Proms 55 and 56: Berlin Philharmonic/Petrenko review – spellbinding magic

Royal Albert Hall, London
Over two evenings of music by Schumann, Smetana and Bruckner, the Berlin orchestra and their chief conductor Kirill Petrenko played with sumptuous mastery

Double bass pizzicatos that land hushed and heavy like the start of a summer rainstorm. Upper strings creeping in with the slow squeeze-and-release of repeated suspensions. Then silence. A massive blast of full orchestra, brass-heavy and gut-throbbing. Then more silence. Each statement left to hang as the Royal Albert Hall’s dome worked its weird magic.

It’s the tone quality that hits you first with the Berlin Philharmonic: like a shot of adrenaline if you’re in the direct firing line of the superb lower brass. More subtly as woodwind soloists breathe life into the smallest melodic fragment and the string sections cohere as if born to play as one. This is the stuff the orchestra’s reputation is made of. In the fragmented opening of Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony, the payback was obvious – its stoppages all the stranger for halting such sumptuousness.

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