Twentieth Century Extremes

The Biennale of the Berlin Philharmonic – a mid-February concert series with a focus on post-war modernism and, in particular, the works of György Ligeti – opened the previous week with a programme that surrounded two of Ligeti’s most essential orchestral scores, Lontano and Atmosphères, with impressionistic ocean-themed works from earlier in the century. If the second orchestral programme, which placed Ligeti’s Requiem in the company of works by Bernd Alois Zimmermann and Bohuslav Martinů, was arguably less conceptual in its plan, it was considerably more cohesive as both an evening of music and an evocation of twentieth-century extremes. While the programme had originally been intended as a guest appearance for Sir Simon Rattle, Matthias Pintscher, who took over after Sir Simon was forced to withdraw, directed electrifying performances…