Here's something you might be interested in.
The Philharmonia delivered the goods on Thursday night at Symphony Hall.
What were the goods they delivered? A colossal struggle between Western subjectivity and Eastern detachment; the Confessions of Augustin and the Tibeten Book of the Dead in musical guise.
Conductor Essa-Pekka Salonen was a mature sage leading a multitude of musical notes across Mahler's desolate landscape toward the promised land.
I've seen Salonen conduct Bruckner's Fourth and Debussy’s La Mer both of which were good but this Mahler Ninth was of a different caliber.
The opening bars were so delicate, so beautiful and so muted that a concerned voice in my head murmured that the performance could become too precious--silly voice.
The orchestra sailed toward the initial climax, the first violins leaned into their suspension--flexing their muscles--and upon the resolution my concert companion and I looked at each other with knowing smiles upon our faces.
It was going to be one of those performances. You know, the kind that make you believe in God.
What of the orchestra’s sound? The strings were drenched in cream, the brass were a chorus of stentors, and the percussion was like an Alpine cliff of granite.
The woodwinds? That was interesting. It could either be said that they were the most confident musicians in the orchestra or that they were a bit aggressive--take your pick.
As I've mentioned in the past, it is impossible and trivial to try to describe a sound, you kind of have to be there.
However, it is possible to describe an emotion.
When the strings started the finale movement of the symphony, it sounded as if they now owned our most cherished possession.
Imagine someone taking your child's hand out out of your own and saying, "this belongs to me now and you are helpless to change it, now say goodbye".
That was the sound we heard. We all listened, like greedy voyeurs, as Mahler hopelessly clung to his life, to his identity, to his world until he released it all.
While the symphony concluded in meditative stretches of silence, Salonen protected the moment. As the sound faded into nothingness, he maintained the silence until we couldn't hold our breath any longer and then we inhaled together.
The Philharmonia delivered the goods on Thursday night at Symphony Hall.
What were the goods they delivered? A colossal struggle between Western subjectivity and Eastern detachment; the Confessions of Augustin and the Tibeten Book of the Dead in musical guise.
Conductor Essa-Pekka Salonen was a mature sage leading a multitude of musical notes across Mahler's desolate landscape toward the promised land.
I've seen Salonen conduct Bruckner's Fourth and Debussy’s La Mer both of which were good but this Mahler Ninth was of a different caliber.
The opening bars were so delicate, so beautiful and so muted that a concerned voice in my head murmured that the performance could become too precious--silly voice.
The orchestra sailed toward the initial climax, the first violins leaned into their suspension--flexing their muscles--and upon the resolution my concert companion and I looked at each other with knowing smiles upon our faces.
It was going to be one of those performances. You know, the kind that make you believe in God.
What of the orchestra’s sound? The strings were drenched in cream, the brass were a chorus of stentors, and the percussion was like an Alpine cliff of granite.
The woodwinds? That was interesting. It could either be said that they were the most confident musicians in the orchestra or that they were a bit aggressive--take your pick.
As I've mentioned in the past, it is impossible and trivial to try to describe a sound, you kind of have to be there.
However, it is possible to describe an emotion.
When the strings started the finale movement of the symphony, it sounded as if they now owned our most cherished possession.
Imagine someone taking your child's hand out out of your own and saying, "this belongs to me now and you are helpless to change it, now say goodbye".
That was the sound we heard. We all listened, like greedy voyeurs, as Mahler hopelessly clung to his life, to his identity, to his world until he released it all.
While the symphony concluded in meditative stretches of silence, Salonen protected the moment. As the sound faded into nothingness, he maintained the silence until we couldn't hold our breath any longer and then we inhaled together.