Germany offers Daniele Gatti some sweet consolation for his recent disappointment in Milan : during this week in October 2025, he rehearsed in the morning with the Berliner Philharmoniker in Berlin and in the evening in Dresden (200 km away), conducting Verdi's Falstaff at the Semperoper with the Staatskapelle Dresden in the pit. Few conductors can boast of conducting two of the world's most prestigious orchestras on the same day. We will return to Falstaff in a few days, but today we will focus on this exceptional concert, which once again demonstrates how well thItalian conductor is in tune with the Berliners, whose soloists on this occasion included Albrecht Mayer on oboe, Emmanuel Pahud on flute, Stefan Schweigert on bassoon and the latest additions, Yun Zeng on horn and violist Diyang Mei.

In an interview on Digital Concert Hall, in conversation with Aleksandar Ivić (member of the first violins), Daniele Gatti explains that he was asked for a kind of counter-programme, without a common thread, featuring rare works that seemed to have nothing to do with each other : he therefore proposed two rather rare pieces, one of which had never been played by the Berliners (Webern), and Stravinsky's Symphony in C, also quite rare in programmes, and alongside these two relative or absolute rarities, a piece from the great repertoire, Brahms' Third.

In fact, the programme plays on a few borderline concepts : Brahms' Third may have more of a Schumannian than a Beethovenian colour and therefore refers to Romanticism, and the first part of the programme is also on a knife-edge insofar as Webern's piece is strongly influenced by Strauss and Mahler, and therefore more by post-Romanticism than by the music of the Second Viennese School for which Webern is known and performed (and even then, rather rarely). As for Stravinsky's Symphony, it is classified in his neoclassical period, whereas we tend to play the works from the beginning of his career, the ‘Russian’ period, which was more open to modernity and innovation.

This programme is therefore an erratic journey through familiar and unfamiliar territory, which makes it particularly interesting.

Webern

The first part of the programme was unusual, as Webern's Langsamer Satz (Slow Movement) is written for string quartet (two violins, a cello and a viola). Another peculiarity : written in 1905, it was premiered in 1965 in Seattle. And a third peculiarity, essential to the evening, is that it was arranged for string orchestra by Gerard Schwarz, who was music director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra between 1985 and 2011, where the work was premiered.

These compositional games always interest Daniele Gatti, who studied composition himself. In 2024, he also conducted the orchestra version of Transfigured Night (Verklärte Nacht) (1899), originally written for sextet, for which Schoenberg wrote a version for string orchestra in 1917, revised in 1943.

Furthermore, in Webern's piece, he also reworked the orchestration (on the double bass line) and offers an interpretation that constantly strives to preserve the rhythmic freedom found in chamber music. In a way, he creates a Zusammenmusizieren (“Making music together “) that expands the quartet score to the entire string section, while preserving the spirit of the quartet.
Webern composed it when he was in his early twenties and madly in love with his cousin Wilhelmine Mõrtl, whom he married a few years later. He himself provides a kind of programme : ‘To walk forever as now, among the flowers, alongside the dearest person, to feel at one with the universe […]’. The inspiration is therefore clearly ‘romantic’ in the traditional sense of the term. Webern had recently become a student of Schoenberg and had himself composed only two small tonal pieces. We are therefore at the roots of his creative process. The work is more complex than it appears and is by no means a mere trifle. The orchestrated version also allows for richer and more fleshed-out colour effects, while preserving the breath of chamber music : at a particularly intense moment, only the two violins, the cello and the viola from the original version are heard in the orchestra, creating a moment that is both suspended and endowed with a particular force. Gatti shows how this seemingly classical music with its post-Brahmsian colours opens up new horizons, attempts to demonstrate the modern use of classical forms and thus perfectly captures how we are at the beginning of profound musical changes with infinite dynamic nuances ranging from pianissimo to fortissimo, tempo breaks, but also experiments with timbre through the repeated use of mutes (double bass, etc.). It is a kind of exposition of the sonic possibilities of a young composer exploring new territory, a little gem of multiple colours of all kinds, a chromatic feast in which the incredible orchestra responds with commitment to all the demands of the conductor, who seeks to work on the slightest expressive nuance, so that the piece, which is new to them, appears fresh, young, surprisingly open and, in short, exciting.

Stravinsky

A completely different universe… where Webern opened up a future open to novelty, Stravinsky returned to older forms and figures in a period known as ‘neoclassical’. A movement of return, while Webern showed a dynamic movement. And yet, here again, Gatti strives to show how this so-called ‘neoclassical’ symphony also breaks a number of canons.
It is also amusing to note that in a previous article on the Berliners (the one in Lucerne 2025 devoted to the Zimmermann-Brahms concert), we mentioned the homage to Stravinsky in the first movement of Zimmermann's oboe concerto (Albrecht Mayer/Kirill Petrenko), which is precisely a direct homage to the Symphony in C. This also shows how much the woodwinds are called upon in this somewhat crazy work.
It is easy to understand why Gatti chose it for such a programme : it has all the appearances of an “ordinary” symphony in four movements, but even reading the description reveals a certain agogic complexity, as in the third movement, for example : Allegretto – Meno mosso – Tempo I – Più mosso – Tempo I).
In fact, Gatti shows that Stravinsky's ‘return to the past’ is not simply a return to traditional, ‘square’ and well-behaved forms. On the contrary, Stravinsky revisits the forms of the past with his modern eye, creating asymmetries, breaks in construction, anacoluthons, and completely unpredictable rhythms. It is a fairly traditional symphony in terms of duration (about 30 minutes), with an organicum that is also in "the natural order of things " (except for the presence of the tuba), but through echoes of Haydn, Rameau, or Beethoven and Edenic moments (exchange between solo violin (Noah Bendix-Balgley), solo viola (Diyang Mei) and oboe (Albrecht Mayer) in the second movement Larghetto concertante – Doppio movimento – Doppio valore) there are irregularities of phrasing, complexities (particularly in the third movement) that Stravinsky himself considered to be the most extreme he had ever written, linking the fairly tranquil larghetto of the second movement and the frenzied allegretto of the third without a break, in a continuous sequence, making the first and last movements seem like cyclical moments…

The rhythmic difficulties, the multiplication of colours and the irregularities that make this symphony one of the most delicate to perform are precisely what make it ideal for an orchestra as virtuoso as the Berliner Philharmoniker, made up of exceptional musicians, great international soloists, who attentively follow the conductor's every instruction. For once, he keeps his eyes on the score (even though he always conducts ‘Italian style’, from memory), a sign of his desire for security in accompanying the orchestra in such a delicate score. The difficulty lies in a composition made up of small cells that change abruptly just when one seems to be getting used to them. Stravinsky constantly breaks with familiarity (quite the opposite of the previous piece, with its multiple colours and real but ‘orderly’ surprises), and this constant desire for rupture and superimposed constructions of cells opposed by rhythms and instrumentation requires extreme concentration on the part of the soloists, among whom we would like to once again praise the performances of the woodwinds, bassoon (Schweigert), flute (Pahud) and oboe (Mayer): here, Gatti's conducting renders the slightest movement, the slightest ebb and flow, the slightest complexity with astonishing clarity, and at the same time, the way in which Gatti presents the piece, chiselled by an extraordinary orchestra and directly in the hands of the conductor, reveals all its modernity, all the volutes of a neo-classicism in which the “neo” is much more striking than the “classicism”, making this crazy and dizzying piece one of the greatest moments heard in concert in recent years.

Brahms

With Brahms, we return to something more familiar, at least for the orchestra, which recently performed this symphony with Barenboim (2023), where Gatti's approach is completely different from that of Petrenko (heard in the First last September in Lucerne), thus two lights confront and debate each other, the more tragic one of Petrenko and the more romantic one of Gatti. It is impossible to choose between them… at this level, it is completely futile and, moreover, from Furtwängler to Karajan or Abbado, it is a Brahms of many colours that we have heard in Berlin throughout the orchestra's history. It should be remembered that it was also the Third that convinced the Berliners to elect Claudio Abbado in 1989 as Karajan's successor.

The Third, premiered by Hans Richter and the Vienna Philharmonic on 2 December 1883, was an immediate success, consecrating Brahms, who had just earned his stripes as the greatest living German composer, since Wagner had died in February of the same year… And it is a calm and liberated Brahms that we hear here, right from the start with the three chords in the wind section F, A major, F (which in German notation is FAF, whose meaning is also Brahms' motto : Frei aber Froh – free but happy). Gatti explores this new-found freedom and joy, while also highlighting the echoes of Beethoven (" You have no idea what it's like to hear the footsteps of a giant behind you all the time!" Brahms said to Hermann Levi in 1870), but also what his association with Schumann, the Schumanns (Robert and Clara) and his knowledge of the symphonies of Schumann, his mentor, brought him. Gatti regularly explores Schumann's symphonic world, often including all four symphonies in his programmes, and it is with this intimate knowledge of Schumann's universe that he interprets Brahms's symphony. Moreover, on the last of the three initial chords, the strings, echoed by the trombones and timpani, launch the first theme, energetic and passionate, in a colour that leans towards the lower registers, limiting the playful side and clearly recalling Schumann's world. In the interview to which I refer, Gatti poses the question very clearly, emphasising the similarity of the rhythm to the ‘Rhenish’, but also the indications con brio or passionato, with no other agogic indications from Brahms, clearly indicating that he leaves full interpretative freedom. And so his first movement is particularly open, breathing fully of Schumann-style Romanticism, going beyond the shadow of Beethoven but with a density, even an intensity, that embraces and gives a slightly tense accent, but never a ‘tragic’ one. And the colour given does not clash with the ‘great tradition’, but tries to find a way of exchange between the tradition carried by the orchestra, its interpretative habits, and the conductor's proposals : the complete success of the result shows the understanding between the two, musicians and conductor.

Another suspended and dazzling moment is the woodwind playing at the beginning of the second movement (Andante) between Matic Kuder (clarinet), and in particular Stefan Schweigert (bassoon) and Albrecht Mayer (oboe) In fact, the entire second movement exudes elegy and themes drawn from more popular roots, which can also be heard in the third movement, the most famous, which is linked in colour to the previous one. These two central movements struck me as the most substantial, the most ‘Edenic’, in the sense that they directly evoke a space of simple happiness through their delicacy, their breadth, the horizons they open up, and their total absence of tension. There is a deep joy here, where we find the initial ‘froh’… Never demonstrative, never mawkish, there is an inner landscape here that shows a serenity that one does not always expect from Brahms. And here the orchestra possesses a kind of organic simplicity that only large ensembles can display, with supple transitions and rubati, without ever pressing, without ever abandoning a kind of delicate approach, an enchanting touch.

The last movement, more dramatic, with tighter rhythms, gives the orchestra the opportunity to explode in an infinite variety of colours. We find something of Beethoven's shadow here, we find urgency and intensity, with contrasts, certainly, but never clashes ; on the contrary, Gatti takes care to deliver a continuous discourse. Usually, in the last movements, we hear a kind of preparation for the final chord, a tightening of the rhythms, but here, on the contrary, Gatti takes care never to create brutality, but to nurture everything that binds, everything that makes it fluid, so that he prepares for this unusual ending, without a climax, an almost contemplative ending, echoing the beginning of the first movement and at the same time the logical conclusion of an instrumental dialogue rather than agogic clashes and contrasts in a reverent silence. An almost heavenly ending that embraces.

This concert, with its surprising programme, which I recommend listening to on Digital Concert Hall (single listening for €16.90), allows us to appreciate the virtuosity and flexibility of the Berliners and, above all, their willingness to trust their conductor. It is this commitment and trust that create the osmosis between the podium and all the sections and lead to this triumphant success. Undoubtedly one of the great evenings of the season.