Berliner Philharmoniker / Kirill Petrenko by Von Weber, Schubert, Hindemith, De (2021/2021), Director musical Kirill Petrenko, Philharmonie de Paris, Paris, France

The evocative sorcery of Weber, whose enchantments inspire Hindemith with a response that is both critical and loving, is followed by the majesty of Schubert's final symphony: who, better than the Berlin musicians, could magnify such pages? Like Mozart before him in his Magic Flute , Weber offers with Oberon a fable where music contemplates its own powers. The horn has replaced the flute, and it is he who leads the debates in the Overture, a page worthy of the magic of the “king of the Elves” and whose writing, already using the leitmotif, will enchant Wagner. The thanks to Weber, however, it is Hindemith who addresses him, in 1943, from his American exile: in the Germanic tradition of "symphonic variations", his Metamorphoses accomplish the transmutation not devoid of humor of several Weberian themes, delivering to the passage a sparkling demonstration of writing. Immense portico concluding, finally, with Schubert's sumptuous Symphony No. 9 , to which its imposing form, its harmonic complexity and its melodic spirituality assign a unique place: that of constituting a bridge between the monumentality of Beethoven and the mysticism of Bruckner.