BBC Proms: Graham, Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, Davis | reviews, news & interviews
BBC Proms: Graham, Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, Davis
BBC Proms: Graham, Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, Davis
Viennese youth orchestra teams up with ageing conductor in the wild and exotic
Thursday, 25 August 2011
Colin Davis and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester: the old leading the young© Chris Christodoulou
The spectacle of an orchestra named after Mahler playing Stravinsky irresistibly calls to mind Stravinsky’s report of a performance of the Eighth Symphony in Zurich in 1913. “Imagine”, he wrote to Maurice Delage, “that for two hours you are made to understand that two times two makes four.” Oddly enough, repetition is the lifeblood of Stravinsky’s own music, though he rarely makes two times two equal four, and his symphonies don’t last two hours (nor, incidentally, do Mahler’s).
The spectacle of an orchestra named after Mahler playing Stravinsky irresistibly calls to mind Stravinsky’s report of a performance of the Eighth Symphony in Zurich in 1913. “Imagine”, he wrote to Maurice Delage, “that for two hours you are made to understand that two times two makes four.” Oddly enough, repetition is the lifeblood of Stravinsky’s own music, though he rarely makes two times two equal four, and his symphonies don’t last two hours (nor, incidentally, do Mahler’s).
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