A packed Barbican Hall tonight experienced the miracle of Mahler’s second symphony made all the more miraculous by the conducting of Michael Tilson Thomas, who has survived brain cancer.
This was MTT’s gift to London and the world for his upcoming 80th birthday, and it went back a long way. MTT once rehearsed the chorus for Leonard Bernstein. To say he has this piece in his bones is something of an understatement.
The architecture was immaculate – ninety minutes of life, death and everything inbetween, delicately veering from tension to tenderness and back. The conductor’s movements were restrained, not so much by his condition as by the awareness that no more was needed than a gesture here, a finger-flutter there. The LSO and MTT know eacxh other well enough over more than 30 years to need no more.
That said, there were quite a few subs in the ranks and, while the strings were immaculate, the brass did not always shine. Alice Coote was beyond celestial in the Urlicht; her volume control is the best of any current mezzo. Siobhan Stagg soared sweetly in the soprano solos. But the accolades belonged to MTT, a maestro who defied death and came back to tell us the tale. To even the most jaded Mahlerian ears, this was a truly uplifting performance.
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