Prom 69 (2.9.12): Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra – Messiaen & Mahler

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Sunday 2 September at 7.30 p.m.
Royal Albert Hall

Messiaen: Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum (31 mins)
Mahler: Symphony No. 6 in A minor (85 mins)

Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra
Riccardo Chailly conductor
The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly in their second Prom perform Messiaen's dramatic 1964 memorial to the dead of two world wars, Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, and Mahler's 6th Symphony which is a similarly wide-ranging soundscape moving from death-portending hammer-blows to alpine cow-bells. It also contains one of Mahler's most glorious slow movements.

Together with the Turangalila Symphony, Messiaen's Et Expecto is one of his most often performed orchestral works. It is on a vast canvas with a wide dynamic range, full of orchestral effects and apocalyptic gongs. The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra is one of the oldest symphony orchestras in the world. Riccardo Chially has been their conductor since 2005.

[bluestateprommer]

First thing to note in advance of this Prom is that Chailly will be conducting Mahler 6 with the middle movements in Andante - Scherzo order. Not my preferred order, so then I guess I'll have to listen to it one twice, with the two different orders of the middle movements. I did this with JB's BBC SO Barbican performance some time back. Nothing quite like subjecting oneself to 2 different ways of feeling emotionally miserable to great music ;) .

[BBMmk2]

So far this Prom is great music making(whatever the order of movements!!)

[Alison]

So far this Prom is great music making(whatever the order of movements!!)

? ? Difficult to assess. Let's hear the finale.

[Il Grande Inquisitor]

? ? Difficult to assess. Let's hear the finale.

That Scherzo went at a devilish lick...

[ahinton]

I didn't listen to the Mahler because I simply can no more bear it with Mahler's mistaken revised order of the central movements (and I'm still reeling from the thought that Mahler of all people could have made so fundamental a misjudgement, especially about one of his finest works) than I can Bruckner 9 with its finale lopped off as though it was never meant to exist. Sorry; I don't doubt that, otherwise, the performance was fine...

[LeMartinPecheur]

Splendidly sonorous hammer!

[Barbirollians]

I perhaps still have to come to terms with that tempo for the Scherzo but I am strongly in the Andante- Scherzo order camp .

I thought it was one of the most thrilling and clear sighted performances of a Mahler symphony I have ever heard . The rapturous reception was well deserved .

[ahinton]

I did listen to the final few minutes of the performance and it sounded absolutely splendid; the way the the music finally wells up into what bodes to be an overarchingly triumphal A major and then gets blown to pieces is always a big moment in this work, but the slow pace with which Chailly made this horrific realisation dawn was something I've never heard done before with such power. I thought that the trombones that followed seemed a little lacklustre for a situation in which the world has blown itself apart and only a small choir of trombones and a tuba remain to lament its passing, but otherwise the very end had all the terror and tragic finality that one could hope for (that's if the very word "hope" can even be used at all meaningfully in a context where it has utterly evaporated). I'm sorry not to have heard the rest but I just cannot get my head around Adagio second. Why? Well, the close of the first movement has a not dissimilar effect to that of the finale except that it does win out and end affirmatively - and then it's all immediately felled by the opening of the scherzo when we're wrenched back to A minor with a vengeance. After the scherzo falls apart and dissolves into nothing, the Adagio comes as the kind of balm that has been almost entirely absent from the work until it begins. When it ends in utter serenity in E flat and then the finale begins with a question mark based on a pedal point C, only to thrusts back to A (two minor third steps downwards), that sheer horror of A minor reasserts itself in a far more powerful way than would have been possible had the central movements been played the other way around.

If the rest of the performance lived up to the way in which it ended, then it must indeed have been pretty amazing.

[Alison]

I found this one of the more persuasive performances of a/s, perhaps aided by the conductor's explanation.

The scherzo worked at that speed.

For a while I wasn't convinced that this was an ideal Mahler orchestral sound with pockets of fine playing not really gelling overall. Given that pretty stunning finale I fear any such criticism should be quickly silenced. Lovely to hear an old fashioned Proms roar, a seemingly spontaneous reaction to the music and the performance.

[Vile Consort]

Superb concert! Lots of detail audible in the Mahler that I hadn't heard previously. And thank goodness the audience left a period of silence before applauding. Many a performance is ruined by the applause coming in too soon. But what applause when it came! The roar from the cheap seats at the back (or so it always seems!) is such an emotional experience.

[gedsmk]

A truly wonderful concert, full of suprises and twists, and glorious playing in all departments. But the COUGHING!!
I found the hall to be particularly humid and stuffy this evening, probably because they didn't have time to change the air after the CC organ concert, which seemed to have been packed out, if the crowds around the hall afterwards were anything to judge, so that probably explains the coughing, much the worst of any of the concerts I've been to this season.

I must say watching Chailly conduct is quite an education: he gives himself totally to the immediate experience, encourages the players right through every bar, and takes plenty of time to recover his bearings between movements. There doesn't seem to be "micro-managing" going on at all; he gives the players a chance to really express themselves. There were lots of smiles and expressions of congratulations going on within sections at the end. Exhaustion and exhilaration combined.

[Roehre]

First thing to note in advance of this Prom is that Chailly will be conducting Mahler 6 with the middle movements in Andante - Scherzo order.

I haven't listened (yet) but I have to point out, that Chailly has changed his mind.
6 is the first Mahler Chailly performed and recorded with the Concertgebouw in 1989, with the scherzo as 2nd mvt.
Whatever the reasons: IMO Mahler should have stuck to the original plan of a 5 mvt symphony with 2 scherzi and a central slow mvt. Perhaps the Matthews borther can help out by orcehstating the 189 or so bars of that mvt?
Btw: I nearly always jump the scherzo listening to this symphony. IMO it's simply superfluous, at either position. But when I listen to it, I much prefer the scherzo following the 1st mvt.

[Roehre]

.....I must say watching Chailly conduct is quite an education: he gives himself totally to the immediate experience, encourages the players right through every bar, and takes plenty of time to recover his bearings between movements. There doesn't seem to be "micro-managing" going on at all; he gives the players a chance to really express themselves. There were lots of smiles and expressions of congratulations going on within sections at the end. Exhaustion and exhilaration combined.

Chailly hardly agrees with recording of rehearsals. Of his 17 years in Amsterdam exactly 22 minutes of a rehearsal of Mahler 9 -made IIRC in 2004- is all he approved of being recorded and made public. There is a big facade around this -admittedly magnificent- conductor.

[Il Grande Inquisitor]

I haven't listened (yet) but I have to point out, that Chailly has changed his mind.

He certainly has changed his mind re the ordering of the Scherzo and Andante. Chailly had lunch with a colleague yesterday and told him that he hadn't performed the work in nearly 20 years and couldn't bring himself to listen to his RCO recording.

I don't have a problem with the ordering of the inner movements - Mahler changed his mind and the preference for Andante before Scherzo is fair enough. It's also worth bearing in mind that the shift back to Scherzo-Andante happened as a result of a telegram to Mengelberg from Alma, who is not always a reliable source re her husband's wishes. I think the reason Chailly cited for switching to Andante-Scherzo is quite convincing, especially given the demonic speed he took the Scherzo.

Terrific performance, as was last night's all Mendelssohn Prom.