![]() ![]() Karita Mattila’s big shining voice might well have put one in mind of the songs’ originator Kirsten Flagstad had she not so memorably reined it in to radiate her inner-wonderment in a succession of melting phrases woven in and out of pellucid orchestral textures. Then to Mahler’s younger contemporary Richard Strauss and the work premiered in this very hall 60 years earlier – Four Last Songs. But when repeated an octave higher with solo trumpet adding a halo of light to the sound, the Royal Albert Hall was suddenly the Temple of the Grail and the effect of the entire prelude was one of seamlessness, of music removed from time and space where barlines ceased to matter or to exist. The Berlin strings have their own built-in acoustic, a resonance, a sostenuto, which can at best defy explanation. Foundations were laid in the sustained unison of strings and wind that is the opening of Wagner’s Parsifal. The Mahler had come the night before – this second Berlin Philharmonic Prom imaginatively chronicled the before and after. SATURDAY 4TH SEPTEMBER 2010 PROM 66: BERLIN PHILHARMONIC/ RATTLE So my objectives remain the same: share the experience and be entertaining about it. I’ve always believed that my opinion matters less than the way in which it is expressed. ![]()
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