Prom 72 - 7.09.17: Vienna Philharmonic – Mahler’s Sixth Symphony

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

18:30 Thursday 7 September 2017
Royal Albert Hall

Gustav Mahler: Symphony No 6 in A minor

Vienna Philharmonic
Daniel Harding conductor

If the Ninth Symphony is Mahler's musical 'dark night of the soul', then the Sixth is the afternoon, dark with storm clouds, that preceded it. Although written at the happiest time of the composer's life, the work builds gradually into a shattering frenzy of despair. 'The hero,' wrote Mahler, 'is assaulted by three hammer-blows of fate, the last of which fells him as a tree is felled.' It was a musical vision that was to prove all too prescient for a composer who would soon suffer a series of life-changing personal heartbreaks.

This is the first of two appearances this season of the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted here by regular collaborator Daniel Harding.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Mahler himself conducted this superb orchestra.

They do leave the best until late in the Proms season.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

They should have been booked for the John Williams Proms too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9xrmThlsOA

[BBMmk2]

They should have been booked for the John Williams Proms too.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9xrmThlsOA

I've seen this tioo. As if they been playing his music for years!

Looking forward to this one. Not on TV, I suppose?

[Bryn]

I've seen this tioo. As if they been playing his music for years!

Looking forward to this one. Not on TV, I suppose?

No, but tonight's will be, and of course the Schiff Equal Tempered Piano Late Prom.

[Darkbloom]

A part of me hopes the band will virtually ignore the conductor in this one. I don't know if anyone remembers the Barenboim VPO Prom ten-plus years ago, but they did exactly that in Schubert 5. Although it didn't quite work for them in Bruckner 4 where things came apart in the first movement. A lot of my most enduriung Proms memories seem to involve DB, usually for the wrong reasons.

[DracoM]

Proms 72 VPO / Harding / Mahler 6th

Breathtaking. I really do not think I have heard orchestral playing in such a fiendishly demanding score like that ever, and under such insightful and benevolent guidance.




At least in part, nearly wrecked for me by twitterish premature applause AND then, the witless wittering of Bloomin' SERVICE!!!
Let the ecstatic, penetrating music, let the silences, let the audience's reactions do the talking - NOT his no-stop incoherent spluttering and gushing.

[Nick Armstrong]

Will be listening later, having pruned the broadcast of intrusive burbling by Dr Gush.

(Btw Draco, I joined your post into the main thread about this concert... )

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Amen to all that. A model of how to (almost) debase and trivialise the remarkable emotion and atmosphere previously created. And as a jazz aficionado, so this is not my usual "turf", I thought the performance was stunning. As was the Shostakovich last night.

[Maclintick]

A part of me hopes the band will virtually ignore the conductor in this one. I don't know if anyone remembers the Barenboim VPO Prom ten-plus years ago, but they did exactly that in Schubert 5. Although it didn't quite work for them in Bruckner 4 where things came apart in the first movement. A lot of my most enduriung Proms memories seem to involve DB, usually for the wrong reasons.

I remember it, Darkbloom. I'm not sure whether it was on the same occasion in which DB tripped up the VPO in their "Blue Danube" encore ...but it smacks of the same interesting dynamic vis-a-vis players -- don't get me wrong, great pianist, & incredible musician, but perhaps occasionally flaky in front of an orchestra IMHO -- observed when he virtually had a stand-up row with the leader of the Berlin Staatskapelle after Act 1 of "Die Walküre" in the Wagner bi-centenary Proms.

[Darkbloom]

I remember it, Darkbloom. I'm not sure whether it was on the same occasion in which DB tripped up the VPO in their "Blue Danube" encore ...but it smacks of the same interesting dynamic vis-a-vis players -- don't get me wrong, great pianist, & incredible musician, but perhaps occasionally flaky in front of an orchestra IMHO -- observed when he virtually had a stand-up row with the leader of the Berlin Staatskapelle after Act 1 of "Die Walküre" in the Wagner bi-centenary Proms.

I remember it very well. And then he announced, after Gotterdammerung, that the guy was retiring because he was getting too old. Classy, Daniel!

[bluestateprommer]

I remember it very well. And then he announced, after Gotterdammerung, that the guy was retiring because he was getting too old. Classy, Daniel!

Except that Post hoc ergo propter hoc doesn't apply here, I believe. The explanation is far simpler, IMHO. The then-Konzertmeister of the Berlin Staatskapelle, Wolf-Dieter Batzdorf, was born in 1947. I understand that the mandatory retirement age for German orchestral musicians is 65. Thus, 2013 would have been Batzdorf's last year with the orchestra regardless.

[Bax-of-Delights]

Much moved by this performance and the devastating final blow was delivered with more ferocity than I have encountered before.

All of it ruined by the gushing blabbermouth Tom Service. Do these people have absolutely no understanding?

Intrigued by the incipient applause at the end. Did the conductor hold up his baton to quieten the early starters?

[David-G]

Much moved by this performance and the devastating final blow was delivered with more ferocity than I have encountered before.

All of it ruined by the gushing blabbermouth Tom Service. Do these people have absolutely no understanding?

Intrigued by the incipient applause at the end. Did the conductor hold up his baton to quieten the early starters?

Yes. It was magnificent how the applause was crushed by the conductor's baton and everyone else's silence.

[arthroceph]

Don't know the piece very well. First movement seemed a bit dully played ... kept thinking ... is this the VPO?

However listening on the radio while preparing dinner ... the context may affect the musical channels in the brain.

And as another member of the TS Dislikers Society, I suspect the sound waves of his well described gushing kept resonating well after the music had started, and clouded the impact for me.