainly a fun alternative approach.

I like (e.g.) the Szell/Cleveland Mozart I have heard.  There must just be something in HvK's Mozart vibe that jars me.

And this is reminding me that I have not yet listened to the Mozart in . . .

[San Antone]

Thanks Jens for the post, very interesting.  Regarding the whiff of anti-Semitism surrounding Thielemann: I find these kinds of whispering campaigns beneath contempt.   He has conducted Schoenberg and other Jewish composers so to imply he isn't doing Mahler because of Mahler's Jewish extraction I think strains credulity. 

[king ubu]

Although many of you are trying to say it is not about his politics, I think it is.

It sure is, and I think that has been said in the discussion on the first three or four pages here.

I'm well aware that there's no outright right or wrong in such discussions, but I think some of the critical points made are very valid. (And frankly yes, I cringe at the thought of Netrebko - just done swinging around a flag of the russian invadors on Crimea - singing at the opera in my city ... just doesn't feel right, no matter if she's an accomplished artist or not.)

[Sergeant Rock]

He has conducted Schoenberg...

Thielemann's Pelleas und Melisande may be the best thing he's ever recorded. At least I think so. (Classics Today gave it a 10/10 rave.)

Sarge

[Brian]

One bad review equals musical polarization, other than because the reviewer himself is polarizing?  And for all we know you might not even agree with it.

One, or even multiple, bad reviews do(es) not equal musical polarization. But if you read the review: he's describing the performing style very carefully, and breaking down exactly how Thielemann interprets the piece. It's easy to see, reading the review [EDIT: and all of Jens's very interesting links, now that I've seen those], why such a performance would be polarizing. Even subtracting Hurwitz's negative opinion, his description is indicative of an interpreter who will inspire friends and enemies.

[San Antone]

One, or even multiple, bad reviews do(es) not equal musical polarization. But if you read the review: he's describing the performing style very carefully, and breaking down exactly how Thielemann interprets the piece. It's easy to see, reading the review [EDIT: and all of Jens's very interesting links, now that I've seen those], why such a performance would be polarizing. Even subtracting Hurwitz's negative opinion, his description is indicative of an interpreter who will inspire friends and enemies.

To be honest I've never spent much time listening to Thielemann.  But since this discussion over the BPO job and the discussion specifically over his candidacy has piqued by interest and I've been listening to as much as I can last night and today.

So far, I am liking what I hear.  Strong, muscular, majestic, and with a definite personality.  Bernstein was polarizing as well. 

I don't consider that necessarily a negative.

[MishaK]

I just want to note for the record that no-one born when Thielemann was born can ever be called too old. Ever.

Perhaps my translation wasn't clear. What I mean (and what the author of the Welt article means), it's now or never for the Thielemaniacs. If someone else gets appointed MD now, then, by the time that person is done in twenty years Thielemann will be considered too old. See, e.g. exactly what happened with Barenboim having lost the previous vote against Rattle and now being too old.

Thielemann also has a history of not being the easiest person to work with, her more or less departed in anger from at least two former positions (Deutsche Oper Berlin and Munich Phil).

Make that three. He also departed his first gig in Nuremberg in a hissy fit.

Would you mind summarizing the "obviously musically polarizing" nature of his musical career?

From people I know who have worked with him since the early days of is career, he is said to be massively arrogant to begin with. Part of that is his Berlin background. Berliners are extremely direct, to the point of often being perceived as very rude by non-Berliners, so that is not entirely his fault. But in any case, he's not the easiest to work with in rehearsal. And at the very least his departure in Munich, as well as the recent dispute in Dresden (over Serge Dorny), had to do with him wanting complete artistic control over everything (repertoire, including the concerts conducted by guests, guest conductors, soloists, etc. the whole thing). I am sure that consideration played into the BPO decision, since they fought long and hard to have independence from exactly that sort of stuff. They pick their MD and they pick their guests and it is hard to imagine how they would collaborate with someone who wants to micromanage so much of their artistic operations.

Purely on the musical results, to me Thielemann is once in a while interesting, but on a technical level way too inconsistent (even weak) and interpretively sometimes incoherent. And, no, I'm not talking about a one-off bad performance, but the overall conceptual thread across his interpretations, e.g. of Bruckner.  I have actually listened to all his commercial and several bootleg Bruckner recordings and found not a single one that made sense to me, not in terms of his interpretive choices, but how the whole thing is connected into an argument - I can appreciate many different approaches to Bruckner, but his is neither here nor there (kinda like he can't decide whether he wants to be Karajan one moment and Furtwängler in the next). In all repertoire I heard with him (and I heard him conduct Alpensinfonie live as well) he has an extremely nasty tendency to round off the edges and to let the air out right as he approaches a climax. It's kinda like going limp right before you were going to make your woman come. I find it extremely frustrating, and he does it so consistently across so many works that I have to attribute it to some kind of perverse system, an interpretive dogma of his. And it just doesn't make sense. Once in a while maybe, but not across the board.

On a purely technical level, what I want to hear is someone who will take an orchestra beyond their routine level. A great orchestra builder (e.g. Dutoit, Barenboim, Barshai, Skrowaczewski, to name just a few) can take even a youth orchestra with no collective experience and make them sound like a million bucks. With CT I hear a professional orchestra below the technical level at which it plays with others. He has admittedly improved over the years, but it is the most glaringly apparent in his early DG Philharmonia recordings, which feature some of the most ragged and embarrassing ensemble coordination problems ever committed to disc by a major record company, but you can hear some of that in his Munich performances too. Add to that one of my greatest pet peeves of lazy conductors/orchestras: limited dynamic range. There is rarely ever a genuinely true pianissimo in a Thielemann performance. I once witnessed Barenboim rehearse Daphnis with a youth orchestra. He repeated the opening several times getting them to play softer and softer until the beginning was barely at the verge of audibility, yet still firmly clearly played, not tentative, but seemingly coming into being out of nothingness. You have to hear something like this evolve just to understand what is possible (or to understand how someone can imagine that this could be possible and then push a group of musicians to make something possible that wasn't possible before). These sorts of revelatory moments where a conductor pushes the limits of what a collective musical being can produce I simply do not get with Thielemann. And I should think that an ensemble occupying the rarefied heights of the BPO should want someone who also on a technical level knows how to push the limits rather than simply relying on the technical excellence of his individual musicians.

Thielemann's Pelleas und Melisande may be the best thing he's ever recorded. At least I think so. (Classics Today gave it a 10/10 rave.)

Sarge

Sarge, thanks for that recommendation. I will try to get a hold of that recording, especially since I will be hearing Pelleas live on Saturday (with Salonen/CSO  ). I'm always willing to give people second chances and this is certainly an interesting conductor/repertoire combination.

[Brian]

he has an extremely nasty tendency to round off the edges and to let the air out right as he approaches a climax.

The Beethoven 8 I'm listening to right now has this in a very big way. The first movement's famous 'fff' is preceded by a whole stretch of weirdly quiet playing of what should be the climax.

By the way, thank you for a very enlightening, informative post, one of the best I've read recently, even/especially the non-CT parts about orchestra-builders, Barenboim, etc.

[San Antone]

From people I know who have worked with him since the early days of is career, he is said to be massively arrogant to begin with. Part of that is his Berlin background. Berliners are extremely direct, to the point of often being perceived as very rude by non-Berliners, so that is not entirely his fault. But in any case, he's not the easiest to work with in rehearsal. And at the very least his departure in Munich, as well as the recent dispute in Dresden (over Serge Dorny), had to do with him wanting complete artistic control over everything (repertoire, including the concerts conducted by guests, guest conductors, soloists, etc. the whole thing). I am sure that consideration played into the BPO decision, since they fought long and hard to have independence from exactly that sort of stuff. They pick their MD and they pick their guests and it is hard to imagine how they would collaborate with someone who wants to micromanage so much of their artistic operations.

Purely on the musical results, to me Thielemann is once in a while interesting, but on a technical level way too inconsistent (even weak) and interpretively sometimes incoherent. And, no, I'm not talking about a one-off bad performance, but the overall conceptual thread across his interpretations, e.g. of Bruckner.  I have actually listened to all his commercial and several bootleg Bruckner recordings and found not a single one that made sense to me, not in terms of his interpretive choices, but how the whole thing is connected into an argument - I can appreciate many different approaches to Bruckner, but his is neither here nor there (kinda like he can't decide whether he wants to be Karajan one moment and Furtwängler in the next). In all repertoire I heard with him (and I heard him conduct Alpensinfonie live as well) he has an extremely nasty tendency to round off the edges and to let the air out right as he approaches a climax. It's kinda like going limp right before you were going to make your woman come. I find it extremely frustrating, and he does it so consistently across so many works that I have to attribute it to some kind of perverse system, an interpretive dogma of his. And it just doesn't make sense. Once in a while maybe, but not across the board.

On a purely technical level, what I want to hear is someone who will take an orchestra beyond their routine level. A great orchestra builder (e.g. Dutoit, Barenboim, Barshai, Skrowaczewski, to name just a few) can take even a youth orchestra with no collective experience and make them sound like a million bucks. With CT I hear a professional orchestra below the technical level at which it plays with others. He has admittedly improved over the years, but it is the most glaringly apparent in his early DG Philharmonia recordings, which feature some of the most ragged and embarrassing ensemble coordination problems ever committed to disc by a major record company, but you can hear some of that in his Munich performances too. Add to that one of my greatest pet peeves of lazy conductors/orchestras: limited dynamic range. There is rarely ever a genuinely true pianissimo in a Thielemann performance. I once witnessed Barenboim rehearse Daphnis with a youth orchestra. He repeated the opening several times getting them to play softer and softer until the beginning was barely at the verge of audibility, yet still firmly clearly played, not tentative, but seemingly coming into being out of nothingness. You have to hear something like this evolve just to understand what is possible (or to understand how someone can imagine that this could be possible and then push a group of musicians to make something possible that wasn't possible before). These sorts of revelatory moments where a conductor pushes the limits of what a collective musical being can produce I simply do not get with Thielemann. And I should think that an ensemble occupying the rarefied heights of the BPO should want someone who also on a technical level knows how to push the limits rather than simply relying on the technical excellence of his individual musicians.

Thanks for the post. As I listen to more of his work I will be on the look out for the tendencies you cite. 

So far, I am finding his Brahms very good.  Later on today I will give his some of his Bayreuth Ring a listen, and he's done some interesting looking vocal-orchestra recordings (Fleming and Quasthoff) that I want to hear.

However, given the competition for this job, I still consider him the best candidate.

[MishaK]

Have you heard Nelsons or Kirill Petrenko? And also, I think more relevant than their recordings with other ensembles, now that we have the Digital Concert Hall at our fingertips, much more interesting are the candidates' recent performances with the BPO itself, especially with respect to what kind of rapport exists between the musicians and the conductor. The recent Mahler 5 with Nelsons was superb, btw.

PS, for whoever is interested, our old now banned former forum member M forever has some views on why he finds Thielemann an unlikely candidate for the post-Abbado, post-Rattle BPO in this comment thread on Uncle Norm's silly site: http://slippedisc.com/2015/05/how-strong-is-the-thielemann-opposition/

[jlaurson]

Thanks for the post. As I listen to more of his work I will be on the look out for the tendencies you cite. 

So far, I am finding his Brahms very good.  Later on today I will give his some of his Bayreuth Ring a listen, and he's done some interesting looking vocal-orchestra recordings (Fleming and Quasthoff) that I want to hear.

However, given the competition for this job, I still consider him the best candidate.

I find MishaK's Thielemann comparison somewhat misleading. Surely CT is nicer to his players, at his worst, than DB at his best. Not to suggest he can't be an &@*!... but DB beats him at that (when - and only when - with his Berlin Band). And while DB says: "Louder. Louder. Not as loud. Quieter." in rehearsal, and not much beyond that, CT really works hard at sculpting sound. It's that what makes him unique. Whether one likes the result is on a different page, altogether of course.

[San Antone]

Have you heard Nelsons or Kirill Petrenko? And also, I think more relevant than their recordings with other ensembles, now that we have the Digital Concert Hall at our fingertips, much more interesting are the candidates' recent performances with the BPO itself, especially with respect to what kind of rapport exists between the musicians and the conductor. The recent Mahler 5 with Nelsons was superb, btw.

PS, for whoever is interested, our old now banned former forum member M forever has some views on why he finds Thielemann an unlikely candidate for the post-Abbado, post-Rattle BPO in this comment thread on Uncle Norm's silly site: http://slippedisc.com/2015/05/how-strong-is-the-thielemann-opposition/

Yes; I am a DCH subscriber and have heard both and recently the Mahler 5th you refer to.  But I thought Nelsons childlike (not necessarily a bad thing) in both his conducting and especially in the interview.  I actually loved the trumpet work on that same concert more than the Mahler.  Also, I've heard one concert with Kirill Petrenko, but don't have an opinion.

Neither seems to have the gravitas or charisma that Thielemann brings to the table, qualities that I think a major orchestral conductor should exhibit.

I am not saying Thielemann is the "greatest living conductor", but for the BPO and given the competition, simply that he is the best choice, IMO.

[Brian]

Two questions.

1. Now that the BPO has given themselves another year to decide, an important question is: who is conducting them in the rest of 2015? Are Nelsons, Bychkov, Thielemann, K. Petrenko, and Jurowski all visiting during June-April? Who on the upcoming schedule looks like a possibility?

2. What about Alan Gilbert??!??

[Pat B]

However, given the competition for this job, I still consider him the best candidate.

Based on what? Some recordings you've heard? The people doing the voting are people who have rehearsed and performed with him, and my expectation is that those experiences are the primary basis for the decision, not how many recordings he has made or how critically acclaimed they are. Especially not opera recordings, since the BPO isn't an opera company.

It's hard to know how much politics factored in. Yes, that was the main focus of the first 90 posts in this thread, and it may well have been a factor for some BPO members, but I don't think it's fair to assume that it was the deciding factor for the BPO as a whole.

[MishaK]

I find MishaK's Thielemann comparison somewhat misleading. Surely CT is nicer to his players, at his worst, than DB at his best. Not to suggest he can't be an &@*!... but DB beats him at that (when - and only when - with his Berlin Band). And while DB says: "Louder. Louder. Not as loud. Quieter." in rehearsal, and not much beyond that, CT really works hard at sculpting sound. It's that what makes him unique. Whether one likes the result is on a different page, altogether of course.

I wasn't comparing attitude. Here in Chicago there were likewise people who found DB appallingly rude and others who adored him. Demanding conductors always polarize. I was simply comparing technical results. And, no, DB didn't simply say "Louder. Louder. Not as loud. Quieter. in rehearsal, and not much beyond that," I've attended his rehearsals. Yes, CT does create unique soundscapes. I do give him credit for that. I actually love his Hebrides overture with VPO. I have never heard such a dark, brooding Mendelssohn and it really works for that piece. It's wonderful. But it's silly to say that DB doesn't do that. Within months of coming to the podium in Chicago as the MD designate, he turned the crisp whiz-bang Solti band into a veritable dark, rich, warm, central European orchestra in the German rep. Listen to the Brahms cycle from the early 90s recorded at that time. It's an unrecognizable orchestra from the Solti days, in the positive sense. Those colors, that blend of instruments (that glorious slow movement in the 4th!), nobody has accomplished that with this orchestra since (and nobody did before, save perhaps Giulini). This is one of the things I mean: the ability to completely change the sound and color of an orchestra from the ground up. You have to have a technical understanding of how you even begin to change that collective blend of sound. DB can do it even with students and he can make any orchestra sound like his Staatskapelle. CT seems to need an orchestra that already has generally the sound that he's looking for, like Vienna, like Dresden. He's less successful with orchestras that don't already have his approach (which is why he basically bombed his NYPO debut). This is also, btw, why I consider Dudamel the genuine article. The CSO is a very experienced orchestra with a certain routine that doesn't easily yield to unconvnicing guest conductors who want to change how they do things. Yet he came here to Chicago for his debut and got them to play the most unique, idiosynratic Mahler 1 I have ever heard, and it worked because he convinced them and they in turn produced a convincing performance. That is very rare for a guest to be able to do in a debut that radically and on that level (I heard Sokhiev come close with a likewise very unique Tchaik 4).

But I thought Nelsons childlike

...

Neither seems to have the gravitas or charisma that Thielemann brings to the table, qualities that I think a major orchestral conductor should exhibit.

Those seem like rather extra-musical considerations.  Btw, what you see as "chlid-like" I see as infectous enthusiasm for music making, which is exactly what *I* would want in a conductor.

Two questions.

1. Now that the BPO has given themselves another year to decide, an important question is: who is conducting them in the rest of 2015? Are Nelsons, Bychkov, Thielemann, K. Petrenko, and Jurowski all visiting during June-April? Who on the upcoming schedule looks like a possibility?

2. What about Alan Gilbert??!??

https://www.digitalconcerthall.com/en/live

Before the end of the season there is just the Dude, Noseda and Paavo among the young-ish ones, and a few old fogies. Nelsons is back in October, Thielemann not until after the new year.

[jlaurson]

Based on what? Some recordings you've heard? The people doing the voting are people who have rehearsed and performed with him, and my expectation is that those experiences are the primary basis for the decision, not how many recordings he has made or how critically acclaimed they are. Especially not opera recordings, since the BPO isn't an opera company.

You are arguing as if the majority of the orchestra (but not an absolute majority) hadn't just voted for Thielemann [as I've been given to understand]. Obviously they see something in him as well.

Alan Gilbert was the 8th choice of the New York Philharmonic... granted he's done VERY well and he's a well-liked, fastidious rehearser. But BPh? I'll take odds on that, not much worse than on Susanna Mälkki.

No one was ever under consideration who hasn't conducted in the last year or is conducting in the upcoming. That's not to say that everyone having or going to is necessarily a candidate.

I think it's fairly straight forward: Will those who oppose CT accede or will those who champion him agree on an alternative. There's not going to be a new rabbit pulled out of someone's hat; the odds haven't changed much, methinks.

[San Antone]

Based on what?

He is the best candidate for the BPO, imo, because of the collective critical opinion of him as one of, if not, the best living conductor(s) of the German orchestral literature, especially regarding Wagner - that, in addition to my own listening to his recordings and watching him in concert.

[MishaK]

I think it's fairly straight forward: Will those who oppose CT accede or will those who champion him agree on an alternative. There's not going to be a new rabbit pulled out of someone's hat; the odds haven't changed much, methinks.

That sounds pretty plausible.