With their chief conductor Kirill Petrenko, the Berlin Philharmonic resemble a predator: lightning-fast, quick-tempered, sometimes cowering, sometimes lurking, intelligent, elegant, purring, hacking or choking, insidious, flattering, erotic, bloodlust. The changes between these aggregate states of a warm and clear sound are rapid, as are the changes in volume and intensities. No other conductor narrates Richard Strauss’ scores with more detail, more glowing, more gripping than Petrenko. Now he has brought the most gruesome of all Strauss operas to the stage at the Easter Festival organized by the Berlin Philharmonic in Baden-Baden’s Festspielhaus, the matricide orgy “Elektra”. What happens in the orchestra pit cannot be experienced anywhere else with such grandeur and precision. No wonder that Petrenko and his musicians are loudly applauded above all others.
Kirill Petrenko conducts “Elektra” by Richard Strauss in Baden-Baden – Culture
