Is the Berlin Philharmonic the best orchestra in the world? Quite possibly. The only potential disappointment about the first of their two Proms under their chief conductor Kirill Petrenko was that there were just two works. Elgar’s Enigma Variations and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No 4 made an insightful pairing, though, sharing an autobiographical aspect that, in different ways, reveals much about their composers.
The Elgar – bread-and-butter repertoire for UK orchestras but not yet for German ones – was approached with a freshness that made these portraits of the composer’s friends and family seem particularly affectionate. The opening can sound like merely a warm-up for what’s to come; here, though, from the very start the string tone was sumptuous and pregnant with possibility, the phrasing meaningful. This attention to detail continued throughout a performance that gloried in the richness of the orchestra’s sound and the full extent of its range, from the softest of melancholy cello solos to the floor-shaking throb of the Royal Albert Hall organ in the finale. A particularly striking moment came with the stark timpani rolls in the penultimate variation, conjuring the sound of a ship’s engine to honour a friend who was then on a long sea voyage – or, reading deeper, perhaps a lost love who had emigrated years before.
