Music to my ears
What the classical world has been listening to this month Andrew Manze
Conductor
I live in Stockholm, where I recently heard the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra performing Berwald’s Sinfonie singulière and Berlioz’s Symphonie
fantastique, conducted by Herbert Blomstedt. He may be over 90 years old, but Blomstedt doesn’t seem a day over 21 in terms of his energy and the impact of his concerts! His performances are always about the music rather than him, but because he’s a bit of a Swedish hero, he has both the orchestra and the audience in the palm of his hand.
Also in Stockholm, I heard Daniel Harding conduct the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Mahler’s Sixth Symphony. It’s so amazing to see a conductor and orchestra thinking as one in the way they do – it’s like an exercise in communal love they’ve got going there. You sense that every player is swaying together and phrasing the music as one, and Harding is no longer conducting it as such but is simply the focal point of it. I’m a huge fan.
Albert Gilbert has recently been conducting Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier at the Royal Swedish Opera. And what a fantastic conductor he is. I admire so much the way that he has no limits in terms of technique – he can turn his hand to virtually anything and conducts a lot of difficult and contemporary repertoire. The cast included soprano Malin Byström as The Marschallin, who is an absolute dream, and a singer I would go anywhere to hear.
And also… I like to read a lot, and am currently half-way through the Roman poet Lucretius’s De rerum natura. I got into it from reading Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve, which is all about the rediscovery of it. I’m finding it very comforting that this work that was written well over 2,000 years ago can still be so interesting, beautiful, fresh and inspiring even today.
Andrew Manze conducts Haydn and Vaughan Williams symphonies in Prom 22 (31 July)