Concert Review: Composer, Interrupted

The Berlin Philharmonic plays Schumann and Haas.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Sir Simon Rattle makes a mysterious gesture.
Photo © 2014 Berliner Philharmoniker

Although Robert Schumann lived and wrote 150 years ago, his symphonies are still fresh and revolutionary, especially when conductor and orchestra choose the original orchestrations over the composer's later revisions. On Monday night at Carnegie Hall, Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic concluded their season-opening four-concert stand with Schumann's Third and Fourth Symphonies, bookending a new work by composer Georg Friedrich Haas.

Concert Review: A Mind Beside Itself

Sir Simon Rattle conducts Schumann.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Sir Simon Rattle.
Photo courtesy the Berlin Philharmonic © 2014 Berlin Philharmonic.

Under its two most recent music directors, the Berlin Philharmonic established itself as one of the most formidable and flexible orchestras in Europe. Yet a strong sense of tradition and devotion to German music remains. On Sunday night, the orchestra addressed that tradition with the first of two Carnegie Hall concerts surveying the four symphonies of composer and critic Robert Schumann.