The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and their Music Director Riccardo Chailly have acquired legendary status – glorious reviews and many awards for their recordings testifying to their continuing success. At Leipzig’s International Mahler Festival, to mark the centenary of Mahler’s death, they performed Mahler’s monumental Second Symphony in the Gewandhaus – together with two marvellous soloists and choral forces quite beyond compare.
Chailly conducts Mahler – Symphony No. 8
Mahler’s Eighth Symphony is agruably the grandest and most ambitious piece of symphonic music ever written. The composer himself regarded it as his ‘opus summum’, and an incredible number of partipicians at the hugely successful Munich premiere in 1910 earned it the nickname ‘Symphony of a Thousand’. At Leipzig’s International Mahler Festival 2011, Riccardo Chailly commanded almost 500 musicians. The perfomance celebrated overwhelming success by audience and critics.