| It’s not often that Brahms’s First Symphony opens a concert – although there are precedents from Ashkenazy, Maazel and Masur (other conductors too no doubt) – which here signalled Alan Gilbert’s first appearance as Chief Conductor of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester. ... A Big Question was being asked by Bernstein, yet none more so than by Charles Ives, to be forever Unanswered. ...and then, with the players restored to the stage, Amériques by Edgard Varèse, a Frenchman in America, a wall of sound, a theatre of urban noises (including sirens) contrasted with Impressionistic brushstrokes and cataclysmic eruptions. |