Was it wise to play the fifth symphony twice in a row?

Mahler 5 By the Budapest Festival Orchestra OLV IVán Fischer. Heard: 13/5, Concertgebouw Amsterdam. Look back here.

The trumpet player was already against his lips with his trumpet when conductor Iván Fischer turned to the orchestra. Red red and looking stuffy, he starts those oh so important opening notes of the Fifth symphony. They are going well.

Tuesday evening will be an evening full of beautiful moments. Especially from the blazers: at the end of the first part the flute beautifully takes over the theme of the trumpet. In the third part, the first hornist may sit in front of his solo-like parts, which he makes as if they come from a mystical distance. The transition to the pizza moment and also to the clarin -sole in that part is goose -lonisive. The well -known and beloved fourth part, the ‘Adagietto’, is especially beautiful at the beginning.

But those beautiful moments are all very striking – and actually you don’t want that to the extent. Where the NHK symphony orchestra in the Third Fallen disappointing because the well -playing musicians as puppets reacted to a moderate interpretation of the conductor, the opposite happens here: Fischer urges all kinds of things, but not everything sounds.

Soft is soft and loud is loud, tempi are fluent, but there is always a certain wait -and -see lifelessness in the game – a conviction that a different instrument group now takes the rhythmic and coloring lead. Solootjes sound timid and quickly dive back into ground level. There is missing a certain spar and finish in the sound.

Is the orchestra tired?

Fischer, whom we mainly know here as a ‘honorary’ guest conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, tries to wave strength from the celli several times. In the last part so much that he is mowing wide wildlife with the elbows, a bit like the sign in coronation time expressed ‘hoarding’. Had he done that for the KCO, your eardrums would probably have flapped. These cellists could no longer give. This way many themes fly by without a spotlight.

Is it because the orchestra had already had to play the entire symphony at five in the afternoon, as a booked program part? With these symptoms it is quite plausible that the evening concert had sounded better if the musicians should not have divided their energy, concentration and healthy concert voltage by two.

On every other Tuesday evening of the year I probably had given this concert three and a half – completed four balls. But not at the prestigious Mahlerfestival, where the cheapest seventh ticket costs 65 euros, and the most expensive 235 euros. Where the room is full of connoisseurs and enthusiasts with the highest expectations of the hundred -year -old Mahler reputation of this room. You have to finish down on such a Tuesday evening.

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