A very impressive performance of DLvdE took place at Bard College a few weeks ago with Leon Botstein's and his new "The Orchestra Now" and mezzo Susan Platts and tenor Charles Reid. The venue was the Fischer Center designed by Frank Gehry, who later designed the now famous Disney Hall in LA. Acoustics were superb. From the seventh row, it seemed I could hear and feel the score in all its richness and beauty and pathos.
Botstein has assembled an orchestra of fine conservatory graduates with impressive early experience and has launched the orchestra and an impressive concert series. I know the first bassoonist in the orchestra, who said that the orchestra rehearsed Das Lied for five weeks.
Charles Reid was about the finest tenor I have heard in the work on record or live. Wunderlich has the more beautiful voice and great nuance, but he is clearly miked up in the Klemperer recording. Reid was passionate and had heroic ring to his voice as well as sardonic humor where called for. From the beginning of the notoriously challenging opening song, we knew we were in a real performance with commitment and range.
Susan Plats has recorded the work with Bertini in Japan and Faleta in Virginia. She was more inward and softer than Christianne Stotijn in Boston two and a half years ago under Daniel Harding. But she was very affecting and intimate, and even sang the final "Evig" so softly that it was almost a fading whisper as the score seems to call for.
Botstein may not be known as a particular Mahlerian. But his background including his time conducting the Jerusalem Symphony certainly paid off and brought sensitivity and an amazing range of tone color to this incomparable work. The orchestra was fine and nuanced, and the young musicians in their early encounters with the work showed great engagement. I saw more than one orchestra member in tears in "Der Abschied."
The performance was as good and in some ways even more immediately impressive and moving than the performances I heard with the Boston Symphony Orchestra two and a half years ago. I waited almost 50 years to hear Das Lied von der Erde live, and now three performances in two and a half years. I consider myself more than fortunate to hear this music, which Mahler heard in his head and heart but never in performance
Since no one else has noted this performance,I thought it worth adding notice of it to the list.
Best,
Tom in Vermont
Topic: Das Lied von der Erde at Bard College, February 13 & 14, 2016 (Read 6378 times)