If you ask every classical music lover around the world who the greatest orchestra is, the overwhelming majority will answer only one of two: the Vienna Philharmonic, or the Berlin Philharmonic, and the Berlin Philharmonic will get the majority within that majority.
But the Berlin Philharmonic isn't even the best orchestra in Berlin! if you want a blanket of perfect sound, the Berlin Philharmonic is the orchestra for you. But if you want musicians who reach deep within themselves to create something ecstatic and meaningful, don't go to the Philharmonie. The Berlin Philharmonic hasn't done that since Wilhelm Furtwangler died in the mid-50s. The charitable interpretation is that the Berlin Philharmonic became a luxury product, everything subversive about classical music denatured for an orchestra designed to be the ultimate in comfortable listening for the same people who wear Rolexes and drive BMW's. The uncharitable interpretation is that their aesthetic was designed by Herbert von Karajan to be the musical equivalent to the films of Leni Riefenstahl. A mass of perfect surface for which individuality is completely subsumed into a totalizing collective. The effect can be awesome and thrilling, it also contorts humanity into things we're not meant to be. Simon Rattle, the epitome of the modern maestro (and for my money perhaps the best currently active), led them for sixteen years; and not even Rattle could bring the Philharmonic into the modern era. Rattle aged horribly over his Berlin years, and eventually retired rather than persisting in a task that was self-evidently futile.
The irony is that just two kilometers east of Karajan's perfect surfaces played an orchestra whose sound was both more refined and rawer. The Staatskapelle Berlin does not make you think of Germany's darkest moments, but it's brightest. Hearing that sound is to recall the Germany of Goethe and Beethoven, and in the darkest days of East Germany, the Staatskapelle Berlin retook its place as the greatest orchestra of Germany's soon to be united capital, even as no one in the West ever noticed.
The Berlin Philharmonic is a relatively modern invention. It was only formed in the early 1880s, right around the time Wagner died. Most of the great German tradition was already written. But the Staatskapelle Berlin goes back to 1570, when it was established by the Elector of Brandenburg to be the court orchestra to the King of Prussia. In the 18th century, it was reformed and expanded to be the orchestra of the Court Opera. It was an orchestra led at varying times by relatively famous minor composers like Spontini, Meyerbeer, and Otto Nicolai, but in 1899, the director became none other than Richard Strauss, and it was during Strauss's period as director that he premiered the operas for which he's now best known. it was only after Strauss's resignation in 1913 that the Berlin Philharmonic became the unquestionably the more important organization, which, perhaps not coincidentally, was the year the Berlin Phiharmonic cut its first recording of a complete symphony.
The Staatskapelle hardly declined, in 1925 it premiered Alban Berg's Wozzeck, which is often considered the greatest opera of the 20th century. It had some very productive periods with a number of conductors whose last names started with K. But in 1964, East Germany invited the Austrian conductor, Otmar Suitner to cross over into East Germany to lead the orchestra both in concert and in the opera house. Suitner was one of those incomprehensible musicians whose performances were invariably understated, reliable, and tasteful, and yet still managed to be overwhelming in their excitement. The Berlin Philharmonic overwhelmed with the power of their sound, but in nearly anything written before 1800 and after 1914, they sounded hopelessly clumsy. The Staatskapelle could match them force for force, but in low-key masters like Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, there was no competition at all. Under Karajan, modern music was virtually non-existant, while the Staatskapelle seemed to play literally everything up to the present day, even under the Communist regime. With the Philharmoniker, Karajan was so the star that Karajan even had a new concert hall built in which the conductor's podium would be in the exact center of the hall. But with Suitner, the orchestra was the star.
Suitner retired just after the Berlin Wall fell, and with a new era came a new star to be their director. Daniel Barenboim may be a dictatorial egomaniac on the Karajan level, but he is a much better musician, and a far worthier heir to Furtwangler with the same ecstatic drive to wring the most meaning from the music. I sometimes find Barenboim's interpretations misguided, both of music and history, but there is no doubting the natural force of his music making.
Just look at this clip here, the Staatskapelle playing Siegfried's Funeral March in London on what seems to be an illegal cell-phone capture (the sound is inevitably distant so turn it up). The orchestra has already been playing for four hours that day, and fifteen hours in the last four days. And yet, from the deepest well of their viscera, they summon something truly frightening. The Berlin Phiharmonic can generate this mass of sound, they would make you hear the individual notes more clearly, but they would remain on the music's surface. They would not let go of themselves to summon this deep, ecstatic fury. This is something only a truly great orchestra can do, greater than the Berlin Philharmonic.
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