The hr-Sinfonieorchester has for decades been numbered among the world’s leading Mahler orchestras. Between 2008 and 2013 it gave its most recent Mahler cycle as part of the Rheingau Music Festival under its then principal conductor Paavo Järvi. The recordings were made in the unique space of the Basilica of Eberbach Monastery, in the magnificent ambiance of the Friedrich von Thiersch Hall at the Wiesbaden Kurhaus and in the outstanding acoustics of the Great Hall of the Alte Oper in Frankfurt. In all of these venues Mahler’s symphonies left a particularly fascinating impression.
Mahler Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2
Bach, Johannespassion (St John Passion)
“A simmering performance that lives up to the high expectations”, wrote the New York Times of the Bach St John Passion presented by the great American director Peter Sellars and star conductor Simon Rattle in the Berlin Philharmonie. This St John Passion shows Simon Rattle, Peter Sellars, the Berlin Philharmonic and “a real dream team of singers” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) building on the brilliant success of the St Matthew Passion and being as wildly applauded as before.
World Orchestra for Peace at the BBC Proms
The 150th anniversary of the birth of Gustav Mahler in 2010 gave rise to a number of celebratory performances of his works. For its program at the fabled London BBC Proms in August 2010, the World Orchestra for Peace under Valery Gergiev chose the master’s Fourth and Fifth Symphonies. In the words of London’s The Independent, ‘the World Orchestra for Peace gave exemplary performances’ of the Mahler symphonies. The demanding soprano solo part in the Fourth is impressively sung by Camilla Tilling. At the opening of the Fifth, the Mariinsky Theater’s trumpeter Timur Martynov provides a lustrous, golden fanfare. ‘A rapt Valery Gergiev […] sculpted the closing Adagietto like a sacred object of veneration.’
RCO: Dudamel conducts Mozart & Mahler
After an absence of more than seven years, Gustavo Dudamel returns to the Concertgebouworkest. And how! For the first time, he will be leading the Amsterdam-based orchestra with its illustrious Mahler tradition in a symphony by Gustav Mahler. Relative to the rest of Mahler’s œuvre, the Symphony No. 4 is comparatively short, airy in tone and lightly scored, yet it is no less ambitious in its conception – the final movement, entitled Das himmlische Leben, is a childlike vision of heaven. It is sung in this performance by the Swedish soprano Camilla Tilling. PROGRAM Mozart: Overture “Die Zauberflöte”; Mahler: Symphony No. 4