They think it’s all overture ... cruel blow for the LSO
THEY thought it was all over when the London Symphony Orchestra put the ball past their German rivals in the final minute of a football match at Hyde Park.
That was until the referee ruled that the ball had not fully crossed the line, leaving the score against the Berlin Philharmonic at 1-1.
The nationality of the official who made the decision? German.
It was a reversal of the 1966 World Cup Final, when the linesman ruled that Geoff Hurst’s shot had crossed the line to give England a 3-2 lead against Germany.
The LSO captain, David Stark, the principal double bassist of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, said: “At the pub later on, after a few pints, they conceded it had actually gone in.”
Prom 64/Berlin Phil Royal Albert Hall
We may live in bewildering times, but one thing is for sure; the Berlin Philharmonic is still the world’s most celebrated orchestra. There wasn’t a seat to be had in the Royal Albert Hall for the first of the orchestra’s two Proms. Sir Simon Rattle, the orchestra’s chief conductor for only one more season, seemed unusually smiling and relaxed. He and the orchestra have been through some tense times, and Rattle has previously described them, with a mixture of admiration and annoyance, as “a stroppy bunch”.
Now he and they seem to be in a second honeymoon, if the smiles and hugs at the end were anything to go by.
“Stroppy” implies irrepressible individuality among the players, not a quality one normally associates with an orchestra, and there was plenty of that on display in the evening’s main event, Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. But the orchestra can be super-disciplined and precise too, and we were given a dazzling display of those qualities in the opening piece. This was the tiny modernist masterwork Éclat by Pierre Boulez, who died in January.
It’s a surprising piece to find next to Mahler. But Rattle likes to bring out the affinities between apparently disparate things, and the sensuous guitar-and-mandolin-flavoured sound world of Boulez’s piece certainly found its echo later in Mahler’s symphony.
After a sunburst of energy on the piano, the piece unfolded in alternating silences and bursts of activity, Rattle’s imperious forefinger causing sudden volleys of piano and vibraphone to break the tension. The trick is to make the piece seem both relaxed and potentially dangerous, like a cat waiting at a mouse hole, and Rattle and the players got it just right. Unlike most of Boulez’s pieces, this one was tantalisingly short, breaking off just as it was trying out a new direction.
This added to the audience’s keen anticipation for Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. By general consent, this is Mahler’s most puzzling creation, launching off in a mood of funeral dolefulness that is soon undercut by grotesquely lumbering Viennese waltzes. Then come two “night pieces”, the first a spectral march, the next like a Mediterranean serenade. Between them is a shadowy dance of death, and at the end comes a noisy finale that tries to quell the ghosts of previous movements with a mix of vulgar jollity and grinning parody.
Frankly, it’s a rag-bag, with too many disquieting echoes of Mahler’s previous symphonies, but this performance achieved the miracle of making it seem masterly and thoroughly convincing.
Rattle achieved this partly by giving the “stroppy bunch” their head. When flautist Emmanuel Pahud played the odd little flute passage at the end of the second movement, he gave it such character that all eyes and ears were on him. Principal horn player Stefan Dohr bestrode the sunny fourth movement like a colossus.
It seemed by the end that everyone had had a chance to shine – including Rattle himself, who made the electrifying contrasts of the last movement so extreme they felt like a hallucination. The Proms continue until September 10; 0845 401 5040