Latest news with #LondonSymphonyChorus
Times
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
LPO/Gardner review — Mahler's Eighth Symphony, with added visuals
Mahler conducted plenty of operas but never wrote one. He probably thought he had put enough drama, life, love and mortal terror into his symphonies. The question raised by this concert-hall staging of Mahler's gigantic Eighth Symphony — that philosophically eccentric but sonically overwhelming amalgam of an ancient Catholic hymn and the last part of Goethe's Faust — was whether all that symphonic anguish and ecstasy is enhanced or confused by stage movements and big-screen video images. It's fair to say that the musical performance — by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, the London Symphony Chorus and Tiffin Boys' Choir under Edward Gardner's high-voltage direction — would probably have been just as thrilling if absolutely nothing had happened visually. With the two adult choruses
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.
The Guardian
10-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
LSO/Pappano review – salty breezes and a balmy Mediterranean sunset
'Behold, the sea itself,' declares Vaughan Williams's A Sea Symphony, but it could equally apply to any of the works in this carefully crafted concert of British music. The latest instalment in Antonio Pappano's ongoing odyssey opened with Elizabeth Maconchy, a gifted yet neglected contemporary of Shostakovich and Tippett, whose impressionistic Nocturne owed more of a debt to Holst and Debussy. A cinematic soundscape, complete with moody undertow and opulent climaxes, hinted at moon, clouds and waves in a spellbinding musical watercolour. William Walton's Cello Concerto sings of warmer waters, especially the shimmering finale, which seems to end in a balmy Mediterranean sunset. The spirit of Prokofiev hovered over the ticking opening, Pappano and orchestra relishing the smouldering harmonies flecked with vibraphone, harp and celesta. LSO principal cello Rebecca Gilliver, a natural team player, was at her finest in the third movement where double stopping and extended trills were rendered with pinpoint accuracy. Elsewhere, she took a more self-effacing approach, a touch smudgy in the spiky scherzo, though always warm of tone. Walt Whitman's metaphysical maritime poetry was the catalyst for Vaughan Williams's most operatic of symphonies. No surprise then that Pappano's 21 years helming the Royal Opera paid dividends in a thrilling performance of the composer's first symphony, his breakthrough work. As bracing fanfares issued a crisp call to arms and tempi broadened to accommodate impassioned choral entries you could feel the ocean's heaving breast and taste the salty breezes. American baritone Will Liverman radiated an ardent sense of pride and purpose. The top of the voice could have used a little more amplitude, but his commitment to the poetry was never in doubt. South African soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha sang with creamy tone, enviable diction and a commanding confidence as she hurled forth a battery of gleaming top notes. The London Symphony Chorus, singing with laser-focused discipline and an impressive homogeneity of sound, never put a foot wrong, from the briny tang of the scherzo through a series of goosebump-inducing a cappella sections. As Pappano guided ship and crew towards the distant horizon and its visionary conclusion, you could have heard a pin drop.
