Take five: Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie celebrates an early birthday

By Stephen Pritchard, 12 January 2022

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“London could have had all of this and more in the doomed Centre for Music. It makes you weep...”

Reviewed at Elbphilharmonie: Grand Hall, Hamburg on 11 January 2022

Adams, Tromba lontana

Adams, Short Ride in a Fast Machine

Adès, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra

Ligeti, Étude no. 5 "Arc-en-ciel"

Salonen, Wing on Wing

NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester

Kirill Gerstein, Piano

Alan Gilbert, Conductor

Anu Komsi, Soprano

Piia Komsi, Soprano

Bychkov's uneven Mahler 8 at the Elbphilharmonie

Alexander Hall, 11th April

Doing justice to the vast scale of Mahler's "Symphony of a Thousand" is itself the mightiest of tasks. Semyon Bychkov and his NDR forces only partially succeed.

***11

A searingly powerful Duke Bluebeard's Castle at the Elbphilharmonie

Alexander Hall, 9th February

Alan Gilbert and his NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester partner first Igor Levit, and then Michelle DeYoung and Gerald Finley, in a night of outstanding music-making devoted to the music of Bartók.

*****

Two Sergeis with Vinnitskaya and Valčuha at the Elbphilharmonie

Alexander Hall, 14th September

Rachmaninov and Prokofiev not only shared a first name. In their individual ways they helped define Russianness too. Anna Vinnitskaya, Juraj Valčuha and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester are here the exponents.

***11

Music that makes the flesh creep: Kochanovsky's powerful Prokofiev 6

Alexander Hall, 20th April

Three diverse works written within 15 years of each other, by Kodály, Poulenc and Prokofiev, given with panache by the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, the amazing Jussen brothers and Stanislav Kochanovsky.

****1

Operatic Wagner and symphonic Shostakovich in the Elbphilharmonie

Alexander Hall, 15th September

Conducting the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, the Latvian Andris Poga reveals a surer hand in Shostakovich's final symphonic statement than in the partnering of Nina Stemme in Wagner, where her big voice often missed the essential intimacy.

***11

Death and what comes after: Alan Gilbert's Mahler 2 in Hamburg

Alexander Hall, 2nd September

Opening the new season, Alan Gilbert and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester send out a clear message in Mahler's Second Symphony, both lyrically shaped and dramatically inflected.

****1

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Stephen Pritchard

Stephen Pritchard began singing as a treble at the age of eight and progressed to become a tenor in Portsmouth Cathedral Choir, the Gibbons Consort and now the English Chamber Choir. Writing about music has been at the core of his 40-year career in journalism, chiefly at the Observer. He has been known to play a pretty mean jazz double bass.