Saturday, February 3, 2018

Trovatore

Low voices soar high in Met’s brooding “Trovatore”

Tue Jan 23, 2018 at 2:39 pm
Anita Rachvelishvili and Yonghoon Lee in Verdi's "Il Trovatore" at the Metropolitan Opera. Photo: Karen Almond
Anita Rachvelishvili and Yonghoon Lee in Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” at the Metropolitan Opera. Photo: Karen Almond
In the Metropolitan Opera’s strong revival of Il Trovatore Monday night, it wasn’t the title character and his paramour who took the spotlight. This performance, rather, was dominated by the two troubled antagonists who use the leading couple as props in their own revenge drama.
It makes sense, in a way. Verdi’s classic melodrama revolves around curses, mistaken identities, fratricide, suicide, and ancient grudges; who better to drive the performance than Azucena and Count di Luna, the two vivid characters who set it all in motion?
For years, the Met has had a go-to mezzo-soprano for the gypsy Azucena, in company veteran Dolora Zajick (who will in fact be singing one performance later in the run). They may have found a new one in Anita Rachvelishvili. This is hardly the Georgian mezzo’s first outing at the Met—she’s played several Carmens since her 2011 debut—but this was by far her most complete performance with the company to date.
When she took the stage in Act II for “Stride la vampa,” she unleashed the kind of forceful, energetic sound that can make even the drowsiest listener sit up straight. This was a gripping portrayal from the moment she stepped on, with a laser intensity in her eyes and in her delivery to match the throbbing, burning power of her voice. There was never a break in the consistency of her sound: from the rich smolder of her chest voice to her penetrating top, she maintained a focused, vigorous tone.
Rachvelishvili gave the sort of star performance on Monday that can be a major inflection point for a career, showing an unswerving commitment to her portrayal that came through in her searing vocal characterization. After this Azucena, it’s easy to imagine her in other dramatic mezzo roles; Don Carlo’s Eboli would be a perfect fit.
As her foil, Quinn Kelsey was a marvelous, brooding Count di Luna. Listed as a baritone, he sounded more like a basso cantante in Monday’s performance, bringing an enormous voice with a deep, woody, rough-grained sound. This was not quite the sort of smooth, caressing vocal performance we often get from more lyric Verdi baritones in this role, yet his instrument is flexible enough to sing the role’s flowing lines. To hear familiar arias like “Il balen del suo sorriso” sung with such weight cast the music in a new light. Just hearing Kelsey was terrifying, and his glowering demeanor and imposing presence made him a fearsome villain.
Tenor Yonghoon Lee gets more secure with every outing at the Met, and his performance as Manrico was, on the whole, excellent. He’s settled in now as a reliable tenor with a consistent, muscular sound and clarion top, and gives a passionate delivery of every role he takes on. On this occasion, attempts at pointless hairpins and excessive high pianissimos did not serve him well; but to the extent that he stayed away from overly precious phrasing, this was an impressive outing.
Jennifer Rowley, after several promising appearances at the Met recently, took a step back in Monday’s performance. She was engaging in her first attempt at Leonora, but her voice sounded overwhelmed by the part: pushing herself to find more vocal weight, she only succeeded in smothering her cool, bright soprano with a colorless wobble. Rowley eventually warmed up, but in “Tacea la notte placida,” her top was shrill and there was little body to her middle voice. She deserves some forbearance, having stepped in for Maria Agresta with only two weeks’ notice, so one can hope that she’ll settle in as the run continues.
Štefan Kocán strutted imperiously as di Luna’s lieutenant, Ferrando, offering a commanding presence and a heavy, gravelly voice. Sarah Mesko made an endearing Ines, warm and tender with her dark-hued mezzo.
Marco Armiliato had the Met Orchestra in fine voice, and while his reading of the score was by-the-book, he provided ideal support for the singers. Many of the evening’s highlights, as a result, were trios or ensemble numbers, where his pacing helped maintain the thrill of the music. Donald Palumbo’s choristers were in top form, blaring forth with bright power in the famous “Anvil” chorus.
Even with such sterling performances as Monday’s, the 2009 production by David McVicar is growing stale—it’s walls, gates, and more walls, rotating grandly on the stage’s main turntable without really showing much of an atmospheric difference between one scene and the next. The staging has its moments of swashbuckling fun, such as the sight of the rebels scaling the gate at Leonora’s convent to surprise di Luna and his men, but grappling with the drama of the work is left entirely up to the principals.
Il Trovatore runs through February 15 at the Metropolitan Opera. Luca Salsi takes over the role of Count di Luna and Kwangchul Youn takes over the role of Ferrando beginning February 6. Dolora Zajick appears as Azucena on February 6. metopera.org
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‘Il Trovatore’ Proves Met Still Delivers Great Singing—If You Know Where to Look


Mezzo Anita Rachvelishvili iluminates a complex character in the Met's 'Trovatore'.
Mezzo Anita Rachvelishvili illuminates the complex character of Azucena in the Met’s TrovatoreKaren Almond/Metropolitan Opera.
As Jane Powell, Kathryn Grayson and innumerable state-level pageant contestants have so often reminded us, “Love is where you find it, / Don’t be blind, it’s / All around you, everywhere!” And so it is with good singing in the Met’s current Italian opera performances: it’s there, but you do have to do some digging to turn it up.
In last night’s revival of Verdi’s Il Trovatore, for example, it was very hard to love Yonghoon Lee’s blatty and blatant attack on the leading role. The title of the opera means “The Troubadour,” that is, someone who makes his living as a poet and singer, but this kind of art doesn’t seem in Lee’s wheelhouse.
Everything seemed focused on making the loudest and longest high note possible at the end of the aria “Di quella pira,” an effect Lee accomplished only by omitting half the music and finally striking a squatting pose, which indicated not so much heroic defiance as acute constipation.
Opposite him, as the self-sacrificing noblewoman Leonora, Jennifer Rowley shoved her medium-weight soprano violently off-pitch with a juddering vibrato. Now, it is true that some of history’s greatest sopranos have sung sharp from time to time: Zinka Milanov, Leonie Rysanek, Anna Netrebko. But there were times last night Rowley seemed literally to have landed in the wrong key.
I hate to be prescriptive, but it seems to me the singer might better have spent her time working out this technical issue instead of interpolating that pair of tasteless and hard-edged high C’s in the final act.
The contrast could not be greater with Anita Rachvelishvili’s eloquent portrayal of the beleaguered Azucena. Yes, she flung out her big, red-blooded mezzo in great cries of despair, but those were set in relief by exquisitely musical gradations of volume from pianissimo to mezzo-forte.
Particularly lovely was her take on the nostalgic “Ai nostri monti” in the last act, sung with a sweet and childlike timbre. It was as if in her last moments of life, the tormented woman found refuge in an untroubled past.
If baritone Quinn Kelsey didn’t quite scale such towering emotional peaks, he did accomplish the daunting task of singing the demanding music of Di Luna with the elegance suitable to a nobleman in love.
At most performances of this opera, listening to “Il balen del suo sorriso” is like watching a tightrope act: so many things can go wrong. But when Kelsey spun out the aria with perfect legato, one could relax and, for once, appreciate the dramatic point that the character thinks of himself as not so much evil as simply lonely.
Perhaps best of all, the Met chorus sounded youthful and vibrant throughout, and the women portraying nuns in the second act even managed the practically unprecented feat of staying in tune during their offstage prayer. I only wish some of their musicianship would rub off on conductor Marco Armiliato, who took big, disfiguring cuts in number after number.
In Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore on January 16, the finest performance was an Easter egg indeed: the crisp, rangy baritone of debuting Davide Luciano caught the ear from the very first phrases of his opening aria. He outshone both Matthew Polenzani’s Nemorino (his “Una furtiva lagrima” felt a little calculated), and Pretty Yende’s Adina, marred by intermittent loss of focus in her pearly soprano.
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Metropolitan Opera 2017-18 Preview: 3 Reasons to See Revival of Verdi’s ‘Il Trovatore’

Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
On Jan. 22, 2018, the Metropolitan Opera will revive David McVicar’s production of Verdi’s “Il Trovatore.” The production runs until Feb. 15, a total of eight performances.
This year’s production is set to offer up quite some delights for newcomers to Verdi’s mid-period masterpiece. Here’s a look at some reasons you must see this revival.
Rising Stars Take the Lead
Just a few days ago, Jennifer Rowley took over the role of Leonora from an ailing Maria Agresta. Rowley is no longer a best-kept secret among American opera stars, the soprano making quite the impact a year ago in “Cyrano de Bergerac” at the Met. She also got a performance of “Tosca” last week and this role will cement her as one of the future stars of the Met.
But she isn’t the only one to keep an eye out for. Anita Rachvelishvili is a Met veteran, arguably the finest “Carmen” interpreter of the last decade with the company, but she is only just coming into her own as Azucena. She scored raves during her previous outings and there is no reason to believe that she won’t cement herself as THE Azucena of the near future.
Finally, two baritones who are establishing their legacies as the greatest Verdi baritones of their generation will share the role of the Conte di Luna. First up is Quinn Kelsey with the first four performances, followed by Luca Salsi, who gets the final four shows.
Seasoned Veterans
There will be a number of veterans of the role incoming. For years Dolora Zajick has been the go-to Azucena at the Met. She gets one performance, on Feb. 6.
Yonghoon Lee isn’t exactly a grizzled vet, but he is no newbie to this production, having performed it five times during the 2015-16 season alongside Anna Netrebko and Dmitri Hvorostovsky, including an HD performance.
Stefan Kocan has also performed the opera at the Met in this current production 10 times between 2011 and 2015. He shares the role of Ferrando with veteran artist Kwangchul Youn, who has performed the opera 14 times, including the premiere of this production.
The Production
For years, the Met had no idea what to do with this Verdi work as productions fell flat with audiences. But in the hands of David McVicar, the production has found new life at the theater. It vibrates with ideas about brotherhood and betrayal and its rotating set keeps this propulsive opera from losing its pace.


Saturday, January 27, 2018

Tosca: Triumph






Photo

Tosca (Sonya Yoncheva) stabbing the villainous Scarpia (Zeljko Lucic) in the new production of Puccini’s “Tosca” at the Metropolitan Opera. CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times
The stakes could not have been higher. The chaos could not have been wilder. It’s fair to say that no production in the Metropolitan Opera’s history has been more vexed than the new staging of Puccini’s “Tosca” that opened on New Year’s Eve.
First, months ago, its star tenor pulled out. Then its star soprano. Then her husband, who was slated to conduct.
His replacement, James Levine, a fixture at the company for four decades, was suspended from the Met last month over accusations of sexual misconduct. And a few weeks ago, for good measure, the opera’s villain canceled too.
It speaks to the Met’s resourcefulness that it was able to field such an impressive premiere cast — the rising stars Sonya Yoncheva and Vittorio Grigolo and the stalwart Zeljko Lucic — on such relatively short notice. But even with some exciting singing, this “Tosca” could point the company in the wrong direction.


Photo

Cavaradossi (Vittorio Grigolo, far right) facing the firing squad in the final act of “Tosca.”CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

The production was already, before all the withdrawals, a kind of referendum on Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager. Early in his tenure, in 2009, Mr. Gelb replaced Franco Zeffirelli’s lavish 1985 “Tosca” with a grim, irreverent staging by Luc Bondy. The boos were loud; some patrons and most (though not all) critics rebelled. The Bondy “Tosca” became a proxy war in the battles that rage in opera between tradition and innovation.
Mr. Gelb eventually gave in, calling the production “one of the blunders of my tenure.” In a recent interview he was even more abject.
Continue reading the main story
“I’ve learned my lesson,” he said. “When it comes to a classic piece of repertoire, beauty counts — and that’s what the audience wants.”
But Mr. Gelb has learned the wrong lesson. The discouraging implication of the new “Tosca,” directed by David McVicar, is that when it comes to staging standard repertory works, modern is bad.


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Mr. Grigolo and Ms. Yoncheva “looked wonderfully youthful as Puccini’s lovers.” CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

That’s simply not true. Look at the critical and popular success that has greeted the Met’s highly stylized version of “La Traviata”; or its surreal, ominous “Hansel and Gretel,” onstage through Jan. 6; or its post-apocalyptic “Parsifal,” set to return next month. Mr. Bondy’s “Tosca” was unsuccessful because it was messily conceptualized and gratuitously sordid, not because a gritty, dark take on this work is an impossibility.
If beauty is going to be his criterion, Mr. Gelb should be careful to ensure that his definition of that word remains expansive, encompassing more than just Mr. McVicar’s traditional-looking, scrupulously inoffensive “Tosca.”
Almost admitting that he has nothing particularly new to say about the work, Mr. McVicar fills his staging with dozens of details, actorly touches that help the performers bring freshness and subtlety to characters every opera fan knows intimately. This was a retro night at the opera, aimed at the Met’s conservative core.
When the lights went up on Act I, the gilded interior of the Church of Sant’Andrea della Valle in the Rome of 1800, the Met audience broke into applause, just as it always did with Zeffirelli spectacles. The creative team (sets and costumes are by John Macfarlane) didn’t even try to mask echoes of Zeffirelli throughout. But, with Mr. Macfarlane’s painterly designs and sharply raked floors, the sets were an improvement over the 1985 staging, less garishly opulent, more attractive.
Continue reading the main story


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“This was a retro night at the opera, aimed at the Met’s conservative core.” CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times
Jumping in for Kristine Opolais and Jonas Kaufmann, who canceled, Ms. Yoncheva and Mr. Grigolo were both singing their roles for the first time, and they looked wonderfully youthful as Puccini’s lovers, the opera diva Floria Tosca and the painter Mario Cavaradossi. They saved the day and gave compelling performances, but their greenness came through, in different ways.
Ms. Yoncheva is coquettish and passionate, fragile and fretful. Prima donna airs do not come naturally to her refined, thoughtful Tosca. Her sound, though not creamy, is richly textured and shimmering. It was fascinating to hear Tosca’s anguished Act II aria, “Vissi d’arte,” delivered as a true reflection, almost pensively. Still, for all the elegance and ardor of her singing, she did not seem like someone who had just endured her lover’s torture and condemnation to death. Tosca’s bursts of fury and jealousy seemed forced.


Tosca: “Vissi d’arte” Video by Metropolitan Opera

Coltish, feral and passionately in love, Mr. Grigolo’s Mario is a true hothead. This singer has drawn criticism for what some find to be almost animalistic singing and acting. I’ll take the trade-off of some vocal rawness and overly impulsive moments for the virile excitement he brings, complete with thrilling top notes. And you can’t say a tenor who so tenderly shaped the dulcet phrases Mario sings to Tosca after he learns she has murdered Scarpia, the malignant police chief, lacks lyrical grace.
Mr. Lucic (stepping in for Bryn Terfel) is better at conveying the suavely aristocratic ways that Scarpia manipulates those he tries to control than he is at tapping into the character’s warped malevolence. Still, the legato elegance and vocal weightiness of his singing have their own rewards. In Act II, trying to persuade a seated Tosca to reveal a convict’s whereabouts, he is creepily intimate, leaning on an armrest and looming over her.
Emmanuel Villaume, the last conductor standing at the end of the train of withdrawals, does not go for the obvious in his conducting of Puccini’s volatile music. He brings shape, nuance and pliancy to the score. There were a few out of sync moments. But following the impetuous Mr. Grigolo cannot be easy.
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Review: A Traditional ‘Tosca’ Returns, With Cheers, to the Met


By Mark McLaren, Editor in Chief, January 1, 2018
A pretty new Tosca arrived at the Metropolitan Opera last night, made exciting by the stunning work of tenor Vittorio Grigolo and an impressive debut by soprano Sonya Yoncheva in the haunted title role.
But not before a tortured journey. The Met’s Tosca drama started in 2009 when general manager Peter Gelb replaced the popular Zeffirelli staging with a spare, sexy and artistically successful production by Luc Bondy, enraging much of the Met’s core audience. Subscriber attrition (to death among other variables) is a concern for the organization, and the Met announced its new (ish) Tosca as a white flag to that constituency.

Set model for David McVicar’s ‘Tosca,’ set design by John Macfarlane; photo: Metropolitan Opera Technical Department.
Drama continued as the production lost all of its principals including tenor Jonas Kaufmann and soprano Kristine Opolais. Conductor Andris Nelsons exited, and his replacement, longtime Metropolitan Opera music director (and Met artistic director between 1986 and 2004) James Levine, who made his Met debut with Tosca in 1971, was permanently dismissed by the Met for inappropriate MeToo behavior during his early career.
But the Metropolitan Opera House, the building itself it seems, breathed an enormous sigh of relief last night as Grigolo dove into a full-throated and gorgeously committed “Recondita armonia.”  The tenor has become a house favorite following singular performances in last season’s Roméo et Juliette and Werther.  Good tenors are hard to find and great tenors are rare. This great tenor’s sound is gorgeous and comfortable, round and robust throughout his range. And it’s as dependable as a full moon. He brings to this impressive sound singing that is uninhibited and vocal scenes that are delightful raw emotion. It would be difficult to find a better live performance of “Recondita” or “E lucevan le stelle” than those heard last night at the Met.

Vittorio Grigolo and Sonya Yoncheva in the Met’s new production of ‘Tosca;’ photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera.
Since her 2013 debut, Yoncheva has also, rightly, become a Met house favorite.  Like another famous Tosca, Yoncheva’s role choices have been broad and like Grigolo, her voice is both youthful and mature, deep and rich, confident and expressive. Yoncheva, who brought the house down last night with “Vissi d’arte,” will be in opera headlines for decades.
Both are confident actors, Grigolo jumping feet-first while Yoncheva makes careful and clean decisions. Both are gripping together. The bariton Željko Lučić rounds out this Tosca trio as a smartly well-sung and concisely sadistic Scarpia.

Željko Lučić and Sonya Yoncheva in Met Opera’s ‘Tosca;’ photo: ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera.
Drama, theatrical integrity and vocal prowess reign in this Tosca, accompanied sumptuously by the Metropolitan Opera orchestra under Emmanuel Villaume.
John Macfarlane’s set is, if dull, grandly realistic.  It’s pretty. It’s most impactful moment may be the production’s show’s curtain, Archangel Michael watching over the proceedings sword in hand. But the physical production is Zeffirelli-lite and if the Met’s subscriber base wanted Zeffirelli’s Tosca, it’s confusing as to why Zeffirelli’s Tosca isn’t onstage as this season’s Metropolitan Opera’s Tosca.
But so be it. This cast is well worth taking in. Later in the run, two other sopranos add Tosca to their repertoire. In May, superstar and another Met house soprano Anna Netrebko debuts her heroine in what will be a career step as anticipated as it is logical.
And excitingly, the very young American soprano Jennifer Rowley takes on the iconic role following a successful Met bow last season as Roxane in its Cyrano de Bergerac (reviewed here) and following a Met debut as Musetta in 2014. ZEALnyc profiledRowley prior to last season’s Cyrano.


Sunday, October 1, 2017

Mahler 3

Hand-crafted from start to finish: Salonen and the Philharmonia triumph with Mahler 3

*****
From the score and from his letters, we know a lot about Gustav Mahler’s Symphony no. 3 in D minor, so you can do a great deal to prepare yourself for it before going into the concert hall: you can learn the concepts behind each movement (“Pan awakens” for the first, “What the flowers in the meadow tell me” for the second, and so on, you can learn about Mahler’s aspirations for the work, you can learn about Nietzsche’s poetry and all manner of details about how the score is constructed. But in the right hands – and yesterday afternoon at the Royal Festival Hall, Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia’s hands were definitely the right hands – you don’t need any of that: just open your ears and your emotions and let the music take you where it will.
Michelle DeYoung, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Philharmonia © David Karlin | Bachtrack Ltd
Michelle DeYoung, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Philharmonia
© David Karlin | Bachtrack Ltd
Whether or not the Third encompasses the whole of creation – as its composer aspired – what you will find is music which resonates with every part of your life: the sad bits, the cheerful bits, the hopeful, the scary, the nostalgic or schmaltzy bits, young love, mature love, grief, world-weariness, the times when you are proud of yourself, the times when you just need to calm down. Salonen proved an indefatigable and sure-footed guide.
Mahler’s big symphonies, of which the Third is up there with the biggest, are so long and complex that most conductors lose their grip on you at least once in the course of the evening: they just can’t keep you fully engaged and at one point or another, your mind wanders away from the music to other things. Salonen proved that, in Ira Gershwin’s words, “it ain’t necessarily so”. The most striking thing about this performance was the unflagging attention to detail: any phrase, however minor, from any section of the orchestra, was hand-crafted to create maximum effect.
The quality started at the very beginning, with the trombones phrasing a solid entry. From there, every instrument seemed to do just that little bit more than usual with their part – the clarion call of trumpets, threat from the cellos, a scream from oboes, powerful drive from the horns, later to be followed by ethereal release from flutes, cheekiness from the clarinets, perfectly timed acceleration from harp glissandi, and then, late in the movement, theatrics from the percussion as three pairs of clash cymbals crashed together. And then, a piece of true virtuosity from principal trombonist Byron Fulcher, morphing a harsh bray into utter lyricism, after which the strings and timpani took the music down to an exquisite calm.
On the podium, Salonen’s movement is spare: he is keeping time, with great clarity and precision even when the tempi are shifting rapidly, but he doesn’t employ the “do three things at once with different body parts” techniques of some conductors. I have to assume that all the hard work of sculpting the music, one bar at a time, has been done in rehearsal, and if that’s correct, this was one of the best rehearsed concerts I’ve ever attended.
Mezzo Michelle DeYoung made a telling contribution: an impressive figure on stage (DeYoung is as tall as Salonen plus height of podium combined), she intoned Nietzsche’s words “O Mensch” from the depths of the ages; her German diction was excellent and her commitment unquestionable. The fifth movement saw real dramatic tension between the grief in her solo role and the clarity and brightness of the Tiffin Boys Choir and Philharmonia Voices.
Over 90 minutes into the work, the intense string start to the last movement was augmented by yet another set of perfectly turned woodwind phrases, with colour and character as just about every phrase had been through all of the preceding music.
Mahler’s Third should be an impossibility – a work of ludicrously overarching ambition, a behemoth of a symphony with a 40-minute first movement hopelessly out of balance with the five that follow, a work that requires gigantic orchestral forces together with a soloist and choir who are only used for a small fraction of its length, music that veers erratically between contrasting styles.
But it works. In the end, it was DeYoung’s face that said it all. After finishing her part, she had been sitting at the front of the orchestra, concentrated on the music. As the texture of the music thickened steadily and wound up into the huge closing march, the pair of timpanists swayed to and fro, pounding their instruments with both sticks, even more powerful than Strauss’ famous opening to Also Sprach Zarathustra. DeYoung’s rapt half-smile turned into a broad grin, her face shining with the excitement that was nearly as evident in most of the audience at a triumphant exposition of Mahler’s immense conception.

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Hand-crafted from start to finish: Salonen and the Philharmonia triumph with Mahler 3
*****
By David Karlin, 02 October 2017
From the score and from his letters, we know a lot about Gustav Mahler’s Symphony no. 3 in D minor, so you can do a great deal to prepare yourself for it before going into the concert hall: you can learn the concepts behind each movement (“Pan awakens” for the first, “What the flowers in the meadow tell me” for the second, and so on, you can learn about Mahler’s aspirations for the work, you can learn about Nietzsche’s poetry and all manner of details about how the score is constructed. But in the right hands – and yesterday afternoon at the Royal Festival Hall, Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia’s hands were definitely the right hands – you don’t need any of that: just open your ears and your emotions and let the music take you where it will.

Michelle DeYoung, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Philharmonia © David Karlin | Bachtrack Ltd
Michelle DeYoung, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Philharmonia
© David Karlin | Bachtrack Ltd
Whether or not the Third encompasses the whole of creation – as its composer aspired – what you will find is music which resonates with every part of your life: the sad bits, the cheerful bits, the hopeful, the scary, the nostalgic or schmaltzy bits, young love, mature love, grief, world-weariness, the times when you are proud of yourself, the times when you just need to calm down. Salonen proved an indefatigable and sure-footed guide.

Mahler’s big symphonies, of which the Third is up there with the biggest, are so long and complex that most conductors lose their grip on you at least once in the course of the evening: they just can’t keep you fully engaged and at one point or another, your mind wanders away from the music to other things. Salonen proved that, in Ira Gershwin’s words, “it ain’t necessarily so”. The most striking thing about this performance was the unflagging attention to detail: any phrase, however minor, from any section of the orchestra, was hand-crafted to create maximum effect.

The quality started at the very beginning, with the trombones phrasing a solid entry. From there, every instrument seemed to do just that little bit more than usual with their part – the clarion call of trumpets, threat from the cellos, a scream from oboes, powerful drive from the horns, later to be followed by ethereal release from flutes, cheekiness from the clarinets, perfectly timed acceleration from harp glissandi, and then, late in the movement, theatrics from the percussion as three pairs of clash cymbals crashed together. And then, a piece of true virtuosity from principal trombonist Byron Fulcher, morphing a harsh bray into utter lyricism, after which the strings and timpani took the music down to an exquisite calm.

On the podium, Salonen’s movement is spare: he is keeping time, with great clarity and precision even when the tempi are shifting rapidly, but he doesn’t employ the “do three things at once with different body parts” techniques of some conductors. I have to assume that all the hard work of sculpting the music, one bar at a time, has been done in rehearsal, and if that’s correct, this was one of the best rehearsed concerts I’ve ever attended.

Mezzo Michelle DeYoung made a telling contribution: an impressive figure on stage (DeYoung is as tall as Salonen plus height of podium combined), she intoned Nietzsche’s words “O Mensch” from the depths of the ages; her German diction was excellent and her commitment unquestionable. The fifth movement saw real dramatic tension between the grief in her solo role and the clarity and brightness of the Tiffin Boys Choir and Philharmonia Voices.

Over 90 minutes into the work, the intense string start to the last movement was augmented by yet another set of perfectly turned woodwind phrases, with colour and character as just about every phrase had been through all of the preceding music.

Mahler’s Third should be an impossibility – a work of ludicrously overarching ambition, a behemoth of a symphony with a 40-minute first movement hopelessly out of balance with the five that follow, a work that requires gigantic orchestral forces together with a soloist and choir who are only used for a small fraction of its length, music that veers erratically between contrasting styles.
But it works. In the end, it was DeYoung’s face that said it all. After finishing her part, she had been sitting at the front of the orchestra, concentrated on the music. As the texture of the music thickened steadily and wound up into the huge closing march, the pair of timpanists swayed to and fro, pounding their instruments with both sticks, even more powerful than Strauss’ famous opening to Also Sprach Zarathustra. DeYoung’s rapt half-smile turned into a broad grin, her face shining with the excitement that was nearly as evident in most of the audience at a triumphant exposition of Mahler’s immense conception.