The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Jansons treated the Lucerne Festival audience to works by Schumann and Bernstein. But it was pianist Matsuev’s Rachmaninov that electrified the hall.
After a revelatory performance with his Bavarian RSO at the Barbican, Mariss Jansons was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society for being "the quintessential musicians’ musician".
Under Mariss Jansons, the Vienna Philharmonic are on top form in Shostakovich's opera; together with a top class cast of singers, they create sonic and emotional intoxication.
Russian repertoire is second nature to Mariss Jansons and this programme at the Barbican with his Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra was easily the finest music-making I’d heard all year.
The role of the outsider struck a chord with Tchaikovsky, whose homosexuality alienated him from society. Stefan Herheim takes that identification as the central idea in his remarkable new production at Dutch National Opera.
Mariss Jansons' festive, but poignant, farewell concert with the Royal Concergebouw Orchestra. Thomas Hampson contrasted folksongs by Mahler with Berio and Copland. Afterwards, while Jansons conducted Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.
Mariss Jansons’ reading of Strauss’ Der Bürger als Edelmann is devoid of parody, while his Mahler Fourth is a glimpse of heaven in shimmering watercolours.
On several occasions when I listened to Brahms’s first piano concerto in concert, I was left wondering whether Brahms really intended the pianist to play with so much physical force.
Fine renditions of Brahms's Haydn Variations and Strauss's Death and Transfiguration and Till Eulenspiegel more than compensate for an underwhelming rendition of Rihm's Lichtes Spiel in the Concertgebouw's performance at the Berlin Festival.
In a packed Usher Hall, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra still and thrill by turns with transcendental, colourful Ravel and innovative, cinematic young Shostakovich.
Third time’s a charm? Or is three a crowd? It isn’t often that an orchestra takes up an entire weekend at Carnegie Hall. Could this be too much of a good thing?
Each note from the Bavarian RSO was infused with a sort of insistent newness as the musicians poured forth adventurous interpretations of two familiar works.
The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Chief Conductor Mariss Jansons fell just short of excellence in the first concert of their residency at the Barbican, with Bruckner's 4th Symphony alongside Mozart's G Major Violin Concerto (with Frank Peter Zimmermann).
We celebrate this year the bicentennials of two of the most influential composers of the 19th century. Yet celebrations in Amsterdam have been rather one-sided so far.
If the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra is the Porsche of orchestras, then Mariss Jansons is something like the Michael Schumacher of conductors, guiding this most-celebrated of German radio orchestras through some of the most precipitous and heart-stopping shifts in speed I have witnessed.
It is on record that Mariss Jansons adores the Usher Hall in Edinburgh and wishes there was a concert hall with as good an acoustic in Munich. His quite astonishing performance of Mahler’s vast “Resurrection” Symphony, taking us as it does on a journey from darkness and despair to blazing light with orchestra and choir going flat out, demonstrated just what an exciting venue this is.
As one of this Prom season’s chief “big-names”, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra’s two concerts with the much-loved Mariss Jansons were quick to sell out. Tonight’s Mahler justified the high expectations with a compelling account of the huge “Resurrection” Symphony, even if the finale wasn’t quite as overwhelming as one might have hoped.
Listening to Mitsuko Uchida at last night’s Prom, it struck me that Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto is the most chameleon-like of works, sounding quite different every time I hear it performed by a different pianist.
Amsterdam audiences must be spoiled by hearing the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra so often. In this second concert of two at Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw again used their immaculate sound and tonal palette to lyrical effect, this time not in Bartók and Mahler, but Strauss and Bruckner.
Two programmes, four works, and nothing written before 1880: the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and their chief conductor Mariss Jansons certainly know how to play to their strengths on tour. What strengths they are, too. This orchestra generates a uniquely warm sound, maintains scrupulously clean textures, and possesses technical skills that surpass even the finest of other orchestras.
Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw can claim the most enduring historical connection with Mahler’s symphonies of any orchestra due to their erstwhile principal conductor Willem Mengelberg, who invited Mahler to Amsterdam to conduct the Third and Fourth Symphonies in 1903 and 1904 respectively and after the composer’s death became one of his chief disciples.
Strauss’ Don Juan has a long tradition as one of the Vienna Philharmonic’s more dazzling curtain-openers but a recent tendency, even with Gustavo Dudamel, who conducted this work with the orchestra last autumn, has been for more subdued accounts which downplay the brilliance and virtuosity of the orchestral writing.
On October 24th the grand-dame of Russian contemporary music, Sofia Gubaidulina, celebrates her 80th birthday. In order to commemorate this event, several concerts with her music were scheduled in Amsterdam for her presence – not least of all, the premiere of her new Concerto for Orchestra.
C’est un Théâtre des Champs-Élysées archi-comble qui a accueilli la phalange autrichienne et son chef Mariss Jansons pour un concert réunissant la Symphonie n° 1de Schumann et la fameuse Symphonie fantastique de Berlioz.
Mariss Jansons hatte sich für eine ganz besondere Carmen-Suite entschieden. Rodion Schtschedrins abendfüllende Ballettmusik verband dabei die Carmenohrwürmer mit 47 verschiedenen Schlaginstrumenten.
Daniel Barenboim interpretierte das Fünfte Klavierkonzert mit dem Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks unter der Leitung von Mariss Jansons in der Münchner Philharmonie.
Obwohl Daniil Trifonov in den vergangenen Jahren häufiger Gast im München war, zu einer Zusammenarbeit mit dem Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks kam es bisher noch nicht. Das sollte sich mit dem vergangenen Freitag ändern.
Le défilé d’orchestres étrangers dans la capitale ne faiblit pas, et après Berlin, Chicago et Londres, la Philharmonie nous offrait cette semaine Munich.
