Kirill Petrenko conducts Bruckner and Rihm

Chief conductor Kirill Petrenko and the Berliner Philharmoniker with music that moves through space. There were good reasons why Venetian polychoral music was invented in St Mark’s Basilica: the layout of the cathedral in the shape of a Greek cross made it possible to place two organs on opposite galleries and to position the choirs in two separate locations. Simple two-choir motets with echo effects were performed in this way. To provide more space for works with additional choirs, it was also possible to use the walkways to the north of the central dome in the chancel. As a result, the architectural space had a decisive influence on the music, and it is no coincidence that Wolfgang Rihm composed his orchestral piece IN-SCHRIFT for a performance in the very same St Mark’s Basilica. As Rihm, a long-standing artistic partner of the Berliner Philharmoniker and the most frequently performed German composer of our time, did not want to take the proverbial “coals to Newcastle” by importing the technique of polychoralism to Venice, in IN-SCHRIFT he shifted the spatial element to the interior of the composition: “All spatiality should be inscribed in the music”.

A parallel can be found in Anton Bruckner’s colossal symphonies, whose music, with its wave-like climaxes and the accumulation of clearly delineated blocks of sound, inspired the music psychologist Ernst Kurth to make musical-spatial associations – as did the Fifth Symphony, which Wilhelm Furtwängler described as the “most monumental finale in the entire repertoire of music”.

Berliner Philharmoniker

Kirill Petrenko