Daniel Barenboim conducts Bruckner and Schubert
As a pianist, Daniel Barenboim made his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker in 1964 with an “outstanding performance” (Der Tagesspiegel) – he was 21 years old at the time. Shortly afterwards he made his acclaimed debut as a conductor, and he has enjoyed a close partnership with the Berliner Philharmoniker ever since. Here, Barenboim conducts Bruckner’s Fourth and the rarely heard choral cantata Helgoland plus Schubert’s Gesang der Geister über den Wassern.
Daniel Barenboim devoted himself very intensively to the music of Anton Bruckner: the Fourth Symphony, which he performed here with the Berliner Philharmoniker in October 1992, he later also conducted as part of a CD recording of the Bruckner symphonies with the orchestra.
Bruckner gave his work the nickname the “Romantic”. In the sense of a “religious-mysterious Romanticism à la Lohengrin”, the term for him referred to something mysterious, God-fearing and pure. In doing so, the composer struck a cord with his time, when Romanticism, according to the Brockhaus Encyclopaedia, was described as “a conception and representation of the world tending towards the emotional, the wonderful, the fairytale-like and the fantastic”.
To open the concert, Barenboim, together with the gentlemen of the Rundfunk- and Ernst-Senff-Chor, presents Bruckner’s ballad-like legend Helgoland. With its striking general pauses, lyrical intermezzi and tremendous waves of intensification, the piece is in no way inferior to the much better-known Te Deum. At its premiere in 1893, the music was received enthusiastically by the Viennese audience and brought Bruckner one last great triumph. This is followed by Schubert’s evocative setting of Goethe’s Gesang der Geister über den Wassern, which juxtaposes human existence with the fleetingness of water. The composition, which places extremely high demands on the performers, was presented by the choirs and the orchestra’s low strings with confidence and vividness under Barenboim’s direction.
© 1992 EuroArts Music International
