Latest news with #GustavMahler
The Guardian
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
LPO/Gardner review – no recording could match the visceral thrill of Mahler's Eighth Symphony live
Gustav Mahler objected to his Eighth Symphony being promoted as 'The Symphony of a Thousand', just as he worried about its 1910 premiere being made into a 'Barnum and Bailey show'. But the symphony remains a vast undertaking, calling for hundreds of musicians, so the nickname has stuck. Meanwhile, crossing a symphony with a circus act sounds exactly like a night at the Southbank Centre's self-consciously boundary-crossing Multitudes festival. As it happens, the circus has already been and gone, but this Mahler 8 came with accompanying video by Tal Rosner in a performance directed by Tom Morris. The basic point, the programme explains, is that 'you can't experience Multitudes at home'. Mahler had already seen to that, of course. No recording (and no domestic sound system) could match the visceral thrill of the combined London Philharmonic Choir, London Symphony Chorus and Tiffin Boys' Choir launching into the fortissimo opening from three sides of the stage. Or the London Philharmonic Orchestra laying down a contrapuntal theme in monumental slabs. Or two sets of timpani and offstage brass in balconies serving volleys in blistering stereo. Or the sudden spare harshness of the opening of Part 2 as conductor Edward Gardner held back his enormous forces, making space for sinewy woodwind and mere flashes of intensity through another achingly slow buildup, climactic phrases placed with absolute precision, his pacing virtuosic. Woven through this intricate texture and singing mostly from behind the orchestra, the eight solo voices inevitably made the greatest impact at quieter moments, their words often lost in the melee. For those interested in the text, screens provided surtitles – albeit in white, illegible at times against Rosner's video. Part music-video, part screen-saver, it spoke the familiar language of advertising: shimmering lights, rippling fluids, hard lines amid smoke. In Part 2 – based on the end of Goethe's Faust Part 2 – Faust himself emerged from the abstraction, then appeared on stage and followed Gretchen up into the auditorium for redemption under a spotlight's glare. Such gestures felt bluntly out of place: too bland and too literal to hold their own alongside such a powerfully immersive musical performance.
Boston Globe
21-02-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Today in History: February 21, Malcolm X was shot and killed at age 39
In 1911, composer Gustav Mahler, despite a fever, conducted the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in what turned out to be his final concert. (He died the following May.) In 1916, the Battle of Verdun, the longest battle of World War I, began in northeastern France. Advertisement In 1965, civil rights activist Malcolm X, 39, was shot to death inside Harlem's Audubon Ballroom in New York. Three men identified as members of the Nation of Islam were convicted of murder and imprisoned; all were eventually paroled. (The convictions of two of the men were dismissed in November 2021, when prosecutors said new evidence had undermined the case against them.) In 1972, President Richard M. Nixon began a historic visit to China, where he met with Chinese leader Mao Zedong. In 1973, Israeli fighter planes shot down Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 over the Sinai Desert, killing all but five of the 113 people on board. In 1975, former Attorney General John N. Mitchell, former White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, and former White House Domestic Affairs Adviser John D. Ehrlichman, were sentenced to 2 1/2 to 8 years in prison for their roles in the Watergate cover-up. (Each ended up serving less than two years.) In 1992, Kristi Yamaguchi of the United States won the gold medal in women's figure skating at the Albertville Winter Olympics; Midori Ito of Japan won the silver, Nancy Kerrigan of the US won the bronze. Advertisement In 1995, Chicago adventurer Steve Fossett became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean by balloon, landing in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada after a 5,400 mile, four-day flight from South Korea.
