A Former Underdog Has His Work Cut Out for Him

BERLIN--In his excellent, newly updated biography of Simon Rattle, Nicholas Kenyon begins with the words “This could change the musical world.” The “this” is Rattle’s becoming music director of the Berlin Philharmonic. Saturday night, amid a town festooned with cheerful “Welcome Sir Simon” billboards, the changing began with impressively played and enthusiastically received performances of Thomas Ades’ “Asyla” and Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Impressive, but not earthshaking. Changing the world is never easy, and Rattle has his work cut out for him.

The elevated status of the Berlin Philharmonic is based as much on mythology as it is on reality. It is often said that player for player, this orchestra is without equal, and that may be. But more significant than these players’ ability to lord over the orchestra world has been their willingness to succumb to the cult of personality.

They were there to support the mystically transcendent Wilhelm Furtwangler between the wars and briefly in the early 1950s after his de-Nazification. They were Herbert von Karajan’s enthusiastic collaborators, at least until things turned bitter at the end, producing an unceasing cycle of perfectly played if increasingly slick and soulless recordings, from the mid-’50s through the ‘80s. Over the past dozen years, the less charismatic Claudio Abbado helped modernize the orchestra and hired younger players, but he failed to generate excitement or a feeling of relevance.

With Berlin not yet quite living up to its promise of becoming the capital of the new Europe, and with much of its ballyhooed rebuilding now feeling like the sterile corporate equivalent of Karajan’s monstrous vanity, the city has hoped that at least one once-potent symbol of cultural superiority would become a revolutionary model for the 21st century. Rattle’s Philharmonic appointment was uncompromising and it was made more than three years ago, when he was 44, allowing him time to get to know the players and the city (he didn’t speak German when he accepted the job) as well as to carefully map out a new vision for the orchestra.

He has greatly expanded the repertory with unprecedented amounts of new and ancient music. Guest conductors now include the likes of early-music specialist William Christie and British composer Oliver Knussen. Esa-Pekka Salonen will conduct his recent orchestral work “Foreign Bodies” in June.

Rattle, moreover, comes to Berlin as an admirable outsider, chosen over the ultimate insider, Daniel Barenboim.

The British conductor remained loyal to his City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for 18 years, steadfastly refusing offers in London, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. The most important orchestra with which he has been closely associated is the Los Angeles Philharmonic; he was a principal guest conductor in L.A. in the 1980s.

Berlin learned quickly just how uncompromising Rattle can be when he withheld from signing his contract until the city government, which supports the orchestra, agreed to wage hikes for the players and until the orchestra changed its policies so that artistic priorities would overrule its lucrative media enterprises.

But Rattle has used the prominence of the Berlin post to lash out at the British as well. Two weeks ago, he angered many Brits by attacking such media darlings as the visual artists Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin. His “music is boring,” replied Dinos Chapman, one of Rattle’s BritArt brat-pack targets.

Ironically, Rattle’s strongest first statements in Berlin come from the classical BritMusic brat pack. The surrealist percussion tones that open Ades’ “Asyla” were the first sounds of the Rattle era Saturday.

The third movement, an ode to the drug Ecstasy, takes the sedate orchestra into the techno world of the club scene. Later in the month, Rattle will conduct Mark-Anthony Turnage’s extremely hard-edged, Miles Davis-besotted “Blood on the Floor,” inspired by a heroin overdose. The conductor will introduce the concert with commissioned films by local directors and teenagers about drug addiction. Two days before that concert, he conducts an all-Mozart program with pianist Mitsuko Uchida as soloist.

But the fact is that neither Rattle nor his new orchestra does everything equally well. Rattle can be awkward when he tries to get too jazzy.

And the orchestra has a long way to go if it ever wants to be cutting edge.

EMI has just released a crossover CD of the 12 Berlin Philharmonic cellists, who proudly browbeat their new music director into rapping a laughably lame song about the divine Mozart. It is a challenge to admire any orchestral musicians that profoundly clueless.

Still, the orchestra clearly did its best to bring off “Asyla,” which made a brilliant impact in the Philharmonie, the yellow, geometrically intricate hall with “vineyard” seating that was an inspiration for the Walt Disney Concert Hall acoustical design. But sensing how hard the Berliners tried meant one’s attention was drawn to sensing how hard the Berliners were trying. When the Los Angeles Philharmonic played the same piece under Rattle at the Ojai Festival two years ago, the score just seemed to take off, despite a far less engaging acoustical setting.

Mahler’s Fifth, of course, is in the orchestra’s genes. It first performed it in 1905, a year after its premiere. But for a very long time, it didn’t play any Mahler, what with the Nazi ban on his music and the composer generally being out of fashion. In any case, the execution Saturday was extraordinarily beautiful. The trumpet solo at the beginning (the players are not identified in the program) was as pure as it could be. The strings in the famous Adagio movement were exquisitely sumptuous and tender.

For his part, Rattle exhibited much passion, offering his musicians something they had not known in a music director for a very long time, if ever--simple joy. But if the Berliners again responded not so much with joy in the music as joy in the mastery of it, goodwill and stunning virtuosity were enough to thoroughly wow a listener. The audience applauded loud and hard, even calling Rattle back after the orchestra had marched offstage, but there was no standing ovation.

For years, many of us have respected Rattle as the underdog, a conductor more concerned with art than career. Now that he has risen to the top, the top has yet to rise to him.

Whether Berlin will welcome Rattle’s combination of tradition and innovation, or whether he will divide the audience, won’t be apparent until after an inevitably long honeymoon wears off. Nor will we know for a very long time to what degree the players can and will follow Rattle.

Time, however, is something Rattle is willing to give, if his 18 years in Birmingham are any indication. But most listeners are hardly willing to wait that long. EMI recorded the Mahler live Saturday and will rush the release out by November.