Richard Bratby

I’m still not wholly convinced by Kirill Petrenko: Berlin Phil’s Digital Concert Hall reviewed

The orchestra's online archive offers an impressive spread of performances, including Rattle conducting Tom and Jerry and a Karajan concert that is appalling and magnificent

Is he really the best person for this job? Kirill Petrenko conducting the Berlin Philharmonic at the BBC Proms in 2018. Photo: Chris Christodoulou 
issue 30 May 2020

At the start of Elgar’s Second Symphony the full orchestra hovers, poised. It pulls back; and then, like a dam breaking, the music surges forward in wave upon wave of golden sound. ‘Rarely, rarely, comest thou, Spirit of Delight!’ writes Elgar, quoting Shelley, at the top of the score, and you won’t hear that spirit captured more exuberantly than in a performance from May 2009 by the Berlin Philharmonic under its future music director Kirill Petrenko.

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