I don't believe it. A soloist who knows how to conduct....
Antonello Manacorda was Abbado's handpicked concertmaster for the Gustav Mahler Chamber Orchestra (fancy naming a chamber orchestra after the world's best composer for large orchestras....). Manacorda has made one of the all time great Schubert symphony cycles with the Potsdam Chamber Academy, a Mendelssohn cycle I have yet to hear (because I don't find the Mendelssohn symphonies all that interesting...), a Mozart cycle, and one of the all-time great recordings of Ravel's Mother Goose.
The Gran Partita for Winds on this concert is absolutely wonderful. But this fully 34 minute Verklarte Nacht is once in a 'blue moon' greatness. It is not the most dramatic or the most perfectly played, but it 'tells a story' and grows organically, note to note, and perfectly sustains tension and continuity from first bar to last in a work that notoriously rambles even in faster performances than this. It's a miracle of understanding whose diaphanous colors illumine the night sky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoLljFv9eHE&t=815s
No comments:
Post a Comment