Cool brilliance: Currentzis conducts Mahler at the Philharmonie

By Hugo Shirley, 07 December 2018

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“You can almost feel a bracing Siberian breeze whipping through the landscape of Mahler’s scores”

Reviewed at Philharmonie: Großer Saal, Berlin on 5 December 2018

Mahler, Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Der Schildwache Nachtlied

Mahler, Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Rheinlegendchen

Mahler, Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt

Mahler, Das Knaben Wunderhorn: Verlor'ne Müh

Mahler, Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Lied des Verfolgten im Turm

Mahler, Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht

Mahler, Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen

Mahler, Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Lob des hohen Verstandes

Mahler, Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Der Tamboursg'sell

Mahler, Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Das irdische Leben

Mahler, Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Revelge

Mahler, Symphony no. 4 in G major

Florian Boesch, Baritone

Anna Lucia Richter, Soprano

Teodor Currentzis, Conductor

musicAeterna

A hole in the heart: Salzburg Festival’s new Don Giovanni

Hugo Shirley, 4th August

The pairing of controversial director and bad-boy conductor brings some thrills but the Salzburg Festival's new Don Giovanni proves disappointingly uninvolving.

***11

An online Beethovenathon: all nine symphonies across Europe in one day

Alexander Hall, 6th June

An all-day Beethoven experience European style with both highs and lows: much diversity revealed and exploited but of variable quality.

***11

An outstanding New York debut for Teodor Currentzis and musicAeterna

Edward Sava-Segal, 21st November

In Currentzis' vision, Verdi's Requiem was both a spectacle and a soul-searching exercise for the musicians, as well as for the listeners.

****1

An evangelical happening in Aix

Mark Valencia, 14th April

The musicians of MusicAeterna were impassioned, engaged and energised into a single force in this performance of Verdi's Requiem at the Aix Easter Festival.

****1

Electrifying Beethoven from Currentzis and musicAeterna

Mark Pullinger, 28th July

The Greek conductor and his hand-picked Russian orchestra offer high-voltage Beethoven that crackles.

*****

A beautiful but infuriating Clemenza in Amsterdam

Nicolas Nguyen, 7th May

The transfer of last year's Clemenza di Tito from Salzburg delights and irritates in equal measure.

***11

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Hugo Shirley

Hugo Shirley is a Berlin-based writer and musicologist. He has written widely as a critic in the UK, including for The Spectator, the Financial Times and Daily Telegraph, and has held editorial posts at both Opera and Gramophone. He was editor of 30-Second Opera (Ivy Press, 2015) and has a PhD in musicology from King's College London, where his thesis focused on Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s Die Frau ohne Schatten.