Berliner Philharmoniker

Thursday, November 10, 2016 8 PM Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage

In one of his final Carnegie Hall appearances as the Berliner Philharmoniker’s music director, Sir Simon Rattle conducts a program that spotlights the remarkable path music took in Vienna throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Brahms’s Second Symphony is a warmly melodic work in the Classical tradition of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. A trio of Viennese composers, who were also the principal members of the Second Viennese School, looked to that tradition and took it to the next level by writing music that mesmerizes with shimmering colors, daring harmonies, and unique textures.

View Seating Chart (PDF)

Performers

Berliner Philharmoniker
Sir Simon Rattle, Chief Conductor and Artistic Director

Program

SCHOENBERG Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16

WEBERN Six Pieces, Op. 6b

BERG Three Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6

BRAHMS Symphony No. 2

Event Duration

The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission. Please note that there will be no late seating before intermission.

View Program Notes

At a Glance

This concert presents daring experiments from the beginning of the atonal revolution, followed by Brahms’s most bucolic, lyrical symphony. “We know there is a 10th Mahler symphony, almost totally complete in existence,” says Sir Simon Rattle. “But what we play in this concert could be considered Mahler’s 11th, comprising Webern’s Six Pieces, Schoenberg’s Five Pieces, and Berg’s Three Pieces, played as a multi-movement symphony all together. You can have this Mahler-like experience in these pieces—the way that they all move together, the richness. They tell the whole story of what was musically coming at that time.” These explosive pieces are condensed and compact, packing a world of emotion and thought into tiny structures. Following three edgy 20th-century works with a Brahms symphony may seem like a huge jump, but Brahms was also regarded as too complex and intellectual for general audiences in his own time. His Second Symphony is expansive and flowing, yet it, too, has subtle architecture like the masterpieces of the Second Viennese School.

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