Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Berlin’s monumental musical life grinds to a halt for the summer months, then heaves itself to a juddering start with the Musikfest every year between late August and mid-September. Though orchestras from Oslo, Milan, Kansas, Cleveland, São Paulo, Munich and more take the stage, all eyes are on the Berliner Philharmoniker each year, to see how they start the new season.The concert opened with Wolfgang Rihm’s mesmerising IN-SCHRIFT, a work honouring the extraordinary spaces of St Mark’s basilica in Venice. Rihm was appointed composer in residence for the coming season with the Berliner Philharmoniker, but died in July; the season is now dedicated to his memory.His pre-eminence in the German musical landscape could not have been more grandly underscored than by this remarkable work, in which five percussionists struck woodblocks with such militaristic precision that it felt like an act of violence. Harshly plucked strings echoed the gunshot effect and washes of transcendent sound provided a hallucinogenic reverie between attacks. Rihm’s music commands its forces by combining the deft assurance of a master orchestrator with feverish originality; under chief conductor Kirill Petrenko’s taut and dramatic control, its impact was shattering.This season marks the first time that Petrenko has ever conducted Bruckner with the Berliners, and that sense of exploration is still raw (although the orchestra had already performed the massive Fifth Symphony in Salzburg, Lucerne and London over the summer). His focus was on the music’s violent contrasts and grand gestures; the listening experience was extreme, with little time for the numinous spirituality that comes with a sense of the symphonist’s broader architecture. ★★★★☆It seemed fitting to start the day with a palate-cleanser in the form of Ensemble Modern’s afternoon concert in the adjacent chamber hall. The two ensembles share a casual virtuosity of approach, an unfussy level of technical excellence where no musical challenge ever sounds laboured. This was just as well for Ensemble Modern’s focus on the music of Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-53), Tania León (born 1943), Katherine Balch (born 1991) and Johanna Magdalena Beyer (1888-1944), none of it simple or obvious.Crawford Seeger’s music is stringent yet playful, clever but legible; for all her carefully-studied atonal excursions, solid fugues and glittering counterpoint, her work is full of theatrical flair and calm lyricism. From the rollicking lilt of Rissolty Rossolty to the self-aware balance of her two Suites (1927 and 1929), her music draws the listener in, engaging both mind and heart. The musicians of Ensemble Modern, under the unassumingly clear guidance of conductor David Niemann, tackled her scores with easy rhythmic precision and cheerful melodic exuberance.The addition of León’s Hechízos and Rítmicas, both dense and witty works with dance-like velocity; of Bayer’s adroit and wry little chamber works (adapted into a suite for this concert by Hermann Kretzschmar); and of Balch’s inventive Country Radio, with its seamless reworking of Charles Ives’s Central Park in the Dark, made this a satisfying amalgam of unfamiliar repertoire presented with flair and class. ★★★★☆Thank goodness for the irony and droll repartee of the afternoon concert. Amid all this epic solemnity, it is good to know that there is room for humour, too, in this year’s Musikfest.To September 18, berlinerfestspiele.de
