Thursday, May 30, 2013

NY Philharmonic: Mahler #1

This article was originally published on my Typepad blog on October 26, 2012

As I wrote in my October 19th post, I was not impressed last week by the NY Philharmonic under the direction of Rafael de Burgos. Tonight, though, was different.

The first half was short and centered on a piece of Mozart's lighter music, the Serenata Notturna with Sheryl Staples, Marc Ginsberg, Rebecca Young and David Grossman forming the "Salzburg quartet." On the Horn Concerto in E flat, one couldn't have found a better soloist than Philip Myers.

In the second half, the orchestra gave a strong performance of its late music director Mahler's first symphony. The strangeness of the third movement was fully captured and the finale was rousing. It's hard to understand today why the symphony stirred so much opposition in its original performances. Could the 1893 revisions have been that extensive?

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