{"id":531,"date":"2007-11-14T10:43:23","date_gmt":"2007-11-14T18:43:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/11\/14\/berlin-and-rattle-get-it-right\/"},"modified":"2013-02-07T18:20:53","modified_gmt":"2013-02-08T02:20:53","slug":"berlin-and-rattle-get-it-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/11\/14\/berlin-and-rattle-get-it-right\/","title":{"rendered":"berlin and rattle get it right"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

I was up late last night, listening to the new recording on EMI of Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic performing Gustav Mahler’s great, heart-rending Ninth Symphony. I have to say that it just might be the best modern recording of any work by any orchestra.<\/p>\n

[I should note that the cellist Alban Gerhardt attended live performances<\/a> of the Ninth in Berlin and declared the performance<\/em> “one of the greatest performances that I’ve ever heard in my life”.]<\/p>\n

I am, first of all, left in awe of the virtuosity of the great Berlin Philharmonic. They seemingly have no constraints on volume – either highs or lows – and an infinite variation in between. The balances in the two inner movements, which can easily turn into a mush of conflicting lines, are exquisite and the interplay of lines, especially in the massive fugue in the third movement, is crystal clear and spot on.<\/p>\n

Listening to this recording was, for me, like hearing a great performance – the orchestra lives and breathes in this account of the symphony, especially in the great valedictory last movement, which seemingly lasts forever as it alternately rages and evaporates. The great Berlin string section creates floods of sound, by turns intense and delicate, with surging up-beat portamenti that I have never before heard like in this recording – it simply makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. The pacing of this final movement is just right – with the d\u00c3\u00a9nouement from the great final climax to the final expiration of the symphony’s last breaths in the violas occurring inexorably and organically.<\/p>\n

As a listener, I’ve found that I really have to listen to Mahler’s Ninth in the dark, late a night. It’s almost too fragile to submit to the light of day, as if the sun’s rays might cause it to disintegrate before our eyes. But in the dark, as with our imagination, the symphony’s details magnify and multiply themselves, becoming living, breathing things. And what is this symphony but a last, long, fitful journey into Night.<\/p>\n

You can download the recording from iTunes here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was up late last night, listening to the new recording on EMI of Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic performing Gustav Mahler’s great, heart-rending Ninth Symphony. I have to say that it just might be the best modern recording of any work by any orchestra.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[115,168],"tags":[169,55,62,3660],"class_list":["post-531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-recordings-music","tag-mahler","tag-orchestra","tag-symphony","tag-viola"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-8z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":635,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/01\/03\/berlin-phil-mahler-9-on-opb\/","url_meta":{"origin":531,"position":0},"title":"berlin phil mahler 9 on opb","author":"Charles Noble","date":"January 3, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Oregon Public Broadcasting will present Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic in their performance of Mahler's Ninth Symphony (from a performance at Carnegie Hall this past fall) along with bits of performances by Gustavo Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra. Check out the OPB website for broadcast times (it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "music"","block_context":{"text":"music","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4101,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2010\/02\/24\/fantastic-symphony-orchestra\/","url_meta":{"origin":531,"position":1},"title":"fantastic symphony (orchestra)","author":"Charles Noble","date":"February 24, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been catching up with performances by the Berlin Philharmonic via my web subscription lately, and here's one of their free preview clips from their performance of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique - and it's fantastic, indeed! (You'll note that, like our recent performance, they use the coronet part in the \"Ball\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4561,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2010\/05\/10\/beethoven-festival-week\/","url_meta":{"origin":531,"position":2},"title":"beethoven festival week!","author":"Charles Noble","date":"May 10, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The Oregon Symphony's Beethoven Festival (rehearsals begin today) kicks off May 15th with the Lenore Overture No. 3, the Piano Concerto No. 2, and the Triple Concerto.\u00a0 Arnaldo Cohen is the amazing pianist who will be playing all of the concertos.\u00a0 He'll be joined in the Triple by OSO concertmaster\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8175,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2013\/01\/23\/recordings-for-this-weeks-concert\/","url_meta":{"origin":531,"position":3},"title":"recordings for this week’s concert","author":"Charles Noble","date":"January 23, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"While I'm not a reviewer of recordings, I do have some recordings that I do especially like. This week's program of works by Mozart and Richard Strauss is one of my favorite of this season, and so I want to share some of my favorite recordings of the week's program\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "recordings"","block_context":{"text":"recordings","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/recordings-music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"strauss-lott","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/strauss-lott.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1656,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/12\/29\/early-reaction-to-berlin-video-experiment\/","url_meta":{"origin":531,"position":4},"title":"early reaction to berlin video experiment","author":"Charles Noble","date":"December 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Ilkka Talvi Ilkka Talvi, former concertmaster of the Seattle Symphony, writes a nice blog (Of Music & Men) as well as doing a lot of high level teaching in the Seattle area.\u00c2\u00a0 He recently signed up for the new Berlin Philharmonic Digital Concert Hall series of concerts, and here's what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"talvi","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/talvi-139x200.gif?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13227,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2014\/02\/16\/wonderful-strauss\/","url_meta":{"origin":531,"position":5},"title":"wonderful strauss","author":"Charles Noble","date":"February 16, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Want to hear something great? Take a listen to the newly appointed 1st Concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, Noah Bendix-Balgley, currently concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony. Newspaper article.","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}