Any time Christian Thielemann and the Berlin Philharmonic get together is sure to turn into a very special occasion, and that was the verdict of the Berliner Morgenpost: "To tumultuous applause he presented himself at the head of the Berlin Philharmonic as the man it was worth waiting for."
This memorable evening was devoted to late Romantic music. Two works were selected, each looking back once more to the vision of a better yesteryear. Albrecht Mayer was the soloist in Richard Strauss's Oboe Concerto, written in 1945, immediately after the Second World War, as one of his last works. In this highly complex piece, composed amid the devastation of war and with German culture reduced to dust and ashes, Strauss dreams his way back into happier times infused by the comforting spirit of Mozart. This work is surely one of the tenderest and finest that Strauss ever composed and it inspired Albrecht Mayer "to express his unique qualities as an instrumentalist with effervescent, unerring verve in the three short interconnected movements." (Berliner Morgenpost)
The second part of the programme was given over to Anton Bruckner, who stands alongside Brahms and Wagner in the late 19th century as one of those composers who set the course of Western art music for the next generation and beyond. Christian Thielemann's international reputation rests in great part on his readings of this very composer. And it is Bruckner's Fourth, the "Romantic", that is surely his most popular.
"Naturally, it is a triumph," exulted Der Tagesspiegel. "The shimmering nothingness of the strings with which it begins, the fabulous Stefan Dohr on the horn, who into this nothingness pours his first, inexpressibly yearning fifth. The gymnastics of the Brucknerian two-three-step. The sharp, positively brutal upsurge in the first movement, to which Thielemann applies his balm: a dizzyingly varied mixture. The musicians of the Philharmonic play at the peak of their ability; as the last chords are driven home, there is stillness in the auditorium."
