Prom 40 (17.08.20) Mahler 7

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

After almost a decade at the helm of the BBC Philharmonic, Gianandrea Noseda (who later became the orchestra’s Conductor Laureate) opened this 2012 Prom with Mozart’s famous overture to Don Giovanni – by turns solemn, impetuous and edgy. From dreaming sleep to a dawn awakening, Oliver Knussen’s Second Symphony then takes us through a landscape of iridescent colour, with a vocal line that soars to stratospheric heights.

One of British music’s great originals, Knussen found an individual voice while still in his teens. This performance – given on his 60th-birthday year – is a celebration of his unique contribution to UK music. Its nocturnal sequence finds a counterpart in the two ‘Night Music’ movements of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony – his own all-encompassing journey from darkness to light – which concludes the programme.


Mozart: Don Giovanni – overture
Knussen: Symphony No. 2
Mahler: Symphony No 7 in E minor

Gillian Keith (soprano)
BBC Philharmonic
Gianandrea Noseda (conductor)

(From the BBC Proms 2012, 7 July)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Apologies for not releasing this thread earlier. For some ham-fisted reason, I “moderated” it out of visibility.

[bluestateprommer]

Somehow managed to miss this Prom back in 2012 (except that it might have been during bsp's annual Santa Fe holiday), so glad to give this a first listen. The Mozart overture felt a touch hard-driven, in keeping with Richard Morrison's nickname for Gianandrea Noseda (read elsewhere) of "Mr. Whippy". Very fine work from Gillian Keith, the BBC Phil and GN with Knussen's Symphony No. 2. If anyone wants a portion of the texts from on-line sources (couldn't quite find them all, sorry):

* Georg Trakl: Die Ratten (text eminently feed-able into an online translator)
* Sylvia Plath: Edge

Hearing this Mahler 7 from GN and the BBC Phil made for an interesting contrast with a recent Chicago Symphony video of Mahler 7 (publicly viewable for a while; now behind a firewall on YT), off a 2011 PBS telecast of a 2010 performance with Pierre Boulez conducting. The BBC Phil performance had its larger share of flubs compared to the Boulez, but generally felt more alive in Noseda's hands compared to the somewhat lackadaisical feel of Boulez's reading. Both GN's and PB's took the first movement at a rather spacious pace, not always to the music's advantage, IMHO. But Noseda picked up the pulse from the 2nd movement on, by comparison, compared to Boulez.

It was also nice to hear the 'interval' banter between Petroc and Noseda, where Noseda revealed endearingly just how wisely he's using his lockdown time, for, among other things, starting to study the Ring for his Zurich Opera production in the semi-near future (fingers crossed). They also spoke of GN's Stresa Festival, retooled for pandemic times.