Mahler
Rachel Halliburton
In an evening filled with "firsts" one of the many striking aspects was the effect the Anonimi Orchestra debut had on people walking past on the Marylebone Road. As we sat in the warehouse space of the Bomb Factory – with its exposed brick walls and large display windows – from time-to-time passers-by could be seen transfixed, gazing in at the vivacious ensemble bringing light to the January gloom.The Anonimi Orchestra is the brainchild of Margarita Balanas, the cellist and conductor (main picture, and page bottom), one of three talented Latvian siblings who between them have Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Epic and intimate, philosophically anguished and rhapsodically transcendent, Mahler’s "Resurrection" Symphony remains one of the most mountainous challenges of the orchestral repertoire. For the opening of the Southbank’s new season Edward Gardner and the London Philharmonic Orchestra delivered an interpretation of superlative resonance and clarity, in which it felt that we explored every detail of the foothills as well as the earth-shaking views from the top.The vigorous attack of the LPO strings at the start of the Allegro maestoso made for a dynamic, athletically poised start, before the Read more ...
Edward Gardner
“If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.”“What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.”With these two quotations from Mahler, I already feel like putting my pen down. I had intended to write about my approach to the upcoming performance of his Second Symphony with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, but the more I thought about words, the more reductive my thoughts became.Journalists trying to unlock Claudio Abbado’s genius in interviews on Mahler were met a smile, nod, and just “schöne Musik”, “beautiful music”. As ever Read more ...
Robert Beale
For someone who said when he first took the helm at the Hallé that he “didn’t do much Mahler”, Sir Mark Elder has a pretty good track record. He’s conducted all the symphonies except one over 20 or so years at the Bridgewater Hall, and two of them have been heard under his baton more than once.Those are no. 9 (it was also recorded, in 2014) and no. 5 – and now, in his final season as music director, he’s begun with the former and will end with the latter, both recalling memorable experiences from the past for those who witnessed them.The Ninth is, in his own words, a lovely way to Read more ...
graham.rickson
Otto Klemperer: The Warner Classics Remastered Edition (Warner Classics)The young Otto Klemperer’s conducting career was encouraged by no less than Gustav Mahler, Klemperer’s meteoric rise leading him to become director of Berlin’s Kroll Opera from 1927 to 1931. The first two CDs in this set comprise recordings made during his tenure there; dim mono sound aside, these fiery readings of Wagner, Brahms and Strauss defy their age. The following decades saw the conductor faced with exile in Los Angeles and range of physical and personal catastrophes, including brief imprisonment. Do listen Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
This Prom by the BBC Philharmonic was billed as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Royal Northern College of Music, in distant Manchester.By design or lucky accident, the RNCM was well represented, with a new work by recent graduate Grace-Evangeline Mason, and a concerto performed by slightly less recent graduate Sir Stephen Hough (he was ennobled last week). Conductor Mark Wigglesworth (pictured below, image Mark Allan) has no obvious connection with the college or the orchestra, though he did study at Manchester University. He is always an asset on the podium, and each of the Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Standing ovations on the less-than-passionate South Bank can have a dutiful, grudging quality. However, I’ve seldom heard more heartfelt ardour at the Royal Festival Hall than the acclaim for Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra last night. Rightly so? Beyond all doubt.We knew, from recordings if not live performances, that their stewardship of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony passes beyond curatorial respect and into a sort of rapturous renewal. We’ll never quite hear Mahler’s Ninth (though Bruno Walter certainly comes close). Still, the great Budapest band arguably embodies the all- Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Brett Dean’s opera Hamlet will play at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in June: the next stage of an acclaimed progress that began at Glyndebourne in 2017. Now on the last stretch of his three-year stint as composer-in-residence with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the prolific and versatile Australian – formerly a violist with the Berlin Phil – evidently still has warring royal families on his mind. Last night the LPO, conducted by Edward Gardner, premiered Dean’s In spe contra spem (Hope against Hope): a dramatic scena for two sopranos in which lyricist Matthew Jocelyn interweaves Read more ...
David Nice
Complex, ambiguous late romantic works in concert programmes need something more direct to keep them company. Mozart and Richard Strauss make excellent bedfellows (and Strauss was an extraordinary Mozart interpreter): no wonder Vladimir Jurowski’s Saturday night pairing worked well. But Mahler and Poulenc? That wasn’t Simon Rattle’s original intention; but in campaigning for the BBC Singers by inviting them to follow his LSO Mahler 7, he hit upon a rare ideal.In terms of post-concert coverage, most of the thunder has been stolen by Rattle's speech after the interval. Which, under the Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
One can only admire the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland for its steadfast indifference to the laws of box office gravity. A little known contemporary guitar concerto allied to a relatively unpopular Mahler symphony would be a hard sell even in an Edinburgh Festival context. On a distinctly chilly April evening in Edinburgh, it fell to a small but vocal audience of camp followers to make up for the disappointing rows of empty seats in the admittedly cavernous Usher Hall. The evening had a slightly unusual format. At 80 minutes, Mahler’s Seventh Symphony is long enough to stand alone Read more ...
graham.rickson
Nadia & Lili Boulanger: Les Heures Claires - The Complete Songs Lucile Richardot (mezzo), Stéphane Degout (baritone), Raquel Camarinha (soprano), Anne de Fornel (piano), Sarah Nemtanu (violin), Emmanuelle Bertrand (cello) (Harmonia Mundi)This 3-CD set of 63 songs and instrumental pieces by the Boulanger sisters, Nadia (1887-1979) and Lili (1893-1918) really is a treasure-trove. It is claimed that it is the first “intégrale” of the songs by both sisters; these are occasionally interwoven with instrumental pieces. To over-generalize, the first two CDs give an insight into the level of Read more ...
David Nice
This longest, wackiest and most riskily diverse of Third Symphonies became Esa-Pekka Salonen’s personal property during his years as the Philharmonia's Principal Conductor. His successor, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, has (in)famously said he’s not interested in Mahler. Two of the orchestra’s most distinguished visitors, Jakub Hrůša and Paavo Järvi, certainly are, so after Hrůša’s blazing Second, hopes were high for Järvi’s Third.It delivered in terms of masterful conducting, effortless in every gear change, and in all those sonorities which must have seemed outrageously novel in 1896; when the Read more ...