“The Berlin Philharmonic under Kirill Petrenko said farewell to live-audience concerts on Oct. 31 with a piece that in no way displayed the orchestra’s famous sound. Or any sound at all,” writes David Patrick Stearns in Tuesday’s (12/1) Classical Voice North America. The Berlin Philharmonic’s “John Cage’s 4’33”… has had nearly 50,000 YouTube hits since its posting Nov. 3. It has become the ultimate unanswered question. With the pandemic going on far longer than anybody anticipated … what is there left to say? Cage’s silence … didn’t prompt us to define our experience over the past eight months. … Cage’s 4’33”—with no apparent stage or audience noise in the Berlin video—confronts you with that silence…. … In the first movement, [Petrenko] seemed to be conducting a conventional piece that wasn’t there. In the second movement, his hands were … as if asking for quiet or like a priest pronouncing a benediction. In the third movement, his hands stretched toward the orchestra…. He was near tears with sorrow and grief…. In the background, musicians could be seen communing with him intently or meditating with eyes closed.… 4’33” doesn’t have to be about silence—the discussion itself is perhaps the piece.”
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