Orchestra of the Royal Opera House / Antonio Pappano / Thomas Hampson / Klaus Florian Vogt - Cadogan Hall, 27 February 2011
It's not often the worker bees of the Royal Opera House orchestra are released from their Covent Garden nest. It's not often either that the Cadogan Hall, despite its fine acoustic, hosts much worth listening to. But after Andres Orozco-Estrada's splendid Tonkünstler Orchestra they managed to pull a second terrific evening out of the bag.
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CBSO / Nelsons - Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 16 September 2010
Was it worth travelling all the way to Birmingham and back for just 90 minutes of music? You bet.
The CBSO kicked off their season and their Mahler cycle with the 8th Symphony. A cast of 600 filled the stage and the choir stalls and stretched around the side galleries.
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Arte.tv are re-streaming last week's live broadcast of Claudio Abbado's Mahler 9 from Lucerne - but only until midnight today, Friday. Watch it below or check out the original by following this link.
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Prom 34: Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin / Ingo Metzmacher / Leonidas Kavakos - Royal Albert Hall, 10 August 2010
Though the BBC chose not to mention it anywhere, Tuesday night's Prom marked Ingo Metzmacher's final concert as chief conductor of the DSO. Regular readers may have gathered from previous posts the flavour of German orchestral politics, and the extraordinary influence wielded by public funding bodies there. Metzmacher's departure is another twist on the familiar story. Denied the cash required to fill what he considers essential orchestral positions, Metzmacher shocked everyone including his orchestra by choosing to resign.
Continue reading "Prom 34: a little Nacht music from Ingo Metzmacher and the DSO" »
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A few events that may have slipped beneath your radar:
If you missed out in the ticket scrum for Esa-Pekka Salonen's Philharmonia Tristan und Isolde at the Royal Festival Hall with Gary Lehman and Violeta Urmana, you might consider travelling to Birmingham Symphony Hall (where the sound is also immeasurably better) on 23 September 2010 for the UK premiere. Not many tickets left so don't hang around too long.
Birmingham is also the furthest south that Opera North will bring their new Das Rheingold (semi-staged) next summer. It's on 24 June 2011 and there are plenty of tickets left at the time of writing, though the best are going fast.
Antonio Pappano and the Royal Opera House orchestra take a rare step outside Covent Garden on 27 February 2011 when they perform at Cadogan Hall. Thomas Hampson and ~Klaus Florian Vogt~ join them for the chamber version of Das Lied von der Erde, with Wagner's Siegfried Idyll also on the bill. Tickets went on sale yesterday.
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Every orchestra in the country seems to be doing a Mahler cycle this year, and the CBSO are no exception, with what might turn out to be the best of the lot.
Their 2010-11 season begins with a bang on 16 September when Andris Nelsons conducts the supersized Symphony No.8 (repeated on 18 September). I haven't heard Nelsons' Mahler yet, but how's this for a review, from Hilary Finch in the Times:
Later in the year Nelsons conducts No's 5 and 9, and the remainder of the symphonies are shared by Sakari Oramo, Vassily Sinaisky and Jac van Steen. Sir Charles Mackerras conducts Kindertotenlieder, and the Mahler cycle rounds off on 12 June 2011 with a visit from Simon Rattle for Das Lied von der Erde, with Magdalena Kožená and Michael Schade.
There's more to life than Mahler of course, and I'm going to be checking out some of Nelsons' other concerts if I can find the time to whizz up to Birmingham. Unlike some of today's younger conductors, Nelsons is emphatically not coasting on charm or enthusiasm, nor is he being overhyped by an industry in search of the next cash cow. He's the real thing, and Birmingham is lucky to have him.
Be warned that the Mahler 8 and the Simon Rattle concert are selling well, so don't leave booking these too late.
There are also a few tickets left for this Saturday's concert performance of Lohengrin, conducted by Nelsons (and featuring Kostas Smoriginas as Schaunard if you believe the website), in case you need to escape the football.
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Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam /Jansons - Barbican, 12 and 13 December 2009
Last weekend's flying Concertgebouw visit packed in two concerts in less than 24 hours. The better of the pair was Sunday afternoon's Mahler 2.
Mariss Jansons had me gripped right from the hovering, shimmering strings of the first bar. There's something magical, almost mystical about the way he balances architecture against details, form against texture, head against heart. I never felt any aspect of the music was being sacrificed in pursuit of insights elsewhere. His path was secure, unerring, and in a work that tempts theatrics from even the best, ultimately truthful. His music is the sort that doesn't need to shout to be heard. Quite overwhelming.
Saturday night's concert was more fragmented and ultimately less satisfying. The glowing strings, warm brass and sonorous woodwinds of the Concertgebouw are pretty much a given, so no complaints on that score. But where Jansons's restraint in the Mahler was revelatory, in Saturday's Brahms 4 it seemed more like a brake. There was an abundance of elegant craft, but I found myself longing for the do-or-die passion of Rattle, Barenboim (on a good day) or even Daniel Harding.
Smetana's Bartered Bride overture was energetic but inherently throwaway, and Martinu's Double Concerto for Two String Orchestras, Piano and Timpani I simply don't care for, never have, sorry. In some ways, the encores, a Dvorak Slavonic Dance and Brahms Hungarian Dance were the most effective elements of the evening.
Perhaps my diminished enthusiasm has something to do with the seating though. I was, unusually, sitting in the balcony, where the view is perfect and the sound exquisitely blended. But the famously dry acoustic of the Barbican is a thousand times more apparent here than downstairs. The seats are fairly priced (a positive bargain in fact) to take account of tthe problem, but it's an economy I shan't make again in a hurry.
***** more photos on next page *****
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"It is true that people respond more easily to Mahler. It is about emotions and people like that. When they go to the movies they like action. If it is a movie about beauty they will just go away. For me beauty is more important than emotion and action, and in my opinion that is what Bruckner is talking about and that is what Bach is talking about. If you listen to Bruckner and Bach it makes you clean inside. If you listen to Mahler you will be full of emotion and all kinds of thoughts. With Bruckner there is a line to God. With Mahler there is also a line to God but it has lots of sideways I would say."
Jaap van Zweden interviewed in La Scena Musicale.
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Prom 5: LSO / Haitink - Royal Albert Hall, 20 July 2009
Bernard Haitink balances his baton on his head while keeping his comedy dagger close to hand. No wonder the cellist looks anxious.
This year's Proms line-up doesn't exactly thrill me to the core of my being, the first month especially.
But I couldn't pass up the opportunity to hear Mahler's 9th conducted by one of his greatest interpreters, Bernard Haitink, and performed by the mighty LSO. Even though it cost a massive £19 for an unspectacular seat behind the orchestra. Around this time of year newspapers often spout about how cheap and brilliant arena promming is (from the comfort of their freebie best seats in the house). Perhaps they don't realise that for popular concerts like this, especially with an early start time, you're simply not going to get in unless you spend most of the afternoon queuing. (And even then you're going to be standing up for an hour and a half while the odours of sock, sandal and anorak waft beneath your nostrils, but I digress). A costly seat is unfortunately the only option.
The last time I heard this symphony was in Berlin, where Daniel Barenboim, on a rare off-day, flayed it to a bleeding pulp. The ever-refined Haitink, leaning on a stool after his recent back operation and conducting with a considered physical economy, could not have been more different.
A spirit of discovery pervaded the first movement right from the primordial emergence of the first sparing notes. Questions were asked objectively and answered unsentimentally, the LSO (strings especially) demonstrating taut control and unity of purpose. Even the second movement's rustic ländler, marked sehr derb (very coarse) maintained a languid distance. The temperature warmed in the third movement's febrile rondo, its exposed groupings demonstrating the strength in depth of each section of the orchestra. Everything came together in a finale of monumental fragility, a matchstick cathedral of sound that ended not with despair or even resignation, but a feeling of renewal that paralleled the work's opening.
No visceral thrills and no tugged heartstrings - Haitink elevated this already magisterial work to the realm of the spiritual.
Have we heard the Prom of the Season already?
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Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal - Salle Pleyel, Paris, 28 April 2009
The Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal haven't visited France for a while, which might account for a less than packed-out Salle Pleyel. Indeed the Salle Pleyel were marketing this concert largely on the back of soloist Klaus Florian Vogt's knockout performance in last year's Lohengrin. But music director Kent Nagano's mission to raise the orchestra's international profile has resulted in a short European tour (the UK is off the list), of which this was the last but one date.
The result was taut and accomplished playing all round, ensemble sharpened by repeated performance. Details positively sparkled in the first two of Debussy's Nocturnes, Nuages and Fêtes.
Tan Dun's Orchestral Theatre 1:O followed. This 1990 composition is far more interesting than the tired oriental cliches he's been peddling recently. The O is for Origin, and the piece recreates a shamanic ritual symphonically with minimalist textures and odd sonorities evocative of traditional Chinese instruments. Col legno strings provide a rattling percussive backbone, and the orchestra sigh, shout and grunt en masse, an effect which provoked a few unsuppressable titters around me. Still, it was hypnotically fascinating, and very well-received.
The Chinese theme was picked up again in the second half with Das Lied von der Erde. The soloists were Christian Gerhaher and Klaus Florian Vogt, two singers I admire hugely, but very different from each other. Gerhaher is one of today's great lieder singers, with a rich colour palette and a fanatically detailed approach to text. Vogt on the other hand is pure sonority, a voice with the abstract qualities of a musical instrument. It was never clear quite what Nagano hoped to achieve from this odd marriage, apart from a clearly-delineated break between songs.
The Tan Dun piece proved a canny entrée, as Nagano's reflective reading underlined the novelty of Mahler's scoring. Carefully nuanced detail was laid out coolly and clearly - no red-blooded romanticism here. But Nagano wasn't afraid of unleashing the full power of the orchestra either, a little to the detriment of the first song, Das Trinklied, where a slightly tired-sounding Klaus Florian Vogt struggled to be heard. Neither this nor Der Trunkene im Frühling were ideally matched to his elevated qualities of luminous clarity and effortlessly exquisite tone. But his Von der Jugend was as near perfect as it gets.
A scarily intense Christian Gerhaher demonstrated the real reason this cycle is usually attemped by an alto rather than a baritone - it's simply too hard and too high. Gerhaher nailed every note perfectly, but it was touch and go, with the effort at the top particularly apparent. But this was another fine performance from him - always attentive to words, his immaculately-crafted phrasing was particularly telling in the lied-like Der Abschied.
It was overall an idiosyncratic reading that split the audience two ways - a minority of ostentatious coughers and fidgeters who dashed for the doors the minute Nagano's baton dropped, and a far greater number of enthusiasts whose applause brought conductor and soloists back to the stage at least six times - I lost count.
Christian Gerhaher mit Mahler tribute haircut:
Klaus Florian Vogt:
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London Symphony Orchestra / Tan Dun / Daniel Harding / Lang Lang - Barbican, 21 April 2009
The most famous symphony in the world right now, Tan Dun's five minute Internet Symphony 'Eroica' was more impressive live in the Barbican than on the inevitably tinny YouTube video. But, frantic yet curiously numbing, it still sounds more like a theme tune for a Saturday night footie programme than a groundbreaking work of art. The LSO, faces like small children confronted with steaming brussels sprouts, despatched it efficiently, though with manifestly less enthusiasm than the conductor/composer himself. The whole YouTube orchestra project of which this is the centrepiece has done a brilliant job of promoting classical music on YouTube. In that respect, it's a massive success. But please can we leave it out of the concert hall now?
The capacity audience seemed to like it. But not half as much as the entrance of the man who for many was the evening's main attraction - Lang Lang - here to give the UK premiere of the piano concerto Tan Dun composed specially for him. It's a more serious work than the Internet Symphony, both in length - thirty minutes - and intent, but again there's much in it that's superficial and derivative.
The piano is very much centre stage throughout, but surprisingly (considering Lang Lang's virtuosity), there's little flashiness in the writing. The key recurring motif is a single note, repeated at rattlesnake speed using alternating fingers. Sounds easy, is hard. Incredibly so when articulated with Lang Lang's clarity and evenness. Stealth flash. But not exactly 'pianistic'. Some attractive moments of Ravelian introspection aside, that's what I felt about a lot of the piano writing in this piece. Tan Dun wasn't so much exploring the instrument's sonorities as wishing it were something else. A drum perhaps, or sometimes a harp. Lang Lang's heart didn't seem to be quite in it, and I couldn't blame him.
Percussion, both tuned and whacked, features as strongly as the piano. It lends a little Chinese flavour but the overall effect is more pot noodle than chow mein. What really killed the work for me though was its rambling, episodic structure (or lack of) - it's a side dish to an invisible movie in the Crouching Tiger mould. Background music.
Daniel Harding - looking in action ever more like a pocket-sized Rob Brydon - was drafted in to restore normality for the second half with Mahler's First Symphony. A fair few of the audience had scooted off in the interval, their musical appetites sated. They missed a great performance. Harding had the measure of the detail, without resorting to empty, over-emphatic gesture. The opening shiver of strings, immaculately controlled, was just the first indication of his detailed preparation. The first movement's offstage brass were perfectly balanced and wind solos assertive but not overbearing.
The odd positioning of the basses - behind and beneath the first violins - seemed to me his only misjudgement (though for all I know he was following Mahler's instruction). Sitting centre stalls, I simply couldn't hear them very well. It was certainly Mahler's idea (at one point) for the usual solo bass introduction to the third movement to be augmented by the whole section - another change that didn't work for me, losing the sinister directness of the solo alternative. The tragic and grotesque edges of this movement weren't quite sharply focussed, but that may be preferable to Gergiev's idiosyncratic extremes.
An explosive finale pushed the volume limits, but never quite teetered out of control. The recollection of the opening string shimmer and horn call lent a neat symmetry. Once again, Harding followed a composer instruction, this time for the horns to stand up - though I'm not sure this added anything but novelty value on this particular occasion. But overall , a measured and satisfying account.
LSO play Symphony No. 1 "Eroica" - for YouTube, conducted by Tan Dun:
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LPO / Jarvi / Matthias Goerne - Royal Festival Hall, 4 February 2009
The Thames from the Royal Festival Hall, 4.2.09
Why did Mahler's arrangement of Beethoven's Ninth arouse hostility in its early Vienna performances? Hard to tell from Neeme Jarvi's LPO presentation - the differences from Beethoven's original score weren't glaring. As Jeremy Barham's very helpful pre-concert talk set out, most of Mahler's changes involved doubling up wind and brass lines, with a few dynamic variations here and there. He added a tuba (unknown in Beethoven's day); he transposed some string lines up an octave. Hardly fundamental stuff. It's easy to suspect any controversy arose more from Mahler's idiosyncratic conducting style than from his subtle tinkerings.
In contrast Neeme Jarvi seemed reluctant to impose himself on the music at all. The Scherzo was lively enough, but the surrounding movements were flabbily anodyne, and the final movement more panicky than joyful.
A few lapses of ensemble hardly helped, and flute intonation was excruciatingly inexact. At least the choir and soloists did a reasonable job.
The first half's Kindertotenlieder were more successful. The barn-sized Royal Festival Hall seemed to shrink around Matthias Goerne as he confided the painful intimacies.
His voice wasn't quite 100 percent - the traces of a cold perhaps - but he still managed a beautifully nuanced and moving performance, despite some graceless support from the LPO.
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London Philharmonic Orchestra / Mark Elder / Alice Coote / Paul Nilon - Wigmore Hall, 9 January 2009
What's the point of a conductor? This recital, so tempting on paper, proved that even with a chamber-sized ensemble, a stick-waver is not dispensable.
Thirteen members of the LPO squeezed on to the bijou Wigmore stage and attempted to steer themselves through the tricky waters of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll without a guide, and at a guess, without a lot of rehearsal. There were numerous glaring slips of ensemble. Balance was non-existent, winds massively overweighted. Tempo or dynamics were cautiously unvarying - monotony spared us the otherwise inevitable chaos. The musicians looked relieved just to reach the end. I certainly was.
It was a different story when Mark Elder picked up the baton for Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. There was even less room on the platform now, and musicians spilled out behind through the doorways. But at least they were playing together, more focussed yet paradoxically more relaxed. Even the intonation was for some reason more accurate.
But the Wigmore Hall acoustics are not kind to such massive forces, however closely reined. They treat every instrument and every voice democratically. To a string quartet, it's a miracle that magically makes them sing with one voice. For Paul Nilon and Alice Coote it was a disaster. Despite heroic efforts, they were frequently inaudible, not riding the band, but joining it.
Paul Nilon's ringing tenor was abandoned in every possible sense in the lurching waltz of the opening drinking song. The looped and intertwined instrumental lines sprang out with crystal clarity; the tenor sank slowly to the bottom of the glass.
Alice Coote fared a little better. At least the mezzo is allotted some of the more thinly-orchestrated passages, so she could shine through without force. She brought delicacy and exuberance in turn to Von der Schönheit, and with her unique gift for inhabiting even the silence, caught the disquieting change in atmosphere that occurs at the end of the song - without singing a note. Perhaps you had to be there. Nostalgia and yearning were joined in Der Abschied, her exquisitely poised farewell.
I suspect only age and infirmity prevented the capacity audience from rising to their feet at the end. I haven't heard many ovations that loud or prolonged at the Wigmore for a while. But while you couldn't fault the effort, or dispute the Wigmore audience's sentimental adoration of Coote and Elder (based on a history of solid performances) what this performance really proved is that if the performers don't fit the platform, the sound doesn't fit the hall. Oh, and a conductor is not a luxury.
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Dorothea Röschmann / Graham Johnson - Wigmore Hall, 20 November 2008
Schumann Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart
Wolf Nimmersatte Liebe; An eine Äolsharfe; Erstes Liebeslied eines Mädchens; Denk' es, o Seele!; Im Frühling; Gesang Weylas; Begegnung
Mahler Rheinlegendchen, Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen, Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht, Lob des hohen Verstandes and Verlorne Müh from 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn'
Brahms 8 Zigeunerlieder
Encores: Schubert Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt; Wolf In der Frühe; Mahler Selbstgefühl from 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn'
Dorothea Röschmann's pearly top notes still emerge effortlessly, but her voice seems to be in a process of transition. It's gaining weight, the centre is dropping, but it's not quite there yet. To speculate how much of this is natural evolution and how much is being hurried along by Röschmann's acceptance of some meatier roles recently and in the near future is probably fruitless (but nevertheless 'interesting').
Schumann's Mary Stuart settings are low-lying for a soprano, and Röschmann never sounded quite at ease in the range. It was not a promising start. But the rest of her programme rarely dipped quite as low, and she seemed more comfortable vocally and more freely expressive.
Her recital art is all about nuance and inflection. Although she's capable of grand gesture and bold dramatic expression in the opera house, she wisely leaves that behind in the concert hall.
We saw a small, solid woman in a black lace strapless sheath and matching bolero, her sensible brown bob uncombed, her face makeup-free, like a librarian trying on a party frock. Her comportment has a stillness born of inner calm. Her facial expression is more conversational then stagey. There are none of the diva flourishes employed by the less wise, so distancing in the intimate atmosphere of the Wigmore Hall. Röschmann's effects are achieved more subtly, almost by voice alone.
She explored some of Wolf's most erotically-charged Mörike settings, traversing seamlessly from the sly innuendo of Erstes Liebeslied eines Mädchens to the nostalgic Im Frühling, always conscious of both the words and their meaning.
She was equally at home in the rustic idiom of the second half and its folk song texts drawn by Mahler and Brahms. Here, as if to compensate for the lack of lyrical subtlety, she employed a much broader range of vocal characterisation, peaking with the animal farm of Mahler's Lob des hohen Verstandes, its donkey, cuckoo and nightingale all brilliantly evoked. If the Zigeuner Lieder all had a rather samey feel, despite their stirring rhythms, this is as much Brahms's fault as Röschmann's. The contrast with the first of her three encores, where she completely inhabited the tormented teenager of Schubert's plaintive Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, showed this only too clearly.
The concert was recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 25 November 2008 at 7 p.m (that's today!) and available for a week afterwards on the IPlayer.
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Prom 48: Gürzenich Orchestra / Stenz / Kirchschlager - Royal Albert Hall, 22 August 2008
Mahler Symphony No.5
Stockhausen Punkte (1952/1962/1993)
Schubert Ständchen, D921 orch. David Matthews, Bei dir allein, D866/2 orch. Manfred Trojahn, Nacht und Träume, D827 orch. Colin Matthews, Das Lied im Grünen, D917 orch. Detlev Glanert
Beethoven Overture 'Leonore' No.3
This was perhaps the oddest-looking but most fascinating programme at this year's Proms.
Mahler's Fifth Symphony was premiered by Cologne's Gürzenich Orchestra in 1904, and the first idea for tonight's Prom was to reproduce that programme. Then new orchestrations were commissioned for the Schubert songs, performed at the 1904 concert with piano accompaniment. Conductor Markus Stenz wanted to add something by Cologne-born Stockhausen, as 22 August would have been the exact date of his 80th birthday. So we ended up with a two-interval concert, the old programme sandwiched with Stockhausen.
The big symphony came first, 70-ish minutes of non-stop music, in a reversal of the modern day practice which normally places it at the end. Or was it? We nowadays often programme the new stuff at the start of the night - and that's just what they did in 1904, before soothing the duly baffled Cologne audience with some more familiar Schubert and Beethoven. If nothing else, tonight's programming highlighted that even the most venerable of chestnuts were new once.
As once was Stockhausen's Punkte - but that was nearly sixty years ago. Unremarkably, the ageing Mahler fans who form a large part of the Arena audience came out with the usual lame jokes and mutterings. But to their credit, the vast majority returned from the bar after the interval for the Stockhausen. A few passive-aggressive old bats chose to demonstrate their superior musical tastes by ostentatiously rustling their boiled sweets and Sudoku 'books' throughout, but the vast majority stood there silently and perhaps attentively, prepared at least to give the music a chance.
I doubt if many were converted - Punkte is one of the early works where musical effect is subsumed to the underlying idea, and the idea sustains more like 27 seconds of music than the 27 minutes it extends over. Although Stockhausen went back later and revised the work, it remains, despite a supple and accurate performance by the Gürzenich, largely dry and unrewarding. "It wasn't flowing" complained a nearby prommer, who unwittingly grasped the Punkt of it all "just a load of different noises with gaps in between".
Stockhausen's legacy is I think better served by the outright sonic manipulation of later works. But Punkte I guess slotted better into this programme, because it deploys relatively conventional orchestral forces. The unconventional but typically thoughtful layout (violins to the right, a harp on each side of the conductor) provided the main foretaste of the spatial soundgames Stockhausen was later to play.
Orchestrating Schubert lieder is a rather quaint and unfashionable practice, but one that might be worth reviving if cast the songs in a new light.
But all four of the newly-commissioned orchestrations for this evening were dull and formulaic. I've heard more interesting arrangements on ye olde scratchy lieder 78s (and would have been happy to hear these revived - what's the point of revisiting if you're not going to rethink?)
A couple were worse than dull - Colin Matthews' stodgy brass band lullaby for Nacht und Träume entirely missed the point of its hidden death wish, and Detlev Glanert's leaden Das Lied im Grünen had none of the joys of spring.
Careless programme editing didn't help - the text for the Rellstab Ständchen D957 was printed instead of the required (identical in name only) Grillparzer Ständchen D920. (Correct text and original music is here for anyone interested, translation is here, and here's an idea for the editor's Xmas list.)
Angelika Kirchschlager, dressed as everyone's favourite Quality Street, nuts and gooey caramel in a purple wrapper, did her effortful best to project over some unsympathetically dense orchestration. The upper end of her range sparkled. The lower notes, her weak point anyway, often just disappeared. But at least she brought a charm that the grimly serious earlier part of the evening had lacked.
Just when I was thinking the Gürzenich was a fine professional orchestra but nothing more, they surprised by flashing their opera house credentials with a weighty and truly stirring Leonore No.3 Overture to finish, and capped even that with their encore, a nice bit of Parsifal. We were by now more than three hours from the start, but I could happily have stayed for hours more. Why is it only at the Proms, and then only rarely, that we get orchestral concerts of any substantial length?
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LSO / Gergiev - Barbican, 5 June 2008
Philharmonia / Dudamel / Shaham - Royal Festival Hall, 8 June 2008
When I started this blog I promised myself I'd write about every performance I attended. Time has a way of defeating the best of intentions, but in the spirit of completeness I'll just catch up briefly on this pair of baffling performances from two of the most idiosyncratic conductors around.
You can't accuse Valery Gergiev of inconsistency. For this last concert in his Gergiev's Mahler™ cycle with the LSO, the Ninth Symphony coupled with the Adagio from the unfinished Tenth, he blistered forward with the same seat-of-the-pants drive he's displayed throughout the series.
I'm not sure adagios are meant to be that reckless, ländlers that turbulent, but it's undeniably riveting stuff. Lest anyone raise the old no-rehearsal issue, a scattering of precision-schooled climaxes proved that the requisite homework had been completed.
It's music making that lives in the moment, it speaks to the heart rather than the head, and standing back and thinking too hard might have highlighted some curiously back-to-front orchestral balance in places, the lack of measure in tempos. Bizarre but thrilling, and rapturously received by an exceptionally attentive and well-behaved audience. And congratulations to the LSO for (literally) sweating it out in the sub-tropical temperatures of the apparently non-airconditioned Barbican Hall.
And if anyone was going to top that, it would have to be Gustavo Dudamel. He whizzed the Philharmonia through Smetana's Overture to The Bartered Bride, found the perfect partner for Dvorak's Violin Concerto in the exuberant but lyrical Gil Shaham, and finished up in blockbuster style with Tchaikovsky's Fifth.
When a performance is delivered with such rampant joy in music making, it's impossible to criticise. Dudamel jiggles like a battery-operated muppet, his full-body conducting channelling every rhythm, his woefully tuneless bathtub singalong uninhibited in its madness.
Yet it's no sideshow act - the Philharmonia played with flair and precision, their characteristic lush, warm string sound the base of perfectly balanced textures. And there was no lack of thoughtfulness in the repose of the Dvorak Adagio or the grace of the Tchaikovsky Valse.
A truly special performance that left every single member of the audience with a smile on their face - and how many times does that happen?
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LSO/Gergiev - Barbican, 20 and 21 April 2008
I've just realised it's Sunday and I have a whole week's concert going undocumented, so I'd better get cracking. Fortunately Sunday and Monday were the same, so that cuts it down a bit.
You don't often get the chance to catch the same concert two nights in a row. But Gergiev's Mahler™ cycle - or maybe just Gergiev - is a big enough draw to sell out the Barbican twice, well in advance. Plus it was being recorded for Radio 3 broadcast and for CD release, and they always like a back up for that.
I hadn't intended to do both, but the first (booked like last year or something) was so good it pulled me back for the repeat (a lucky last-minute return). I had to settle for a front corner seat second time round, but a clear side-on view of teh maestro at work was some payback for the lopsided sound.
The big number was Mahler's 2nd Symphony, but before that Strauss's Metamorphosen revealed a hand-picked crack team of LSO strings mining a vein of unaccustomed poignancy, a curiously effective complement to the characteristic meaty LSO sound. Strauss was 80 when he wrote this, as the measured resignation of Gergiev's reading reflected perfectly. His fluttering hands (batons are for wusses) strayed upward now and then to smooth errant strands back into his threadbare combover. Now, you can't attend to hair and music simultaneously, and he notably let it all fly in the Mahler, so whether Gergiev's concentration was 100% who can say.
Perhaps it's simply that Metamorphosen doesn't necessarily need conducting on stage at all if it's rehearsed properly. But it was still something special, and notably on both nights the London Symphony Chorus chose to come out and listen from their choir seats.
Mahler's 'Resurrection' Symphony was utterly convincing, the second night's performance better by some measure than the first. The dark thunder of the opening funeral march thrilled and terrified, and Gergiev's extended pause (more like one minute than the five prescribed by Mahler) was a vital breather before the ironic sentimentality of the second movement's nearly-dances.
Gergiev was big on effects - pauses milked to the max, dynamics straining the ears in both directions - essential inflection and punctuation in the wall of sound. The energy levels dipped only when the first soloist, mezzo Zlata Bulycheva made her effortful and rather routine entry in the fourth movement. The other soloist, soprano Elena Mosuc, was equally subdued if more radiant. The London Symphony Chorus, performing without scores for the dramatic final movement, took all the vocal honours, rehearsed to perfection, and immaculately attentive to Gergiev's every whim.
This was the point at which my second night front corner seat became a real disadvantage. The offstage brass, a potent and magical feature of the last movement from the centre of the auditorium, was a challenge to the orchestra when heard from a position in between the two teams. It was like battle of the bands, with the smaller group often winning. It wasn't quite enough to ruin the night - just rather bizarre.
The first night was received enthusiastically, but the second managed a standing ovation - not a frequent occurrence at the Barbican, but I think a genuine and spontaneous gesture of appreciation.
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LSO/Gergiev/Anna Larsson - Barbican, 24 September 2007
Last month Claudio Abbado guided the Lucerne Festival Orchestra through a sublime and intimate Proms performance of Mahler's gargantuan 3rd Symphony.
Tonight Valery Gergiev gave, as might be expected, a very different reading for the opening concert of the LSO's season. Gergiev seems to bring out both the best and the worst in the LSO - a tremendous raw energy and dynamism often compromised by rough hewn textures and lack of attention to detail.
The hairy-ar5ed Mahler delivered tonight had none of the refinement and little of the depth that Abbado brought, but it was an invigorating and engaging performance all the same.
Loud and fast were the watchwords. From my seat close to the front, the raw but surprisingly well-balanced timbres won out over the all-round rough edges. OK, it wasn't perfect, but it was exhilarating, and never boring.
And nobody understands the theatrical aspect of performance quite like Gergiev. Batonless, he swept, danced and even jumped around the rickety podium, macerating in unseasonal sweat, growling occasionally like a feisty jack russell guarding a bone.
The fourth movement unleashed the most refined aspect of the evening, the statuesque contralto Anna Larsson (elegantly gowned in diamante-sprinkled mauve stripes) who performed the same duty with Abbado last month. Is there anyone else right now who could do this better?
Her flawless and intensely moving delivery, followed by the graceful polish of the ladies of the London Symphony Chorus and the Tiffin Boys Choir in the fifth movement, proved a much needed counterweight to the rough and tumble of the rest.
I remain puzzled by the band's reactions to Gergiev. While they're playing, most ignore his presence totally, but during their tacets, eyes seem hypnotically fixed on his every move. Perhaps, as is often suggested, they don't see enough of him in rehearsals?
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Prom 51: Lucerne Festival Orchestra/Abbado - Royal Albert Hall, 22 August 2007
Could this be the world's most exclusive part-time orchestra? The Lucerne Festival Orchestra was created by maestro Claudio Abbado in 2003 and its members remain handpicked by him. To the nucleus of his Mahler Chamber Orchestra, he adds soloists, chamber musicians and others who have caught his eye over the years. Every August they come together to perform at the Lucerne Festival and a select handful of dates elsewhere before going back to their regular jobs.
Last week they performed Mahler's 3rd Symphony to the Lucerne Festival audience. Tonight it was the Proms' turn, to, unsurprisingly, a capacity audience, many of whom I spoke to had been queuing outside in the wind and rain for four hours or more to secure a spot near the front of the arena (ahhh, these are the times I enjoy being tall.....)
The orchestra inevitably can't spend enough time together to mould their sound into the liquid caramel gloss of the great traditional orchestras. But this doesn't count against them. Their individual skill and experience ensure fastidious technical precision, and the granular texture they've found gives them a sound all their own.
The gigantic ensemble looked impressive before they even played a note. At the rear of the large orchestra was raised a battery of percussion. Alongside were the smartly turned-out Trinity Boys' Choir, and up in the choir section, the ladies of the London Symphony Chorus. 
The statuesque soloist Anna Larsson (left) in a gorgeously architectural scarlet gown led in the purposeful and immaculately fracked-out maestro, and it was straight down to business.
From the trombone solo which grew into the resolute brass-laden marches, through to the satiny strings at the end, Abbado gave the first movement gravity without ponderousness, and drama without brash contrasts. It was a considered reading, and anything it lacked in spontaneity it made up for in spades in considered elegance.
The Albert Hall's billowing acoustic for once worked in its favour. The sound, already spread across the full width of the stage, reverberated from the high dome at the other end, and enveloped us in a way the radio recording of course can't emulate.
The second to fifth movements mark the ascent of being, from vegetation, to animals, to humans and a higher life. Every detail was meticulously presented but Abbado never lost sight of the overall structure, and always allowed the music space to breathe. The graceful minuet of the second movement weaving around the sweeps of playfully chaotic strings and the exquisite wind solos of the third brought the sunshine which had been sadly lacking outside all day.
In the fourth movement, Anna Larsson, who'd been sitting there patiently for an hour, finally got to unleash her dusky, burnished contralto in Mahler's darkly spare setting of Nietzsche's O Mensch. The two choirs balanced each other perfectly in the spirited fifth movement.
Everything in this symphony leads inexorably to the final movement, where the human voice is silent again and only the instruments sing. Growing from a bravely restrained pianissimo, the music gracefully blossomed into the white light of the climax.
The performance was accompanied throughout by significantly less coughing, fidgeting and general bad behaviour than usual, a sure sign of the spell it cast. A standing ovation was inevitable, and was received by Abbado with the same grace and modesty that characterised his conduct throughout.
It appeared almost miraculous that the seemingly frail Abbado, looking every one of his 74 years, could even stand up there for the full hundred minutes or so, let alone conjure up an interpretation of such magisterial power. This recent interview throws some light on his process and on what keeps him going -his passion for music.
*Update - and there's another new interview here (conducted from the splendour of the maestro's private jet, no less).
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