Safe Space

Kirill Petrenko makes a conservative début at the Berlin Philharmonic.

- Alex Ross

When, back in 2002, Simon Rattle began his seventeen­year tenure as the music director of the Berlin Philharmonic, he opened his inaugural program with Thomas Adès’s 1997 work “Asyla,” which mixes grand Romantic gestures with four­on­the­floor dance beats. Rattle thus announced his intention to modernize an ensemble famed for its almost occult command of the core repertory. That night’s performance of “Asyla” was only fitfully persuasive; the players seemed less than convinced by the music. Throughout his term, Rattle met with resistance from the orchestra—even from younger musicians who had pushed for his appointment. He succeeded in his mission all the same.

Kirill Petrenko, the forty­sevenyear­old Russian­born conductor, who replaced Rattle in August, shows no interest in picking up where his predecessor left off. The main work in his first concert was Beethoven’s unavoidable Ninth Symphony. A short tour of European festivals also included Tchaikovsky’s inevitable Fifth. Marginally more modern repertory fleshed out the programs, in the form of Berg’s “Lulu Suite” and Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto. New music was conspicuously absent, and none appears in Petrenko’s remaining concerts during his first season. Conservatives in the orchestra and in the audience may be reassured, but this retrenchment is a troubling signal from a historically great orchestra that ought to be assuming a leadership role in global classical music.