The Munich Philharmonic offered a program of very different sound worlds in the Isarphilharmonie under the knowledgeable, confident and wide-awake direction of Susanna Mälkki. In their uniqueness, the pieces also appeared like the physiognomies of their creators. It began with Anton Webern’s six orchestral pieces op. 6: darkness and the finest sense of sound, allusion and lament in the shortest possible form, orchestral richness in the smallest of spaces and the exploration of piano and pianissimo regions. Webern’s music provides a unique answer to Sergiu Celibidache’s trick question: “What is longer, a Bruckner Adagio or a Chopin Nocturne?” Music cannot be grasped with externally measured brevity or length, but how it is experienced in the making determines its effect and after-effect. Susanna Mälkki “moved” the large orchestra in an elegant and structuring way: music, concentrated on the essentials.
In contrast, the bright, supple, eloquent soundscapes of Richard Strauss’ Oboe Concerto, written in 1945 as a way out of deep depression. Andrey Godik, solo oboist of the Philharmoniker, played it so stimulatingly and appealingly that the audience cheered him enthusiastically. How Godik offered virtuosos almost casually, always paying attention to vocal quality and sweeping phrasing, how he colorfully and longingly evoked the melodic in interaction with orchestra and conductor – it was pure pleasure. He expressed his thanks, making music, with Handel’s lament “Lascia ch’io pianga”, reminding of the war in the Ukraine.
After that, Susanna Mälkki unfolded Jean Sibelius’ “Lemminkäinen Legends” with moderation and fire, never loudly. The four pieces tell of the hero Lemminkäinen and his adventures without being just program music. Above all, they tell of Sibelius’s incomparably dark mixture of tones, of the burning nervousness and urgency of a young composer to communicate, of magical soundscapes and wild orchestral effervescence and a vital desire to invent sound. Huge applause for a successful production of this thoroughly theatrical, wonderfully peculiar music.