An especially memorable performance in 2025: Mahler’s Second with the San Francisco Symphony and Esa-Pekka Salonen, which concluded his tenure as the orchestra’s music director:
Filed under: Esa-Pekka Salonen, Mahler, review, San Francisco Symphony
September 2, 2025 • 3:02 pm Comments Off on The Concertgebouw Orchestra at Lucerne Festival
The Concertgebouw Orchestra at Lucerne Festival
Deeply grateful for the chance to experience both Concertgebouworkest concerts at this summer’s Lucerne Festival. On the first night, Janine Jansen seemed to guide us along a silvery path into the stars with Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto — sans the guilt of escapism from a troubled world: the effect was too transfiguring. On either side of the Concerto were
Mozart’s ‘Paris’ Symphony, scintillating with surprise, and a Concerto for Orchestra that caught the double edge of Bartók’s thinking in this last-minute artistic reprieve, the grip of its shadows yet allowing for the persistence of hope.
The second program began with Berio, in his fascinating and now seldom-heard “Rendering”, as he summoned Schubert’s friendly, curious, half-smiling ghost, without a trace of rear-view mirror parody, but neither as a holy relic drifting through fragments. The culmination was pure revelation: Mäkelä led a Mahler Fifth overwhelming in its simultaneity of detail, yet which clarified the sense of Mahler at an existential crossroads in life and art. Above all, the sheer vibrancy of the finale swept away the cranky Adorno-inspired doubts about “happy endings” (though the Seventh remains another story entirely). I really felt as if I were hearing the Fifth for the very first time. Brilliant, packed pre-concert lectures by Lucerne Festival dramaturge Susanne Stähr filled the KKL Auditorium and set the stage for each program.
Filed under: conductors, Lucerne Festival, Mahler
October 9, 2024 • 11:07 pm Comments Off on Philharmonia Northwest Opens Its Season with “Origin Story”
Philharmonia Northwest Opens Its Season with “Origin Story”
Seattle-based Philharmonia Northwest opens its season — and introduces its new music director, Michael Wheatley — on Sunday 13 October with a program titled Origin Story. The concert takes place at 2pm at the Shorecrest Performing Arts Center.
Wheatley has chosen four works central to his musical identity, beginning with Wojciech Kilar’s celebration of the folk traditions of Poland’s Tatra Mountains in Orawa. Seattle Symphony violinist Elisa Barston will be the soloist in Dvořák’s Romance in F minor and Ravel’s dazzling Tzigane.
The second half of the program will present soprano Ellaina Lewis in her Philharmonia Northwest debut as the soloist in Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, the last of the so-called Wunderhorn symphonies. Lewis, who is known locally for her appearances in Seattle Opera’s Blue and Porgy and Bess.
Following the concert, Michael Wheatley will appear in a Q&A talk-back with the audience.
Tickets here.
Filed under: Mahler, music news, classical-music, music, orchestra, philharmonia-orchestra
September 3, 2024 • 12:57 pm Comments Off on Rattle, BRSO, and Mahler 6 at Lucerne Festival
Rattle, BRSO, and Mahler 6 at Lucerne Festival
One of those nights — my insta-review of Sir Simon Rattle’s return to Lucerne, this time with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, to perform Mahler’s Sixth Symphony:
Last night’s interpretation of Mahler’s Sixth by Sir Simon Rattle and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks at Lucerne Festival ranks with the great ones. Rattle has obviously put his all into his recent grapplings with a work that is loaded with special significance for him. (He chose it for their recent North American tour in spring.) This was my first time hearing Rattle conduct the Bavarians, and they’ve clearly forged a strong bond. Their sound has a wonderful darkness and even something almost raw that is burning even at the lyrical. Not a trace of sentimentality – the cowbells actually worked.
Rattle lingered over the “daydreams” embedded in the overall framework. The realization that they insubstantial pageants, fading, happens gradually and was made to underline the tragedy. The Andante (placed, importantly, second in order in Rattle’s interpretation) was especially stirring and emotionally authentic.
Rattle navigated the continual shifts in perspective in the Scherzo and in the vast, unfathomable finale with a translucent attention to detail. The twofold hammer strokes (the third left unstated) seemed a plausible continuation, through the orchestra, of the dramatic thunder-lightning storms of the night before. The final chord’s bitter fadeout was devastating, and it seemed no one wanted to acknowledge it was simply over — was almost afraid to. Immense applause, and Rattle gracefully trying to indicate that he wasn’t begrudging the audience an encore — but that it was simply impossible to continue playing after this. (Fun fact: Not until 1947 did Mahler’s Sixth have its US premiere.)
Filed under: Lucerne Festival, Mahler, review, Simon Rattle
July 11, 2024 • 6:25 am Comments Off on “Urlicht” with Samuel Hasselhorn
“Urlicht” with Samuel Hasselhorn
I reviewed baritone Samuel Hasselhorn’s latest harmonia mundi release, Urlicht, for Gramophone:
Samuel Hasselhorn’s first orchestral release, this album follows his inaugural instalment of the ambitious ‘Schubert 200 Project’ (Harmonia Mundi, 11/23). Die schöne Müllerin, which won the 2023 Diapason d’Or, launched the young baritone’s collaboration with the pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz to record all of the lieder penned by Schubert in his last five years, with the undertaking to culminate in the bicentennial of the composer’s death in 2028….
Filed under: CD review, Gramophone, Mahler
April 15, 2024 • 2:08 pm Comments Off on Kahchun Wong and Seattle Symphony Tackle Mahler’s Third
Kahchun Wong and Seattle Symphony Tackle Mahler’s Third
My review for Classical Voice of Kahchun Wong’s return engagement with Seattle Symphony to conduct Mahler’s Third:
SEATTLE — In 2016, Kahchun Wong’s final hurdle before taking first prize in the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition was to win the jury over with his interpretation of Mahler’s Third Symphony. The conductor reaffirmed his special connection to the work that helped launch his international career during his return engagement with the Seattle Symphony. In the first of three performances of Mahler’s Third, on April 11, Wong reached and sustained a peak of mutual understanding with the musicians for which our era seems to have lost the vocabulary — words like “sublime” having long since gone out of style.
Filed under: Mahler, review, Seattle Symphony
December 7, 2023 • 1:54 pm Comments Off on David Robertson with Seattle Symphony in Mahler … and Robertson
David Robertson with Seattle Symphony in Mahler … and Robertson
SEATTLE — So far this season, the Seattle Symphony has played under no fewer than seven conductors as part of its central masterworks subscription series. The musicians have shown remarkable flexibility in adapting to a dramatically varied range of podium styles and personalities for each program as the search for a permanent music director continues.
Filed under: conductors, Mahler, review, Seattle Symphony
August 11, 2023 • 8:24 am Comments Off on Mahler 3 Opens Lucerne’s 2023 Summer Festival
Mahler 3 Opens Lucerne’s 2023 Summer Festival
Lucerne’s Summer Festival officially starts today with a performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony by the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this season; Paavo Järvi conducts. This concert launches the 2023 Summer Festival: for the next five weeks, the Festival will explore musical reflections of the theme of “Paradise.” The concert is being streamed live on arte at 19:30 Swiss time.
on the 20th anniversary of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra
Filed under: Lucerne Festival, Mahler, music news
June 30, 2023 • 10:03 am Comments Off on Osmo Vänskä’s Precision-Calibrated Mahler with Seattle Symphony
Osmo Vänskä’s Precision-Calibrated Mahler with Seattle Symphony
I reviewed the final concert of the Seattle Symphony season — an excellent performance of Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony No. 2 with guest conductor Osmo Vänskä:
SEATTLE — The Seattle Symphony’s season of guest conductors concluded with a visit by Osmo Vänskä. On June 24, he led a breathtaking, meticulous performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2. Conventional program structure offers a chance to experience each visiting conductor’s skills with a variety of pieces and styles. But with the entire concert devoted to this single work, Vänskä took on the additional test of sustaining the musical narrative over the length of a feature film.
Filed under: Classical Voice North America, conductors, Mahler, review, Seattle Symphony
October 5, 2022 • 9:36 am Comments Off on As A Musical Olympian, In Sprint And Marathon, Salonen Shows Mettle
As A Musical Olympian, In Sprint And Marathon, Salonen Shows Mettle
I wrote about a pair of concerts involving Esa-Pekka Salonen, one each in San Francisco and Seattle:
Reflecting on his double identity as a composer and conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen once likened the difference in what each requires to that between “running a marathon and a 100-meter race,” respectively. A pair of compelling programs from two of the West Coast’s leading orchestras offered a glimpse of the Finnish artist in both capacities…
Filed under: Esa-Pekka Salonen, Mahler, Seattle Symphony
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 