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Mahler 7 by Daniel Harding and the London Symphony Orchestra
Last Thursday night I heard the London Symphony Orchestra perform at the Barbican. It was the first night that their new Principal Guest Conductor, Daniel Harding, conducted the orchestra in his new role. It was a special night for me - a celebration, really - as my colleague, Eric Lariviere and I made our way through receptions, conversation, and electric anticipation to the padded, wide benches of the Barbican’s concert hall for the performance.
I knew that I would hear Mahler's Seven Symphony and, strangely, I feared it as much as I anticipated it. I did not want to be disappointed. For 40 years or so, it has been one of my favorite works for orchestra; I find it full of all things human - courage, transcendance, venality, fear, hatred, rage, tenderness, and stuttering, self-conscious hesitancy. When it is done poorly, it is a work that can bitterly disappoint. It is a challenge to perform; no less a luminary than Pierre Boulez called it "a difficult nut to crack."
Speaking personally, one of Mahler’s gifts was his ability to warp time, bending it to his will. Months of grief, weeks of anxiety, and days of joy slipcover mere seconds of his music. Like Wordsworth or Rilke, Mahler distills whole chapters of life, then summons them fulsome and ripe into the present moment. His music has this uncanny ability to reacquaint me with parts of my life that I had folded neatly away like a vest I might need someday, but have no intention of ever wearing again.
I sat there watching and listening to this lithe, seemingly somewhat self-conscious, ginger-haired, boyish man, Daniel Harding, wrest profundity and the sublimest of musical moments from the LSO, a lion of an orchestra. I wept in my seat like a Fiat-bound Milanese taxi driver facing off Verdi.
I felt embarrassed to shed tears, but I couldn’t help myself. This performance, especially the first movement, was so bravely beautiful, so chin-up defiant that I was overwhelmed.
Some people might read this and think that I’ve lost it - that I am completely over the top. I offer this evidence: this very experienced and sophisticated London audience erupted into applause between the first and second movements. And I am not talking about the embarrassed sprinkling of tentative clapping that sometimes trips forward among the gobsmacked. I am talking about Londoners who would rather be caught laughing at Larry the Cable Guy than break the silence between symphonic movements.
After the concert, I was at dinner at a superb Italian restaurant (Alba) - up Whitecross St. - with some of the orchestra, their management, and young Maestro Harding. I found myself watching this young man - in sweater, t-shirt, and crumpled jeans - looking for all the world like a nerdy, bookish clerk out with his rich relatives. I looked and looked and looked. I wanted to remember him as I met him - warm, unassuming, and curious. I wanted to remember him as I heard him - a masterful conjurer capable of muscular, vivid convictions.
From what I understand, Harding has had some difficulty shedding his reputation as Simon Rattle's protege to become fully his own artist. I suspect that he will not have trouble much longer. He really is a terrific conductor. His stick technique is superbly clear, he is very musical, and there is clarity, vitality, and muscularity in his music-making that is fresh and welcome. Bravo, Mr. Harding. I can't wait for more from you.
Posted on March 26, 2007 12:54 PM | Permalink
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Comments
Hi Neill, I know you from Smokers Forum; I really enjoyed reading of your night at the LSO.