A superb choral performance and some memorable solo moments bring Mahler's "Symphony of a Thousand" to life, even if the sheer energy of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra turns frantic at times.
Marin Alsop nods to her mentor in Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, challenges the Edinburgh Festival Chorus with Villa-Lobos' Chôros 10 and astonishes in a passionate enduring performance of Shostakovich's Fifth.
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.
The opening concert of the 2013 Edinburgh International Festival was a Scottish-Russian collaboration. The RSNO, the home team on home turf, featured two Russian soloists, all under the baton (or, more accurately, the open hands) of Valery Gergiev at Usher Hall.
This, the final indoor concert of the 2012 Edinburgh International Festival (the closing Fireworks Concert takes place under the Castle Rock in Princes Street Gardens), was bookended by possibly the loudest and quietest sounds in the festival.Charles Ives' The Unanswered Question opens with a delicate mist of pianissimo strings.
It's about time. Certainly Chronochromie is about the colour of time, but grasping the essence of much of Messiaen's music depends on being in synchrony with his take on time in music – specifically intimations of the eternal.
An evening of French music, the notes from Debussy, Ravel and Dutilleux lingered in the sticky summer air long after the concert finished.
Making their BBC Proms debut, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (BBC SSO) and the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, conducted by Donald Runnicles with chorus-master Christopher Bell, took command of the stage. In the opening piece, Debussy's Prelude a L'après-midi d'un faune, the BBC SSO captured the pastoral, yet erotic nature of the piece. From the opening flute theme (played by Rosemary Eliot) to the last ringing chord, the Prelude was orgiastic throughout.
If there would be one piece to show someone asking “who is Mahler?” the third symphony would undoubtedly be my first choice. Though it does not perhaps reach the heights of expressionism of some of his later symphonies, it perfectly exemplifies everything Mahler’s music is about: contrast between emotional extremes, ingenuitive orchestration, and a juxtaposition of the sublime and trivial.
