Saturday, August 23, 2025
Royal Albert Hall, London
In the first of two Proms, Klaus Mäkelä (conductor designate) and the Concertgebouw Orchestra opened with Luciano Berio’s late-1980s, thirty-five-minute Rendering, based on Schubert’s sketches (D936a) for a three-movement Symphony in D, sympathetically crafted by the Italian, true to Schubert, and also to himself, who incorporates some advanced harmonies and timbres without sidelining Schubert’s bequest. Indeed, Berio’s balancing between the Austrian’s intentions and his own imagination as a twentieth-century master is finely achieved and here was given a beautifully judged reading by the orchestra in at the birth and a conductor who clearly relishes the phasing nature of the music, Schubert as he most likely would have finished the work, and Berio finding kinship extensions to match his own creative inclinations, the twain certainly meeting.
The Fifth is today probably the most-played of Mahler’s Symphonies. It certainly seems like it (with the ‘Resurrection’ a close companion). One hopes for new angles to be brought out in a very familiar work, which also convince, although musicians are under no obligation; it would be an unfair burden to place upon them. Mäkelä had little novelty to offer during this Mahler Five, although it was a perfectly good performance, superbly played – the opening trumpet solo exemplary – so, no complaints regarding a well-organised account that didn’t step outside the customary, full marks for not doing something for the sake of it, although the Scherzo dawdled a little in places during which Katy Woolley’s horn obbligatos matched the aforementioned trumpet. This being M5, the timing of the placed-fourth Adagietto is always of interest, a wide number of minutes have been chalked up. The RCO strings were wonderfully unanimous and intimate, Mäkelä shaping this love-letter tenderly, and taking an on-average nine minutes to match numerous colleagues. With virtuoso playing and counterpointing, the Finale had clear direction, reaching organic triumph, the concluding measures exhilarating. Listener sucker-punched.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002h7sw
Schubert/Berio Rendering. Orchestra Alessandro Scarlatti di Napoli della RAI conducted by Berio. May 8, 1992.