In matters large and small
The Chamber Music tradition of the Berliner Philharmoniker  

Chamber music means engaging in a dialogue between equals and creating a shared artistic identity as a group. Naturally, the musicians of the Berliner Philharmoniker are passionate about this art form. At the Salzburg Easter Festival, they present a series of chamber music concerts, offering insights into this rich tradition. In this article, members of the orchestra share their reflections and experiences.

It is a paradoxical situation: an orchestra made up of numerically vast resources is clustered round a conductor who, with the help of the musicians, can produce enough sound to make the whole auditorium shake. And what does the maestro want? The musicians should play as if they are performing chamber music. Herbert von Karajan, Claudio Abbado, Sir Simon Rattle and Kirill Petrenko have all been the chief conductors of the Berliner Philharmoniker and all of them have nurtured this same ideal: the group as a whole should create the impression of being a small ensemble in which each of the players listens closely to what all of the others are doing.

In short, the players are expected not just to rely on the signals that they receive from the person with the baton, allowing themselves to be treated as servants reliant on dictates from the podium. Quite the opposite: they also have to communicate with one another. “You need to point your antennae in every direction,” says cellist Knut Weber. “I remember a performance with Claudio Abbado in 1998, just after I had joined the orchestra. During a group solo I looked towards him at the front, but he signalled that I should heed my section leader, not him.”

“The sound becomes more cultivated”

“It is by performing chamber music”, violist Julia Gartemann explains, “that one acquires the sensitivity needed for ensemble playing.” She speaks from twenty-five years’ experience. “During rehearsals with small groups you spend an incredible amount of time discussing details such as phrasing. If there are differing views, we simply try out each of the versions and we then decide which one of them we should choose.”

“With chamber music, you really need to be able to mesh,” Knut Weber adds. Once all the orchestral players have acquired this ability, this automatically benefits their ensemble playing in a larger formation. Musical textures emerge more clearly, the sound becomes more cultivated and more nuanced and the complex symphonic fabric appears more transparent. Back in 2003, Simon Rattle admitted: “What I actually measure as the conductor are units of time, and I also ensure a degree of effectiveness. But if I am inspired by the spirit of chamber music, I am something else: I ensure that the musicians understand one another when they are playing.”

“Chamber music has always been a part of my life, ever since I was a child,” Julia Gartemann explains. While she was at school, her whole family would perform music together. Later, when she was a student at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, her teachers included the violist with the famous Guarneri String Quartet, Michael Tree. Knut Weber, too, was familiar with domestic music-making. Although neither of his parents played a musical instrument, “we were so many children that we were able to rustle up the resources needed for the ‘Trout’ Quintet.” Schubert’s masterpiece is scored for piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass.

Over ninety percent of the members of the Berliner Philharmoniker play chamber music

Weber attended the University of Cologne, where he was especially inspired by the courses given by the Amadeus Quartet and by the Alban Berg Quartet. “But there was also a violin teacher who refused to allow his pupils to play chamber music, since he was determined that they should all be soloists,” he recalls.

“Over ninety percent of the orchestra’s members play chamber music on a regular basis,” Knut Weber estimates. Like Julia Gartemann, he is a member of five different chamber groups, even though not all of them appear regularly. Many of them come together only for specific projects, since these activities all have to be scheduled during the players’ free time.

Some of the string quartets to have emerged from the orchestra’s ranks achieved cult status in their day. The quartet formed by Johannes (“Hans”) Bastiaan in 1945 survived until 1970. Hanns-Joachim Westphal founded the quartet that bore his name in 1958; the Herzfeld Quartet made its debut in 1975, the Brandis Quartet in 1976, the Philharmonia Quartet in 1985. This last formation was shaped in particular by Daniel Stabrawa and Jan Diesselhorst. Truly exceptional was the Philharmonisches Duo of Berlin that was formed in 1969 by cellist Jörg Baumann and double bass player Klaus Stoll. Audiences reacted enthusiastically to the pairing. The two players gave more than six hundred performances all over the world, and made over a dozen recordings. Since 2019 the trail they blazed has been followed by cellist David Riniker and double bass player Janusz Widzyk as the Philharmonia Duo.

The Philharmoniker website currently lists thirty-two chamber formations, ranging from the globally-admired 12 Cellists to various wind ensembles and from the innovative Scharoun Ensemble to the Berlin Baroque Soloists, which focus on a specific area of the repertoire, and the all-female Venus Ensemble.

As part of this season’s subscription Series Q (“Berliner Philharmoniker Ensembles”), Julia Gartemann will be appearing with the Brahms Ensemble of Berlin, Knut Weber with the Varian Fry Quartet. In keeping with the season’s motto, “Controversial!”, both artists have conferred with their chamber colleagues on the choice of programmes that they will be performing.

“It’s great fun to develop a programme from the standpoint of a particular challenge,” says Julia Gartemann, warming to her theme. “This is a wonderful opportunity for us to continue to evolve, because we’ve got to be creative and can’t always fall back on the usual repertoire. In the course of our research we often stumble across unexpected gems.”