Harding's Mahler 5
I attended both concerts of LSO last week. The first one was boring, with Lang Lang playing Ravel's Piano Concerto in G and Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. Lang Lang was not impressive and Berlioz was never my cup of tea. The second night was much better. Berg's violin concerto was somewhat atonal and I think the audience found it not very interesting but Zimmerman's encore of Bach's Sarabande was very good.
The focus of the concert was the second half's Mahler 5. I was interested to find out about how Harding, a young conductor in his early thirties, handles Mahler. The result was not at all bad. He took a relatively fast tempo throughout and there was significant contrast. However, the balance of different sections seemed to be blurred, and the brass was simply too loud in some passages. The slow movement was moving, and the strings under the baton of Harding sounded like one instrument. The final movement was the best among all and the climax at the end of built up effectively.
Although it is not the most touching live performance, Harding's Mahler was fabulous in the sense that he could maintain the control and let the music spoke by itself. I look forward to hearing more of his Mahler. And he is still very young. His future will certainly be bright.
The focus of the concert was the second half's Mahler 5. I was interested to find out about how Harding, a young conductor in his early thirties, handles Mahler. The result was not at all bad. He took a relatively fast tempo throughout and there was significant contrast. However, the balance of different sections seemed to be blurred, and the brass was simply too loud in some passages. The slow movement was moving, and the strings under the baton of Harding sounded like one instrument. The final movement was the best among all and the climax at the end of built up effectively.
Although it is not the most touching live performance, Harding's Mahler was fabulous in the sense that he could maintain the control and let the music spoke by itself. I look forward to hearing more of his Mahler. And he is still very young. His future will certainly be bright.
posted by Andy at 4/29/2007 09:51:00 AM
3 Comments:
I didn't like the Mahler 5 this time. The first two movements were too fast, and the overall sound was too bright and loud, and yes, the balance was not quite good. The last movement was the best of 5.
Daniel Harding is still young anyway. But the even younger conductor Gustavo Dudamel has just recorded Mahler 5 too...
Berg's concerto is the only reason why I attend this concert (There are too much Mahler for me these days, both in terms of concert listening and performing.) Harding+Zimmerman's treatment is a bit too dramatic for me, it's basically a piece of lament.
I understand that the piece would not be everybody's cup of tea, but after the performance I hope some audience will find Berg's music a bit more interesting than they thought. Before the performance, I under-heard some conversations among a few composition students sitting behind me, saying that Berg's piece are so boring to listen to, let's see how Berg use pitch-class in the piece... I nearly fainted on-spot.
Oh, by the way, one of the first violins sneezed just at the very end of the Berg violin concerto. It destroyed the peacefulness and it was such an anti-climax.
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