Andris Nelsons Leipzig Gewandhausorchester Mahler 6 listening link

Andris Nelsons outside the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra hall

Andris Nelsons, new Kappellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, in Mahler Symphony no 6, available here on MDR Kultur.  A powerful performance , full of vitality and insight. This orchestra is one of the oldest in the world, and easily one of the best, with a highly individual sound. Also a highly individual ethos - this was Mendelssohn's orchestra. When the Nazis wanted his statue pulled down, the then Mayor, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, defied the Nazis and paid the price. In 1989,Leipzig again stood for freedom, when the then Kapellmeister, Kurt Masur, led the orchestra in performances of Beethoven which helped topple the East German regime. You don't mess with Leipzig!  In the years after the fall of the DDR the orchestra, like so many institutions at the time, underwent a period of readjustment. When Riccardo Chailly took over in 2005, Leipzig was revitalized, eager to take off on a new era.  I remember their first keynote concert together (Mendelssohn)  and the sense of energy that was generated. 

This time round, only the evidence of an audio broadcast, but wow! a performance so invigorating and so electric that it could well signal even greater things to come.  With Thielemann in Dresden and Bayreuth and Nelsons in Leipzig and Lucerne, things are looking up.  I haven't got time to write the performance up in full, but suffice to say, this was an inspired approach, which captured the vitality in the piece, very much in line with what we know of Mahler the man and of the traverse of his symphonies as a whole. Sure it's "tragic", but without abundant life beforehand, would the loss thereof be so horrific?  Muscular, energetic playing, wonderfully together - tho' listen to the percussion thumping like a heartbeat.  Yet also the elusive, sensuous waltz, suggesting softer feelings and the haunted, ghost-like passages.  Altogether an intelligent performance, full of intelligent insight, and musicianship of the highest order.  The Leipzigers know what they want and do it perhaps better than anyone else.  With Nelsons, they're a dream team.  BTW, it's ridiculous to knock Nelsons for "doing too much". His schedule is no different to anyone else. Even in the past, conductors moved round, and some of the best weren't stuck to any one orchestra at all.   

Feral Varèse Arcana Andris Nelsons Berlioz Debussy

Edgard Varèse Arcana with Andris Nelsons and the Berliner Philharmoniker, from the Musikfest Berlin, available til 31/12 in the Digital Concert Hall.  Grab the chance !  Arcana (1925-7)is scored for massive forces-   roughly 120 players altogether,  68 strings, 20 woodwinds, 20 brass and a phalanx of percussionists playing 40 different instruments from timpani to castanets.  Every performance is a feat of logistics, so it doesn't get done as often as it should be.  It's also extremely visual : watching is very much part of the experience.  It's not every day you see rows of trumpets and trombones, some muted, some not,playing together, or 8 horns raised heavenwards. Arcana is big, but its bigness springs from its musical function. Arcana proceeds like a gigantic beast, its component parts articulated to move in stately formation, groups of instruments impacting on each other in constantly varying combinations. I've never quite been sure what Varèse  meant by its title, but I've often imagined it as a mythical creature brought to life by arcane spells and incantations. 

Compared to Varèse's more esoteric innovations,   most for smaller ensembles,  Arcana is relatively easy to follow since it's constructed like a series of variations with interlocking inner cells and permutations thereof.  Although it isn't by any means electronic, it functions like a machine, where different sections operate in parallel and together towards a common purpose.  Very much the Zeitgeist of the 1920's of Futurism and things to come.  Andris Nelson's approach is deliberately unhurried, allowing the monster to waken and walk at its own pace without being pushed. I get a kick from speedier tempi but Nelsons reveals the textures and colours.  Watch him beat the inaudible passages bar by bar showing how silence is part of the structure.  Instinctively, Nelsons half-crouched, like a feral animal, listening to the world around him before making a move. This was intuitive and almost certainly unconscious,  but definitely in tune with the spirit of Arcana and also with the Debussy Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune which preceded it. Consider the connections between the two pieces, and their elusive physicality.  Someone could do Arcana as ballet, though they'd need a big budget.  It would certainly lend itself to visual patterns and recurring images.

Nelsons' Berlioz Symphonie fantastique op 14, was thus coloured by being heard in conjunction with Varèse and Debussy. Symphonie fantastique is so dramatic that lesser conductors cheat by playing up the dramatic kitsch.  We've all heard this piece so often that it's easy to coast along.  Not Nelsons. He instead  emphasizes the intelligence in the orchestration.  Berlioz's genius lay in the way he could use instruments to create myriad textures and colours. He studied instruments for their own sake, and was open to new, innovative sounds like that of the saxophone.  Not really all that far from Varèse and his experiments with klaxons and ondes martenot.  Yet again, Nelsons emphasized the underlying musical logic and the finesse with which Berlioz built up his palette.  The Berliner Philharmoniker are so good that they can do refinement with natural, unforced élan.  Like a composer using the tools available to him, Nelsons knows this orchestra well enough to inspire them so they play as if the work were fresh and vivid.

Listen out specially for the quiet passages, like in the third movement, where the shepherd  listens to the gentle rustling of leaves and contemplates a moment of solitude. Gradually more complex feelings rush in, but to understand, we must listen attentively, picking up every nuance.  Shepherds, like animals in nature, listening acutely to the sounds around them : the faun again, the "creature" in Arcana  ?  Noisiness dulls the senses.  The Dream of the Night of the Sabbath was vivid because our minds had been cleared of detritus.  Listen to those crazed winds! Some audiences think music exists to serve the listener, and like conductors who deliver in that way. True artists, though, are more likely to think that they (and their audiences) exist to serve the music. Nelsons and the Berliner Philharmoniker belong in the latter category, most definitely. 

Strauss Elektra Goerke Nelsons Boston Symphony Orchestra

Richard Strauss Elektra in Boston with Andris Nelsons and Christine Goerke. Goerke "is" Elektra, like no-one else. She inhabits  the character, using her voice to channel  Elektra's turbulent emotions.  Elektra rejects everything her mother stands for, even if it means going feral. The part is merciless,  driven by wild extremes. Animal-like mutterings give way to howls of frenzied rage.  Yet Goerke takes her cue from the music around her. Even in the frenzy of her final dance, when words fail, Goerke exudes regal dignity. This performance was outstanding, by far the most intense of the three Elektras I've heard her sing.

Let us pray that the Boston Symphony Orchestra finds a way to make the broadcast more widely available, because this will be a kind of landmark. Goerke was amazing, but she was challenged and stimulated by equally exceptional orchestral playing.   Goerke and Nelsons have worked together before, and have a kind of natural chemistry,which is quite unique. When they did Strauss Elektra at the Royal Opera House in 2013, word got round even in early rehearsals that something extraordinary was going to happen. Read my review here. When the production was first done five years previously, it was misunderstood, but Nelsons and Goerke made it work. Some thought the production had changed. It hadn't. Lucky for us, it is being revived, because it's good. Hopefully, we'll get Goerke again. Last night, after the Boston performance, I thought about putting on the Aix production (Salonen/Chereau/Herlitzius) but couldn't face it.

This performance also proved why the Boston Symphony Orchestra wanted to grab Nelsons and hang onto him against all comers.  Just as there is more to singing than making sounds, there is a lot more to conducting than waving a baton. Nelsons is inspirational because he genuinely loves music. As Claudio Abbado said, that kind of love motivates creative people and fires them up to do things that those motivated by hate can't comprehend.  Listen to this interview with Christine Goerke where she explains how she works, and how singers work with conductors. What a personality, down to earth and no fool.

This superlative Elektra showed that  the BSO can rise to the challenge of a conductor who is very different, and who can push them in new  directions. Their  basic technical standards have improved greatly since I last heard them in August. Read my review of their Mahler 6th at the Proms here. (I was a lot less scathing than some.) This Elektra shows what they can do when they go outside their comfort zone. It was even  more visceral than Semyon Bychkov's Elektra with the BBC SO, where Goerke also sang with Gun-Brit Barkmin as Chrysothemis. Read my review here.  Boston Symphony Hall is a smaller place than the Royal Albert Hall, which helps concentrate the impact.
 
Now that Nelsons is taking over the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the BSO will embark on a partnership with the oldest and possibly finest orchestra in the world.  This is an unprecedented deal, which raises the bar very, very high indeed. 

Tanglewood Mahler 8th Andris Nelsons - livestream

Now available on livestream here, Mahler Symphony no 8 at Tanglewood. Andris Nelsons conducts the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra.  The set of soloists is so good that it will remembered for a long time: Erin Wall, Christine Goerke, Mihoko Fujimura, Jane Henschel, Klaus Florian Vogt, Matthias Goerne, Ain Aigner and Erin Morley.  Most of them are Mahler 8th veterans but Goerke, Goerne and Vogt stand out. This is seriously luxury casting. I think it's Goerke's role debut, but she's so good that she's bound to make it part of her repertoire.

Nelsons conducted the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra. No youth orchestra will ever have the finesse of a professional orchestra of seasoned players, but in the open air ambiance of Tanglewood, youth and freshness are an advantage. I loved watching the concert on video, seeing how intently the players were performig, and putting their hearts into what they were playing. As Claudio Abbado has said, music-making begins with love. If these young players love what they're doing, they are well on the way to becoming good musicians. The choruses, too, were "homegrown",  again not at all a disadvantage. Very few large choirs are fully professional, and what these singers may lack in polish they make up for with enthusiasm.  Twice, when I've heard Mahler 8th live, the performance came awry because some of the choruses drifted apart from the others and the conductor. This symphony is notoriously difficult to conduct so it's a credit to all that they listened to each other and to Nelsons.

The tag "Symphony of a Thousand" was invented by concert promoters , not by Mahler himself. Although vast forces have impact, musical considerations come above all else. Mahler himself said "“So far I have employed words and the human voice …….to express symphonically only with immense breadth......But here the voice is also an instrument…….used not only as sound, but as the bearer of poetic thoughts”. I've heard this symphony twice at the Royal Albert Hall, and once in a sports stadium nearly twice the size of the RAH.  What matters is how it is performed.   Numbers aren't as important as quality. The old saw "Never mind the quality, feel the width" applies. Here, the balance sounded right, so one might contemplate "poetic thoughts" without being overwhelmed.

On the live audio-only broadcast, the First Part and the Second Part were separated by an interval. I was quite shocked, since there isn't supposed to be an interval.  The silence between the parts is structurally important,  serving as a  limbo state  between the "earthly" aspects of the first part and the much more spiritual conclusion, limbo inn this case referring to the transit from death to afterlife in Christian liturgy, a sort of "clearing space" so things move on. The silence doesn't have to be defined, but it has to be palpable.  Significantly, there are no voices in the first part of the second part. Ideally we should listen and intuit our own "poetic thoughts". When Nelson's conducted  his legendary Mahler 8 in Birmingham in 2010, he conducted it without an interval  So why the interval at Tanglewood ?

What  I liked about this performance was its friendly atmosphere.  Again and again, the text refers to light, and to thoughts rising upwards, beyond the restraints and preoccupations of the temporal world.  When the Mater Gloriosa appears, way above the stage, she represents a higher level of existence, more luminous and humane. This  Tanglewood Mahler 8th bodes well for the future.

Andris Nelsons Mahler 6 BSO Prom 49

For Prom 49, Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall. It's been eight years since the BSO last came to London, with James Levine. Some of the players may even be the same personnel. But eight years is a long time, during which Levine has been seriously ill. So it was a wise move on the BSO's part to bring in Nelsons as Chief Conductor.  He's  a stellar Wagnerian who's featured at Bayreuth, so closely connected to the Berlin Philharmonic that he was a contender for the top job there. He's the prize racehorse in his field.  Music doesn't stand still. Good orchestras can rise to the challenge.  As in so many cases, change takes time. Fortunately, the BSO has Nelsons contracted until 2022.  Europe's loss might be America's gain.

Earlier this week, Nelsons conducted the opening night of the Lucerne Festival, one of the sacred places of European music, still  hallowed by Claudio Abbado. Lucerne Festival players are the best in the business, individually hand picked, for their personal standards of excellence.  The Lucerne ethos of orchestra as chamber ensemble predicates on these high standards. very different from perfectly normal  orchestral experience.  Enjoy the Lucerne concert HERE. .

At Lucerne, Nelsons conducted Haydn's "Surprise" Symphony and Mahler Symphony no 5, both well suited to the intimacy of Lucerne, and performed with the intensity and spark of an ultra-chamber unit.  In London, at the Royal Albert Hall, Nelsons conducted Mahler Symphony no 6 and Brett Dean Dramatis Personae. Unlike so many Brett Dean pieces which rely on non-musical gimmicks, this piece has better musical foundations. The presence of Håkan Hardenberger certainly helped.  He's not stretched and the piece could probably work fine with lesser players. The ideas are undemanding and Dean's thing for cute visuals gives it appeal.

In Mahler 6 Nelsons and the BSO followed the Allegro moderato with a surprise : Scherzo  first, Andante Second.  The controversy on the order of movements is somewhat pedantic.  If it were easily settled, it wouldn't be an issue. Most of us grew up with Scherzo-Andante and it did us no harm. Three years ago,  Chailly conducted Andante-Scherzo with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and that worked fine, too, because it capitalized on the legendary warm glow the Leipzigers do so well, so the contrast with the Scherzo felt heart rending. Nelsons' order worked better with the BSO because it injected dramatic urgency into the symphony sooner rather than later. The Andante felt like a gentle Ruckblick, a wistful looking back on gentler times. Hence the cowbells, clearly audible on this occasion from where I was sitting. Mahler wanted them heard "as if from a distance" -- easier said than done in practical performance. When Semyon Bychkov conducted Mahler 6 in 2011, with the BBC SO, (more here),  he made the Andante seem haunted, rather than peaceful.  Nelsons' approach is more conventional, but makes more of the BSO's good string sections. Nelsons' Finale was suitably haunted though, the strings and harps creating a chilling, "icy" character from which the violent march returns.  The hammer blows fall, but the trumpets herald a future beyond.  the March here isn't military, but the march of life, itself.  It's not necessarily "tragic"or maudlin. This connects to the ideas of life-affirmation, so closer to the deeper understanding we now have of Mahler's overall idiom. In the last section, Nelsons lets the BSO rip. Good contrasts, suggesting tension, but also inexorable forward movement. In many ways, this symphony suggests hope, and triumph over death. Certainly, this Prom suggested a bright new future for Nelsons and the BSO. 

Photo: Roger Thomas

Black smoke : Latest Berlin Philharmonic election news

Latest on the Berlin Philharmonic's election of a new Music Director. Black smoke signals ! At the Vatican, when cardinals elect a new Pope, white smoke signals indicate a decision has been reached. Black smoke signals signify impasse.  The Berliners haven't decided. Far from that being a problem, in many ways, it's a sign of strength.  There is a lot more at stake than choosing a new conductor. It's a sign of maturity that these musicians are thinking seriously about where they want to be in 10 or 15 years, and can compromise when they can't agree. .Rushing to rash judgement isn't wise in most things in life. Much better that the Berliners take their time to cogitate. The sky won't collapse.

They won't stop playing, for one thing. They'll simply continue working with different conductors and contenders as they've been doing for years. The members of this orchestra are so good, and so well connected that  they can afford to look after themselves. The Berliner Philharmoniker "brand"  will survive.  If anything, the brand will be enhanced because the members of this orchestra are thinking about why they operate.  So hooray for them ! Here's the press release in full :

"Orchestra Board member Peter Riegelbauer said: “After an orchestra assembly which lasted 11 hours, we have unfortunately come to no decision. There were positive and lively discussions and several rounds of voting, but unfortunately we were unable to agree on a conductor.”
123 members of the orchestra who were eligible to vote were present. Riegelbauer continued: “We must continue this process and this election. That will have to take place within one year. We are very confident that we will come to a decision then. The process of this election will be continued, and the orchestra assembly will meet regularly, but we will take the time that is necessary. That can last one year.” The mood during the assembly was described by all participants as very constructive, cooperative and friendly."

Earlier in the day there was a rumour, quickly denied, that Andris Nelsons had been chosen. When, hours later, nothing was confirmed, I thought, either the election's too close to call, or someone's looking into other ramifications.  I don't believe the story that Nelsons turned the offer down of his own accord. Otherwise why run at all ?   A few months ago, he said he was "too young" for the job, which fooled no-one.  Furtwängler was younger than Nelsons is now when he took up the job, and in an era when age was more feted than youth. Delaying the vote gives breathing space for a lot of different parties. Nelsons is probably kicking himself for grabbing a pawn and sacrificing the King. Last week, the British electorate were forced into divisive polarization, resulting into extremism which may not reflect what people really want. Let's hope that the Berliner Philharmoniker won't be pushed into such corners.

Andris Nelsons : Concertgebouw Amsterdam Sibelius, Shostakovich

Sibelius and Shostakovich in Amsterdam: Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin), Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Andris Nelsons, Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, 5th March 2015

Conventional wisdom has for over half a century suggested that Shostakovich’s mighty Tenth Symphony depicts the tyranny of Stalinism, both as a a construct on the evil of society and on the man himself. Whether or not Shostakovich actually wrote the symphony after Stalin’s death (the pianist Tatiana Nikolayeva has said she witnessed hearing parts of the work as early as 1951) this performance with Andris Nelsons and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra posed an interesting question: What happens when a conductor born after, and outside, the events which gave birth to such a personal and tragic work seems so intent on revisionism? Great music, of course, can survive an element of re-interpretation - Kurt Sanderling, for example, viewed Shostakovich’s Eighth very differently than either Kondrashin or Mravinsky - but Nelsons' view of the Tenth sometimes felt distinctly lacking in any sense of personal or wider meaning, and occasionally seemed lost altogether.

The huge first movement should make you feel you have travelled somewhere. Nelsons, an accomplished Brucknerian, was certainly aware of the architecture holding the structure together, and the climax had a cumulative power, but as the movement receded towards where we had begun one wondered where the sense of struggle was. In part this movement is an insidious waltz - albeit one that never quite takes the form of a dance - but too often the conductor was caught flatfooted and out-of-step with an historical past, or placing the symphony in one in which it never belonged. He was caught out again in the second movement. Shostakovich marks the score Allegro but Nelsons’ tempo was way off that marking (indeed, at almost six minutes this has to have been the slowest performance I’ve ever heard, in concert, or indeed on record, of this movement). There may well be a convincing argument for making this movement sound so rhythmically balanced and square (it actually felt more like a march), but Shostakovich crams within it a huge amount which was simply glossed over here. The orchestra did indeed begin fortissimo, but Shostakovich then goes on to add a further fifty crescendos (amid only two diminuendos) and at such a glacial pace the evenness of the orchestral dynamics made much of this go missing. The imposing gait simply added to the already tremendous weight of the orchestral sound; what we ended up with was less a portrait of evil and more an adventure in orchestral sonority, less Shostakovichian masterwork, and more brushstrokes in crotchets and semi-quavers.

The third movement risked a lot, and the dividends paid off it should be said. Returning to the failed waltz of the first movement, Shostakovich attempts a second one though it is even more macabre. Resolution is never quite achieved here, the music stumbling over itself in a frantic state of hysteria and mania. In part, Nelsons was much more flexible with his tempi, this being much closer to the Allegretto marking Shostakovich wrote, and the enormous weight of the ‘cellos and basses didn’t feel as uncomfortable (and disfiguring) as they had done in the Allegro. Although this movement for many conjures up Mahler and Das Lied von der Erde the sepulchral horn sound that Nelsons got from the Concertgebouw seemed much closer to Mussorgsky’s tenebrous Catacombs: there was a horror and abject sense of loss here that few performances articulate this well.

The Finale, too, was successful, Nelsons able to replicate the slowness of Shostakovich’s scoring into something genuinely terrifying whilst keeping the music from collapsing into episodic sectionalism. Because the fast music in this movement never really goes anywhere conductors can often seem non-plussed by the lack of resolution to it. Nelsons could have fallen into this trap but instead he chose to bring Shostakovich’s Tenth into a world much closer to Nielsen: snare drums and timpani seemed involved in a battle of wills, defiant against growling, resonant lower strings that came shuddering up from the floorboards. If there had been desolation in the woodwind at the beginning, there was triumphant optimism in the final brass fortissimos.

This concert had opened with Anne-Sophie Mutter as the soloist in Sibelius’ solitary Violin Concerto. Since I last heard Mutter play this work, probably some 15 years ago in London, both her tone and sense of engagement with the concerto have changed markedly. Her sound is huge, so much so that as I listened to her navigate this treacherous work I was often reminded of David Oistrakh. Apart from the richness and roundness of her string sound, she shares with him an unusual ability to confront a work with unassuming honesty. Her peerless virtuosity (and this really was a performance that was technically faultless) allows her to focus on the music and she does so with a sense of engagement and intimacy. Rapid string crosses, up-bowed staccato double-stopping, tonally perfect octave runs, arpeggios and harmonics were all heroic. The sheer size of her tone (especially on the G string which sings so lyrically) does sometimes come at the expense of this concerto’s oft-suggested tundra of chilliness and polar-capped sunlight, but she compensates for a sometimes warmer sound picture by giving the impression of imperviousness and in few performances do you get Tovey’s ideal of a “polonaise for polar bears”. For such a symphonic concerto, Nelsons and the Concertgebouw provided outstandingly rich, sonorous orchestral support. Mutter’s encore was big-boned, luxurious Bach, the Sarabande from the D Minor Partita.

Whilst it would be true to say that Nelsons’ Shostakovich Tenth remains something of an enigma (and very probably a work in progress for this young and immensely charismatic conductor) there is no question that he revels in what the Concertgebouw can do for him. The playing was very special, with fabulously rich strings and brass and woodwind sections other orchestras really can’t compete with. The hall itself gives such beautiful balance and proportion to every section of this orchestra - nothing is ever occluded or overwhelming. A memorable night in Amsterdam!

Marc Bridle

This concert is being broadcast on Sunday 15 March at 14:15 via NPO Radio 4

Beethovenfest Bonn livestream Andris Nelsons

BEETHOVENFEST BONN LIVESTREAM

7.9.2014 um 19 Uhr live aus der Beethovenhalle Bonn mit dem City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra und Andris Nelsons

Mit den Beethoven-Symphonien 1, 2 und 3 (»Sinfonia Eroica«) beginnt am 7. September der Beethoven-Symphonien-Zyklus mit dem City of Birmingham Orchestra und dem Dirigenten Andris Nelsons beim Beethovenfest Bonn. An vier aufeinanderfolgenden Abenden wird das Orchester alle neun Beethoven-Symphonien chronologisch aufführen. Dirigent Andris Nelsons: »Ich verstehe die Chronologie als eine Art Reise. Wir bleiben Beethoven auf den Fersen, durch die Höhen und Tiefen seines Lebens hindurch. Und wir stellen uns den Höhen und Tiefen unseres eigenen Lebens. Darum geht es

7th September (Sunday) at 1700 European time (1800 GMT) livestream from Bonn - CBSO and Andris Nelsons  Trailer HERE (with listening link)

Andris Nelsons for Lucerne, succeeding Abbado

Conductor Chess! In a stroke, Andris Nelsons changes the game. The Lucerne Festival has announced that Andris Nelsons will succeed Claudio Abbado as Director of the Lucerne Festival from this summer Abbado was unwell for a long time, so the question of a successor would have been under consideration for some time. From Lucerne:

 "Two different programs will be performed, each featuring works by Johannes Brahms. Claudio Abbado himself had planned these programs for the summer. “We are extremely pleased to be able to have Andris Nelsons, one of the leading conductors of our time, agree to take on these LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA concerts,” says Michael Haefliger, Executive and Artistic Director of LUCERNE FESTIVAL . “We are furthermore happy that we are able to present these two Brahms programs originally conceived by Claudio Abbado. In this way, the memory of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA’s founder remains alive in the Festival’s artistic programming as well.” 

"At the start of the 2014-15 season, Nelsons will officially assume his position as Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Since the 2008-09 season , he has been at the helm of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and with the CBSO he made his LUCERNE FESTIVAL debut in the summer of 2009. Nelsons will be heard during LUCERNE FESTIVAL at Easter on 12 April, when he will conduct the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in the third act of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal. Along with the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA’s concerts, during LUCERNE FESTIVAL in Summer he will also lead the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra on 30 and 31 August.":

In chess terms, this is a masterstroke which takes control over the board. Lucerne is fundamentally important because it connects to the best and most interesting orchestras in the world. Like it or not Europe is where the action is, in artistic terms.  Nelsons is a pedigree racehorse, he needs challenge. 

Andris Nelsons Chess Moves

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has announced today that Andris Nelsons won't be renewing his contract with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. "“It’s very good news,” said Mark Volpe, the BSO’s Managing Director. “It came up organically. He started looking at how he was going to organize his musical life and what he wanted to do in Boston and what he wanted to do in Tanglewood. It became clear, especially with blocking some family time, that something had to give.”

The announcement on the CBSO site is rather more discreet. In August 2012, the CBSO announced the extension of his contract formally through the 2014-2015 season, and then for subsequent seasons on the basis of an annual rolling renewal. So the "rolling renewal" is terminated barely a year after it was announced.

Nelsons says: " I have enjoyed five great seasons with (Birmingham) and, while I look forward to another two in my current role, this difficult decision comes in view of my new position with the Boston Symphony Orchestra alongside my wish to protect precious time with my young family."

For Boston, Nelsons is a coup: no wonder they're over the moon. While other US orchestras are running into problems and losing conductors, Boston has managed to lure the hottest conductor on the circuit, a man seriously tipped for Berlin when Simon Rattle steps down in 2017. But what's in it for Nelsons?  European and American orchestral cultures are different in so many ways that it's not simply a matter of switching podiums. Many US conductors would give their best batons for opportunities across the Atlantic.  American orchestras tend to think in terms of long tenure and orchestral development. If the BSO had to coast while James Levine divided his time between them and the Met, and his illness, how will they cope with a conductor whose real future lies in the international scene? A conductor like Nelsons isn't going to stay in one place and give up Bayreuth or Berlin, or Salzburg, or Vienna, or wherever. Besides, Nelsons is shaping up as one of the greatest opera conductors on the circuit. Indeed, he was conducting opera from a very early stage in his carer. Whatever Boston might have to offer, it's not quite in the European league.  Besides, Boston's a lot futther from Latvia. So what's Nelsons planning long term? What's in his best interests, and in the best interests of music in general?

Explosive Elektra Royal Opera House

Richard Strauss Elektra at the Royal Opera House is every bit as explosive as reports indicated.  Audiences are  perfectly capable of appreciating extreme trauma as drama. At last, this intelligent production gets the superlative performances it deserves, suggesting that Elektra should feature more regularly in the ROH repertoire. There's more to opera than tired rehashes of Così, Traviata and Carmen. It takes courage to do Elektra with the intensity it merits. Get to this before the run ends, because it's very powerful. If ROH has the foresight to film this, it will become a cult on DVD.

Andris Nelsons conducted. No mistaking this Strauss for Johann! Nelsons is always dynamic, but Elektra seems to have electrified him.  He relishes the danger of Strauss's most adventurous score, which threatens to break through the bounds of tonality, just as Elektra herself breaks through the bounds of convention. Nelsons stretched the Royal Opera House orchestra, and they responded with unusually idiomatic freedom, almost as though they were a specialist ensemble like the London Sinfonietta.  His tempi are well judged, creating huge surges of tension. It's as if the palace itself were alive, breathing like Elektra herself, a volcano, a force of nature about to erupt. The ghost of Agamemnon hovers oppressively over the drama. Eletra's father, the king, doesn't need to sing. His "Schatten" looms in the backdrop, and his voice is in the orchestra. Dark bassoons and basses slither, rumbling under the seething strings. Details emerge like brief releases of tension: sour, bitter woodwinds, oscillating like the pan-pipes of mad dancers.

Yet Elektra affects us most emotionally when we identify with her as a human being. Charles Edwards, the director, wanted to avoid the caricature of Elektra as a mad harpie. "A lot of her music is soft, amazingly tender...... Elektra, for all her righteousness, is deeply damaged: everything that's weiblich, human and fertile about her, she’s had to repress, yet she doesn’t hold it against her sister who stands for all she can never have.” In 2008, this was Mark Elder's first Elektra. He overdid the restraint at the expense of drama. This music needs a schizophrenic dynamic between oppressive extreme and fragile vulnerability. Nelsons gets the contrast perfectly. At critical moments the orchestra almost falls silent as singers growl sotto voce. The impact is all the more unsettling.

Christine Goerke is astonishingly good. She projects crescendi at maximum volume without sounding shrill or forced, though that might well be within the character. Goerke's technical control allows her to create Elektra as a fully rounded personality, a normal woman driven to extremes. She terrifies the maids but at least one of them identifies with her. Women are brutalized in societies like this. Goerke's "inner Elektra" is equally impressive. When she sings about Elektra having once been beautiful, Goerke's voice mellows into rich rubato: we can "see"  the young innocent she used to be. Edward's Personenregie is exceptional. Every gesture, every modulation works expressively. When Goerrke sings "Orest! Orest!" , she does so with such Sensucht that you can visualize her "Traumbild".  Nelson's conducting in this section  glowed with wistfulness.

For all we know, Agamemnon was a brute, and Klytemnestra was redressing the balance. Michaela Schuster's Klytemnestra is still young enough to hope for happiness. Schuster's voice is vibrant and sensual, and she moves with energy and litheness. Psychologically, this is perceptive. If Klytemnestra were a desiccated hag, we might not feel the desperation which led her to this cataclysm. The insomnia sequence suggests how deeply conflicted she is. Klytemnestra is strong, but Schuster (very well blocked) was able to suggest that there are savage cracks beneath her surface.

This is one seriously dysfunctional family, but we're drawn to them because they're realisitic. Adrianne Pieczonka sings Chrysothemis with authority, so one feels that the character is mature enough to make choices even if they're not the ones her sister makes. Were it not for Elektra's sacrifice and Orest's courage, Chrysothemis might have become trapped in the same syndrome of denial and revenge turned unhealthily inward.

Iain Patterson sang Orest with enough character to make the role a credible hero. The role isn't massive, but Patterson makes a far stronger impact than some who've done the role. With genes like these, Orest needs to be credible. Again, the direction is good. When Patterson climbs into the castle, hanging onto a rope, it feels, and looks dangerous. When he and Elektra embrace, it feels genuine. "The dogs recognized me": a deft human touch in the libretto, which Patterson sings with warmth. In this revival, there isn't a single role, however minor, that isn't well cast and well directed.

This time round, the staging and direction are even more focused. The revolving door as plot device works extremely well. It's a kind of Tardis, compressing the violence beyond the stage, its movement reflecting the sudden switches of fate in this opera and in its turbulent music. The palace wall looks impenetrable, but the cloth backdrop reminds us that the inner rooms will be breached, and Klytemnestra, for all her power, will die. Debris is strewn over the stage, and bodies, but purposefully. We are "inside" the fractured psyches that inhabit this opera and its insights into human psychology.

photos : copyright Clive Barda, courtesy Royal Opera House

Andris Nelsons from CBSO to BSO - Chess moves !

Andris Nelsons has been appointed Chief Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He's completely different from predecessors like Seiji Osawa and James Levine, so maybe he represents the start of something big? He's a very innovative, adventurous conductor equally at home in orchestral music and opera. His wife is the soprano Kristine Opolais. A Dream Team, though they usually work separately.

In Britain, we've been fortunate that we've been able to hear Nelsons so frequently, and in so many different things. He's been head at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra since 2010, and is a regular at the Royal Opera House.  The CBSO connection is supremely important . More than 30 years ago, Simon Rattle transformed it. Now it's one of the best orchestras in the country. Rattle's vision focussed on progress. He was always interested in 20th century music, specially championing Mahler, Stravisnky, Szymanowski, Lutoslawski and so on. Sakari Oramo (now BBCSO) and Andris Nelsons have further polished the diamond.

Conductor moves are like chess moves. With each move, the whole game changes shape. Nelsons will almost certainly shake up Boston, since he's so very different from, say, Seiji Osawa or James Levine. At a time when the US orchestra scene seems in shambles, will he inject new life into the rest of the country? What can Boston offer to a conductor who commands respect at Bayreuth and the Royal Opera Hose ? And what are Nelsons' long term plans ? At 34, he's young and far too good to while out his career in one city as conductors did in the past.  Things don't work like that in an era of CDs, internet and travel. Where will he be in 10 years ? That's an even bigger question than who's taking over CBSO or what he'll do with the BSO. Nelsons is also unusually charismatic, which gives him the edge: conductors have to inspire as well as conduct well. With his charm, he can achieve great things. Nelsons conducts a lot in Berlin, too: some have suggested that he's the real dark horse favourite to succeed Rattle there, too.

3 More Years! Andris Nelsons CBSO

Andris Nelsons, the charismatic conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, has renewed his tenure on the basis of an annual rolling renewal from the 2014/15 season onwards.That means at least three more exciting years.  Rejoice! Since his appointment, he and the Orchestra have created many 'once in a lifetime' performances such as Wagner's Lohengrin and the 50th Anniversary performed of Britten's War Requiem in Coventry Cathedral.(this can still be heard and watched on thespace). The CBSO says "Over the summer, Andris and the CBSO will be appearing at some of the most prestigious European festivals, including their residency at the Lucerne Festival with the CBSO Chorus. Highlights in the 2012-13 season include Mahler's momentous Resurrection Symphony, Wagner's romantic opera The Flying Dutchman and a Beethoven cycle which features all of the great composer's symphonies." Next Tuesday, 21/8 Nelsons conducts the CBSO at the Proms (Glinka and Shostakovich)

 For full details visit www.cbso.co.uk.

photo: Marco Borrgrave

Nelsons out of CBSO Gerontius

Andris Nelsons isn't conducting Elgar Dream of Gerontius in Birmingham and at the Barbican on 12th and 14th because his littler baby daughter has been taken ill. It's obviously not a minor matter. Audiences are sympathetic because no conductor can concentrate 100% in situations like that (not nice men, that is). A child is far more important than a concert. In any case, Edward Gardner will be stepping in (Gerontius is hardly rare repertoire). Toby Spence is out too, replaced by Robert Murray. So all good wishes to the baby, to Nelsons and to his wife Kristine Opolais, the soprano.

Andris Nelsons in Berlin Sunday

Andris Nelsons is conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker on Sunday morning 1100 German time. Despite a horribly busy week, I'll be up early to catch it (I hope). Really interesting conductor, orchestra and programme. Rihm, Pfitzner, Kaminski and Richard Strauss - fantasies on different times and styles.READ ABOUT HEINRICH KAMINSLI DORISCHE MUSIK DORIAN MUSIC HERE.