Mahler
David Nice
Despite footsteps in the snow, as creepily characterised by Debussy's prelude of the same name, and sleighbells to launch a childlike symphonic journey, interior illumination should have been at the core of this concert. Sadly, given Colin Matthews's refined but fussy designer lighting in his Debussy orchestrations, a low-wattage Rimbaud/Britten zoo from one-tone soprano Christine Schäfer and hard sunbeams failing to probe the inner mysteries of the tomb-effigies Mahler envisaged in his Fourth Symphony's slow movement, it wasn't. Fortunately Vladimir Jurowski found novelty enough elsewhere to Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Because it was the capricious Finn who got us going and provided us with the evening's only chunks of nourishment. His performance of Rodion Shchedrin's Fourth Piano Concerto was joyous and thrilling. I wasn't expecting a great deal from Shchedrin after the critical drubbing the opening salvo in this mini-celebration received on theartsdesk. But, despite passages that stewed in a vat of concentrated Shostakovich for far too long, I was pleasantly surprised overall.The piano voice of this Fourth Concerto is quite unlike any other. Soaked in Carnatic flavours and free-form jazz, it emerges into Read more ...
graham.rickson
This month’s selection includes a rare recording of a Danish masterpiece and a glorious late-Romantic Austrian symphony. There’s a thrilling set of Bartók piano concertos and music composed by Dvořák’s son-in-law. Going back further in time, we’ve two Mozart releases, one blowing the cobwebs from an operatic masterpiece, the other a period instrument version of a very dark symphony. There’s a vintage live recording of Verdi’s Requiem and a stunning box set of Bach’s keyboard music played on piano by a Canadian pianist who’s not Glenn Gould. Two scintillating live recordings from Read more ...
David Nice
From primeval baying to a very human song in excelsis, Mahler's Third Symphony cries out for Olympian interpretation. That I've found in recent years with Abbado in Lucerne and the Albert Hall, Bělohlávek at the Barbican and Salonen on the South Bank. Since Vladimir Jurowski always demonstrates fresh thinking, and sometimes a burning intensity to match, the first performance of his London Philharmonic's new season was bound to be at least as challenging.That it certainly was from the opening bars. After two months of hearing conductors and orchestras handling mass and void in the Proms' Read more ...
David Nice
Call me a paradoxically wary old Mahler nut, but I reckon that given 24 months of anniversary overkill, it might keep things fresh to catch each of the symphonies live no more than once a year. So, having heard an Everest of a First Symphony from Abbado in Lucerne last August, I thought Rattle's might be the team likeliest to do this far-from-beginner's symphony similar justice. Did its Proms Mahler One compare well with the Swiss festival love-in? In terms of orchestral sophistication and dynamic range, certainly. As for cumulative impact, ease of phrasing and the ultimate electric charge, Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Yet again I leave a Herbert Blomstedt concert with a sense of wonderment and bemusement. Wonderment at the extraordinary music-making that this man is capable of. Bemusement as to why he is not better known, his talents not more widely recognised, his services not more often called upon in this, his 83rd year. Last night's masterful Prom saw him leading the youngsters of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester first into the heavens of Hindemith's Mathis der Maler Symphony and then into the fiery wastes of hell in Bruckner's terrifying Ninth. Sure, if I passed the tall, mousey, seraphically Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Boy, did I want to enjoy this Prom. On paper it should have been the highlight of the season. Young Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin has been making his mark in London as principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra with several sensational performances of Bruckner over the past few years. Here he was for his Proms debut at the helm of his smart new orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic (Gergiev's old outfit). And joining him was one of the most intelligent of singers, Simon Keenlyside, in Mahler's Rückert-Lieder. What could go wrong?Effort was certainly not lacking. Read more ...
David Nice
You'll just have to take it on trust from me that to hear the world's most responsive orchestra conducted by the world's finest living conductor in the deepest symphony ever written is the one concert hall experience you can't afford to miss. And since tickets for this event have been the hardest-to-get ever, live viewing will have to be a second best for most. Tonight you can watch Claudio Abbado conducting his beloved superband the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in Mahler's Ninth Symphony as it unfurls from the Nouvel-designed concert hall. It's here on the Lucerne Festival's website, starting Read more ...
David Nice
Swimming in the soup of the lesser late Romantics can be hard work. You get to admire the pretty variegated fish as you flounder, waiting to be buoyed up by a bigger idea. Then one comes along and nudges away so insistently that you nearly drown. Both extremes had to be borne in the first half of last night's Prom, with Ingo Metzmacher steering a supple course between the lazy devil of a Schreker operatic interlude and the placid blue sea of Korngold's Violin Concerto. The one interesting question that kept me afloat in viscous waters was: could he turn master oarsman and steer the superior, Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
It seemed odd on paper. Two Mahler symphonies? In one night? I don't think I'd ever seen that. Last night's Prom showed why not. While Valery Gergiev's second half Mahler Five saw the stage transfigured into a writhing sea of bodies and the air filled with an epic sound, his first half starter, Mahler Four, fell flat on its face. One was a performance; the other was a rehearsal to a performance. It's no wonder really. The World Orchestra for Peace, the king of scratch bands, made up of concert masters and principals from the leading orchestras of the world, last met in September 2009. Read more ...
edward.seckerson
Being a great Mahler conductor is all about going the extra distance: the near-inaudible pianissimo, the seismic crescendo, the rhetorical ritardando; the accelerando that borders on reckless, the tempo change that crashes the gear-shift, the general pause that becomes a gaping chasm. Mahler took all the trappings of Austro-German music to the edge and back. His most successful interpreters do likewise. So, on the evidence of this Prom performance of the pantheistic Third Symphony, is Donald Runnicles a great Mahler conductor? Maybe not quite, not yet. But getting there. The first movement of Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
The stage of the Royal Albert Hall has a rather unfortunate habit of making orchestras seem incidental. Stretching endlessly across, one of the world’s largest organs by way of backdrop, even the most generous conventional ensembles take on Lilliputian proportions. Youth orchestras, with their Romantic scale and do-or-die attack, often emerge best from this encounter, as the Simón Bolívar and Gustav Mahler ensembles have recently proved. Framed by eight double basses and five horns, the Royal Albert Hall finally starts to make sense as a performance space. In the hands (and lips) of the Read more ...