Word: mahler
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...MAHLER: DAS LIED VON DER ERDE. This melancholy masterpiece, a symphonic setting for ancient Chinese poems at once contemplating the twilight of life and poignantly recalling its pleasures, has appeared in three new interpretations, each worth considering...
Leonard Bernstein, in a guest appearance with the Vienna Philharmonic (London), gives a turbulent interpretation that shows his affinity for Mahler. But Tenor James King sounds a bit forced, and the second soloist is a baritone instead of the usual, complementary mezzo-soprano. However, that baritone is Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and his 30-minute Farewell is a perfect fusion of poetry and song...
...baton, the orchestra is not yet burnished to the glow it had under Mengelberg, and in some of the repertory he has not yet overcome a faint tendency toward coolness and restraint. But when he conducts the full, darkly romantic music that seems to echo the Dutch temperament-Mahler or Bruckner, for example-he is superb...
...stage was bare, the costumes were rehearsal-type togs in grey, white and black. "If you combine sumptuous sets and costumes with Mahler," explains MacMillan, "you get something like jam on jam." A tenor and a mezzo-soprano sang the vocal parts from opposite sides of the proscenium, while onstage dancers representing such allegorical figures as Youth, Beauty and Everyman traced a melange of MacMillan movements that seemed to draw equally on classical, modern and Chinese dance styles...
MacMillan's best insight into Mahler's mood was in his characterization of the Messenger of Death-a role that was executed with feline power and grace by the company's fastest-rising male dancer, Anthony Dowell, 24. Though always a brooding, ominous figure, the Messenger was also a familiar and alluring one, sometimes standing patiently to the side, sometimes dancing among the other figures or carrying them away. At the end, something beyond his triumph was suggested as the mezzo-soprano sang, "Everywhere and forever the distance looks bright and blue-forever . . . forever...