Mahler
graham.rickson
Mahler: Symphony No. 4 Turku Philharmonic Orchestra/Leif Segerstam, with Essi Luttinen (mezzo-soprano) (Alba)Leif Segerstam can be a maddeningly inconsistent conductor, a musician whose recordings can frustrate as much as they inspire. He’s recorded Mahler 4 before, unremarkably, with Danish forces on Chandos, so it’s good to report that this new Finnish version is a zinger. The Turku Philharmonic’s lean, clear sound suits this transparently scored symphony especially well, though there’s no lack of weight in the bigger climaxes. Intermittent dark clouds may threaten the symphony’s Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
Lockdown, perhaps more than any other time, has amplified how modern technology can be both a blessing and a curse. Of course, it’s wonderful to have the means to connect with friends and family scattered across the globe; carry on working, learning, eating, praying etc. with others; and enjoy art in new and innovative ways, such as this particular digital series. But how many of us have felt the exhaustion that comes from back to back zoom meetings, the ennui that comes from barely leaving our homes and the self doubt that comes from others’ social media streams? (Does my garden look as nice Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Luis Sagasti attends closely to the silence that precedes, pauses, and follows music in this mesmeric collage of stories inspired by the sounds that humans – and animals, and stars – create. Like many authors before him, the Argentinian novelist and curator is also a bit obsessed by Bach’s Goldberg Variations, especially as played by the maverick Canadian genius Glenn Gould. Well, Luis – snap. The last pre-lockdown Goldbergs I heard live fizzed into the Devon twilight a year ago during the Dartington Festival, in a blistering, furiously-paced performance by pianist Joanna MacGregor that Read more ...
David Nice
Solitude, mortality and transcendence have never been more profoundly expressed in music than by Mahler, who composed Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) in the valley of the shadow of death (too superstitious to give it the name of Ninth Symphony, though that and a sketched-out Tenth did follow, he never lived to hear it performed). It seems like the perfect work to benefit from a silent background in an otherwise empty Royal Opera House - though there's no substitute for the intense silence of a full audience. Gluck, too struck his deepest note with the highest ones of the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Beethoven Symphonies 1-3 – arrangements by Ries & Ebers Compagnia di Punto (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi)Just Beethoven’s first three symphonies in this two-disc set, so you wonder whether he’d still be described as a genius had he stopped after the Eroica? Of course; Symphony No. 1’s well-behaved façade conceals a wealth of radical detail, but the leap from there to No. 3 is enormous. Do we really need more Beethoven symphony recordings? Yes, if they’re like these, the eleven-piece Compagnia di Punto (named after a celebrated horn player) performing them in chamber arrangements by Read more ...
David Nice
It seems like a different world when the Berlin Philharmonic and Simon Rattle gave a full concert to an empty hall as the world began to go into lockdown. Now, on continental Europe at least, orchestral musician plus the occasional star conductor and soloist(s) are cautiously reuniting in smaller numbers, though still as yet without a live audience. We look on from the UK, behind as we are in possibilities of release from quarantine, but even here there are a few hopeful signs of players being able to do more than join each other virtually from their own homes. Oslo Philharmonic's Read more ...
David Nice
So many performances of Mahler's most theatrical symphony every season, so few conductors who have something radically fresh to say about it. Two who do are London Philharmonic Orchestra chief Vladimir Jurowski, perfecting his vision over the years, and now the Philharmonia's Principal Guest Conductor, Jakub Hrůša. With total command, he captures the scope of a monumental canvas, every nuance in the phrasing – quite often it's simply that Mahler's meticulous instructions need following, but how rarely that happens – and pointillist jabs of colour.The breadth of Hrůša's interpretation – the Read more ...
Richard Bratby
“Try to imagine the whole universe beginning to ring and resound” wrote Gustav Mahler of his Eighth Symphony. “There are no longer human voices, but planets and suns revolving.” It’s an image that captures the impossible scale and mind-boggling ambition of this so called “Symphony of a Thousand”. But it doesn’t begin to do justice to the freshness, clarity and sheer headlong energy of this performance by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and no fewer than five choruses under the direction of Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla. Doesn’t the Earth alone move at 67,000 miles per hour? With around 600 Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
For better or worse, because of Visconti’s classic film the Adagietto of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony now inevitably means Venice in its gloomiest moods. So there turned out to be a grim timeliness in a performance on an evening that coincided with the most devastating “acqua alta” to flood the city in half a century. Yet, in keeping with everything he does with the London Philharmonia Orchestra, Vladimir Jurowski’s reading at the Royal Festival Hall made us think afresh about an iconic work and dispel its more hackneyed, reach-me-down associations.Not for Jurowski the languid late-Romantic swoon Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The Prague Symphony Orchestra are in town, their Cadogan Hall concert the London leg of a UK tour. It’s ambitious, including Mahler’s epic Third Symphony in five different cities, each with a local chorus. The orchestra itself, Prague’s second band, is a spirited and distinctively Central European ensemble. And they have an interesting conductor, the young Finn Pietari Inkinen, who, since taking charge of the Prague Symphony in 2015 has also added Saarbrucken and Tokyo orchestras to his portfolio, and was recently named as the conductor for Bayreuth’s new Ring cycle next year.Cadogan Hall isn Read more ...
graham.rickson
Haydn: Opus 20 String Quartets, Nos 2, 3 & 5 Dudok Quartet Amsterdam (Resonus)When discussing Haydn’s music it's difficult to avoid using words like ‘elegant’, ‘witty’ and ‘brio’, but I'll do my best. The writer E.T.A Hoffman should shoulder much of the blame for Haydn's typecasting as a simple-minded funster, arguing in 1810 that “his symphonies lead us… to a merry, colourful throng of happy mortals.” Hmm. Two of the three string quartets on this disc are in minor keys. All three are as striking, and as dramatic as anything in the classical chamber repertoire. Exactly what you'd Read more ...
David Nice
There's something about the very opening of a Mahler symphony which gives you an idea of how the rest of the performance will go. In the case of the Second, the inescapable "Resurrection", it's the ferocity behind the upper string tremolo and the wildness of the uprush from cellos and basses. To kick off the first full Tsinandali Festival in the wonderful part-open auditorium recently constructed on a country estate in Georgia's wine-growing district, there was that special shock of the new you only get from young players experiencing the work for the first time.The Armenians, Azeris, Read more ...