My brother and I were privileged to attend an outstanding M3 from the Concertgebouw Orchestra under their conductor Mariss Jansons on Tuesday evening at Edinburgh's Usher Hall. I thought you might care to see a little review I wrote after the concert:
We were in the stalls 5 rows from the front - and the sound the orchestra produced was absolutely phenomenal! I have seen a number of great orchestras in the flesh but they were very special indeed. Jansons looks remarkably young (you would probably place him in his mid 50s, rather than 67!) and has such verve and vitality on the podium, where more than one Lenny-leap was to be witnessed! He is remarkably animated and was beaming throughout: he and the orchestra really seem to enjoy a highly symbiotic relationship.
Janson's stick technique was wonderfully fluid and elegant to watch and his body language was also fascinating - he danced through several passages in the first movement as the marching bands passed by! The horn section and brass in general were predictably pitch-perfect and gleamingly sonorous (the trombones were truly indefatigable and the brass section as a whole fully deserved their singling-out for especial applause at the mighty symphony's close). Indeed, from the opening fanfare on the 8 unison horns we knew we were in for a rare treat - they set the tone for the performance ideally. The evocative sound of nature awakening, punctuated by the periodic doom-laden stirrings from the growling double basses, was beautifully rendered. Returning for a moment to Janson’s balletic baton work, at the close of the first movement – the stick cut through the air laterally right to left, sweeping over the strings and bringing off every bow in breath-taking unison making the audience audibly gasp! If you ever doubted you were in the presence of one of the three top European orchestras under a magnificent conductor, those doubts were well and truly dispelled at that moment.
The winds had a fruity, rustic quality and really 'sung'. Jansons brought a splendid sense of a legato line to his interpretation: the whole thing just breathed from the very first stirrings; cohesive and unaffected, it unfolded very naturally and organically. He never harried the tempo nor did he indulge in any hyper-emoting. Full value was given to all Mahler's special touches: for example, when the offstage post horn made its magical presence felt, all hauntingly distanced and mystical, with a real sense of evocation, it was just as it should be.
Anna Larsson was in her velvety, ethereal, voice the very embodiment of mother nature issuing that most heartfelt of warnings and the Edinburgh Festival Chorus bim-bammed as though their very lives depended on it and acquited themsleves very creditably.
Jansons expertly held together the superb finale, bringing a sense of deep, resonating spirituality and where repose gives way suddenly to a vehement outburst he brought the terrors ripping through the adagio’s fabric with great drama and vividness. At twenty minutes in length it, like the rest of his reading, seemed inherently “right” and the whole audience left completely buoyed and ecstatic.
In his 3rd symphony, Mahler hoped that "nature in its totality may ring and resound". Well it certainly did on Tuesday. It was a wonderful late summer’s evening as we stepped from the gilded nineteenth century hall back into Edinburgh’s genteel streets, but it was Mahler and this monumental hymn to the natural world that was at the forefront of our minds.
It was my brother's first orchestral concert and he is a Mahler newbie but he found it a fantastic experience I'm pleased to say!
Karafan
Topic: Concertgebouw/Jansons M3 at the Edinburgh Festival (Read 10148 times)