Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, Daniele Gatti, Conductor. Gustav Mahler: Adagio from Symphony No 10; Symphony No 1
I spent the earlier part of the day at Wittenberg – or rather Lutherstadt Wittenberg. I went to the Lutherhaus, and the Schloss church, where Luther is buried. The museum at the Lutherhaus is very fine and thoroughly informative – Luther’s house is in fact his old monastery which he, his household and his students/academic and domestic staff took over after the early 1520s with the agreement of the local ruler.
The evening’s concert encompassed both the beginning and the end of Mahler’s symphonic oeuvre – an interesting piece of programming. This was, however, as I suspected it would be, not a great evening – though let’s be clear I’m judging this by the very highest standards (as is of course appropriate for a Festival). I’ve mentioned Gatti’s Mahler before (see review of Mahler 5 four days ago …..seems a life time…!). Both the Mahler 1 this evening, and the Mahler 4 some years ago had the same characteristics I associate with Gatti’s conducting – exaggerated tempi, arbitrarily slowing down or speeding up, and emphasis on beauty of sound for its own sake. The Mahler 1 started ridiculously slowly in the beginning of the first movement and the latter ended ridiculously fast; there was an extraordinary slow down the second time the second main theme occurred in the finale; the ending was raucous; and so forth. This performance annoyed me a great deal. The adagio of Mahler 10 was better but was not as intense as the CBSO one on Sunday.
In addition, while the orchestra plays very very well, and clearly has some very talented young players, there were sometimes problems at moments of transition, when there was a less than total unanimity of ensemble – which I guess is due to their not playing together as a permanent ensemble and some hesitancy as to how one section joins in with another (or it might have been Gatti’s beat – though he seemed to be giving very clear directions to the young players………..)
This was the sort of evening where you think that maybe there’s too much Mahler being played, and that conductors get to feel they can only make an impact on their audience if they exaggerate their approach to the work or do something unusual. I hadn’t appreciated until reading the programme notes for the concert that in 2024 Gatti takes over from Thielemann in Dresden. That, sadly is somewhere I’ll probably be avoiding for the next few years then, though I could imagine he’s an excellent opera conductor
John's musical journey 