Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra

Michael Sanderling

Andrei Korobeinikov on piano 

The Anvil, October 16

HAD we been music lovers in late-19th Century Europe, our identities would have depended on one question: Wagner or Brahms?

Richard Wagner - the odious but musically revolutionary composer of outrageously long operas – seemed to represent all that was radical and new; Johannes Brahms was the reluctant, semi-traditionalist nemesis, described by a supporter of Wagner as “only a relic from primeval ages.”

Yet here they were, in the programme of the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra’s concert at The Anvil, staring at each other from opposite ends of the evening and trying to achieve surprisingly similar things.

The Mastersingers of Nuremberg – Wagner’s longest opera and only real comedy – was the composer’s attempt to connect with an ancient idea of Germanness, somehow coded into its musical traditions. This idea was especially relevant to a nation which, at the time of the opera’s completion in 1867, was still a few years from becoming a single united country.

The Prelude, which here allowed the Dresden Philharmonic a chance to show what a fine orchestra it is, recalls the pageantry and culture of a semi-imagined medieval German musical competition.

Despite the war of words between supporters of the two, this turns out to be fairly close to the aims of Brahms, particularly in his Fourth Symphony, which ended the Dresdeners’ concert.

Brahms was obsessed with the music of the past and, in the Symphony’s finale, harks back to the greatest of all German composers, J S Bach.

Smart programming wasn’t all the Dresden orchestra brought to the show, however. In the Symphony, their stunning tone and commitment revealed the depths of feeling locked in Brahms’s music.

Conductor Michael Sanderling (son of once-legendary maestro Kurt Sanderling) may have been a steady hand on the tiller, but playing as fine as this made a pure pleasure of Brahms’ tumultuous masterpiece.

Between the two was a much-loved piano concerto by Brahms’ musical godfather, Robert Schumann. Schumann’s music can come off as rather non-committal – fretting and worrying rather than driving at something profound – but there was no danger of that here with young Russian pianist Andrei Korobeinikov.

What Korobeinikov managed to do was reveal all the contrasts, depths and excitements of the concerto by pushing the expressive envelope further and further as the piece progressed.

Here was a pianist with bags of musical personality and with the technique to make it resound through his instrument.

Together, pianist and the orchestra managed that most wonderful of things: convincing us that the music was being written as they played it. It doesn’t get fresher than that.

Andrew Morris