Ligeti
Atmosphères
Mahler
Kindertotenlieder
Schoenberg
Five Orchestral Pieces, Op.16 [Original Version]
Strauss
Also sprach Zarathustra, Op.30
Matthias Goerne (baritone)
Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester
Jonathan Nott
Reviewed by: Colin Anderson
Reviewed: 4 September, 2009
Venue: Royal Albert Hall, London
Anyone who has followed Jonathan Nott’s career will have heard him conduct this music before (in Bamberg, at the Edinburgh Festival, and even in London, where he is too infrequent a visitor). What was so gratifying about this concert was that his interpretations have ripened further, exhibiting an impressive wholeness, and that he and the members of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra displayed a mutual respect and a close rapport.
Nott conducted the enigmatic clusters and colours of György Ligeti’s Atmosphères from memory (rather impressive, that), its ‘electronic’ timbres tempered by the humanity of the performers, an arresting account that immediately displayed Nott and the players’ concern for sound – vibrant without compromising the music’s otherworldliness.
It might have been an idea for the Schoenberg to follow directly (literally attacca) as an interesting juxtaposition and, indeed, to reveal some similarities, not least with regard to these composers’ concern for timbre and atmosphere. This performance – using Schoenberg’s original extravagant scoring – held no terrors for the performers, Nott investing both drama and mystery into music that here appeared as if Schoenberg, in 1909, was extending (if radically) musical tradition rather than breaking with the past.
Beforehand, Matthias Goerne had given an imitate and consoling account of Mahler’s “Kindertotenlieder” (Songs on the death of children), expressing Rückert’s texts and Mahler’s settings generously yet drawing the listener into a private and, indeed, accepting world, the vocalism unforced, the accompaniment scrupulous (including eloquent woodwinds) as well as quietly emotional.
Ligeti’s Atmosphères has its Kubrick and ‘2001’ associations; so too does Richard Strauss’s ‘Zarathustra’, here given a remarkably cohesive performance, the opening organ-pedals and bass drum roll creating a genuine suspense to herald brass and timpani build a sunrise rather than opening a film! This is, after all, only the beginning of the piece, spectacular as it is, and shouldn’t overshadow the work’s catharsis with the tolling of the midnight bell (very effective here with a metal plate, all twelve strokes audible, a rarity) and then the polar tussle of the closing bars. The episodes in between included some affecting but never mawkish solo string playing in ‘Of the Backworldsmen’, the searching concentration of the double basses and cellos in ‘Of Science’ and a schmaltz-free ‘Dance Song’ (lightly turned) in which Carolina Kurkowski Perez (leader) found the ideal combination of elegance and sentiment in her violin solos.