As if you didn’t already know: musical genes run in families. And they are by no means rare. Michael Sanderling, the youngest of Kurt Sanderling’s three conducting sons, was here in charge of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra. Its principal conductor since the 2021-22 season, Sanderling and his Swiss players had a special soloist with them: Andreas Ottensamer, himself part of a great family of clarinettists. His father Ernst was one of the Vienna Philharmonic’s principal clarinets, a seat now occupied by his son Daniel, while the other son Andreas combines his time in the Berlin Philharmonic with an international solo career.
It was indeed a pleasure to hear the creamy mellowness of this Ottensamer’s clarinet in the Elbphilharmonie, less so in the concerto work, than in his encore, his own arrangement of Mendelssohn’s Lieder ohne Worte, Op.30 no.6. Earlier, those who look askance at the notion that any transcription of an original work could be even moderately successful, would have heard their reservations confirmed. Some composers have always had an eye on the main chance, realising that existing material can easily be adapted and made to fit a different frame. Brahms was one of them. Very soon after sending his two clarinet sonatas to his publisher, he made separate arrangements for both violin and viola. Much later, Luciano Berio was commissioned by the LA Philharmonic to rework the Clarinet Sonata no. 1 in F minor.
Though clarinettists will surely welcome any expansion to their repertoire, the thickness of the orchestration, especially in the two outer movements, and the absence of any cadenza-like passages mean that it is sometimes a hard struggle for the solo voice. The charm of the original late work emerged most clearly in the Andante moderato movement, where Ottensamer’s luscious tone and seamless phrasing provided a pre-echo of the symphonic work to follow. Berio’s own sound-world was hardly in evidence. Only the third movement, with its Ländler characteristics, moved it closer to a Mahlerian idiom.
This concert opened with a nine-minute work by the Swiss composer Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini. Its title Wunde(r) is a pun in German: the wound that causes initial pain and the miracle that brings about healing. The inspiration came from a novel by Joseph Roth on a reworking of the Job theme. There was plenty of pain in the central Agitato section, with eruptions from a large percussion section and mighty brass all but drowning out the strings. The two outer sections owed something to the meditative influence of Arvo Pärt, the suspenseful string lines towards the close providing an element of inward-looking atmosphere.
The Lucerne orchestra is Switzerland’s oldest, established in 1805, and has set about creating a greater international profile for itself, including a recently issued cycle of the Brahms symphonies. The players were well prepared and evinced a high degree of technical security in both halves of this concert. However, making a mark in the Symphony no. 4 in E minor is an acid test for any Brahmsian interpreter and the orchestra they lead. The Swiss orchestra has yet to field full strength in its string sections, and the absence of both heft and the embrace of a warm hug cannot be overlooked. Sanderling’s focus on transparency and the clarity of individual lines allowed woodwind and brass to dominate, at times excessively so, giving the overall sound a quality of tartness. I was reminded of the comment Brahms himself made to Hans von Bülow, after the completion of the work in the mountainous state of Styria. “My Fourth tastes of the local climate. Here the cherries have no sweetness.” Exactly so.
