January 2020 before lockdown

I started the year off with an extraordinarily weekend of music in mid-January. After a meeting I had to go to in Borimingham I was able to catch the CBSO Mahler 8 with their chief conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla,. I have only heard Mahler 8 infrequently over the years – Davis and Boulez at the Proms in the 70’s, and also Charles Groves at Alexandra Palace (!) – plus in Manchester Kent Nagano conducting the Halle in the late 90’s. But the CBSO/Mirga performance was the finest I’ve ever heard live – Mirga is an amazing conductor, who led a performance that was never over-blown, but always alive, hard-hitting when needed, and totally memorable. It was quite fast in the opening movement but she totally justified the approach – as ever with this work, part of the impact is the public spectacle of so many singers and the CBSO certainly achieved that  – ‘surround sound’, almost as the choir stretched right round three sides of the hall. I am not always convinced by some of the second half, but the CBSO gave it their all with total commitment

And then on to London with the last train more or less from Birmingham the same evening to an LSO Day in London. It started with Simon Rattle rehearsing Beethoven’s Christ on the Mount of Olives with the LSO – very interesting to see Rattle’s rehearsal approach; long stretches of performance and then picking up on specific points. I couldn’t help wondering whether these were points he had determined in advance, as things he knew to be tricky, or were actually prompted by specific performance issues. Anyway – I suddenly found this was a fascinating work I didn’t know at all, with real Beethovenian energy at points. The soloists were very good – particularly Else Dreisig – and one just wondered why the work wasn’t better known. Then to an LSO chamber music in the afternoon, where I heard one of Beethoven’s Op 104 cello sonatas for the first time, and then the actual performance of  Christ on the Mount of Olives, preceded by the Berg Violin Concerto. A fantastic, if exhausting weekend…………