Pappano and LSO Deliver Bold Mahler 2 Reading — SkimNews
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- Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra delivered a resolute, dramatically turbocharged account of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, with bold interpretive choices that bound potentially disparate episodes into a cohesive whole.
- Dai Fujikura's "Amber Alchemy" received its UK premiere, commissioned to celebrate the centenary of Nomura Holdings and inspired by the beehives atop the Japanese financial company's London offices.
- Pappano's reading of the opening movement featured clipped marches, walloping payoffs, and a massive rallentando two-thirds of the way through that caused "hearts to leap into mouths," alongside limber woodwind solos and clattering col legno strings.
- The central scherzo was rendered as an "aqueous perpetuum mobile" in which the orchestra was "transmogrified into a pool of wriggling fishes."
- Contralto Noa Beinart delivered an unaffected performance of Urlicht before the orchestra launched into a formidable finale where the terrifying army of the dead sounded as if battering on the doors of the concert hall.
- The divine apotheosis in the finale faltered, hampered by what the reviewer called the "boxy acoustic of an auditorium unable to contain such a heavenly climax."
Why it matters: In a year saturated with Resurrection Symphonies on disc and in concert halls, Pappano's ferocious, instinctual reading offered a fresh dramatic urgency — and the LSO's pairing of this Mahler warhorse with a 10-minute Fujikura commission shows how major orchestras are using premieres to reframe even the most familiar repertoire for contemporary audiences.
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