Andris Nelsons flows again on the podium with Mahler and Dvořák | Culture

19 months ago, the Gewandhauskapellmeister could be seen, with limited movements on the podium, despite its 44 years. Then, the late teacher needed to sit down to rest between the extensive Mahlerian movements, although the greatest inconvenience was audible, because his brief and slowed indications to the orchestra did not always help the fluidity of his interpretations, which and even dance steps, as he demonstrated. His return this week to the Ibermusic cycles with the Gewandhaus, after six years of absence, has revealed a director with dozens of kilos less and a physical form recovered to breathe musically overwhelming moments.

Nelsons has not publicly revealed any detail about its strict diet. However, a quick look allows to verify the aforementioned weight loss in the last year and a half. Last summer, the newspaper Boston Globe He echoed the progress of the orchestra director, who is also the head of the Boston Symphony, in the practice of Taekwondo. In, it was reported to obtain the second Black belt and showed. But it seems that this intense physical transformation has caused some incident, such as after directing a Mozart overture at the beginning of a concert.

The Latvian director has started the new year with force. In January he directed a complete cycle of Beethoven’s symphonies with Boston’s symphony and. A tour with two programs focused on the Fourth Symphony by Gustav Mahler and the Octave of, which began last Monday, February 24 in the teacher of Seville and has included two performances in the National Auditorium of Madrid on the 25th and 26th. The tour will continue from next Friday 28 in several German cities, with a stop in Vienna, and will culminate in Budapest on March 12.

The first program, last Tuesday, began with the uncommon symphonic poem The gold wheelof Dvořák. It is a composition of 1896 that is part of a cycle of four works inspired by. In this score, the Czech composer not only translates the poetic content to orchestral expressions, but also adapts the physiodies of their melodies to the prosody of the verses. The work served to show off the excellence of the Lipsian Orchestra and, especially, the delights of its wind, wood and severe rope instruments. Nelsons showed many details of his renewed vitality, although he failed to enter the dark and supernatural plot of Erben’s ballad musically.

The concert ended with an excellent interpretation of the Symphony no. 4 of Mahler. The Latvian director does not share the darkest and extreme vision of this work, which in the cycles of Ibermusic have interpreted colleagues such as. On the contrary, Nelsons literally believes in that sky full of violins as mystical and ironic that this score evokes, and achieves an admirable fluidity and serenity in that game of interruptions, resumption and reconsiderations, which is its first movement. The second of the second had very little grotesque, because we know that he is inspired by, in which Mahler makes the concert touch the violin of death with all the tuned strings a higher tone (hence he needed a second instrument arranged in a chair next door). Nelsons concentrated on the kindness of the two trios with admirable transitions, but he did not worry too much the balance problem between Bernhard Krug’s tube always too strong and the almost inaudible violin solos of Sebastian Breuninger.

Everything changed in the slow movement. And the Lasta director managed to provoke the first chill of the night in the sixteen compasses in which the violers and the cello, with the pizzicato of the counterbacces marking the step, interpret the main theme of the. Then, he fluently handled the passage to the second section in minor mode, with that “complaint” admirably touched in the Lipsian orchestra by the young Valencian Immaculate Veses. Nelsons raised each dramatic contrast in an overwhelming way, but without losing the smile in the most optimistic variations. And the opening of the doors of heaven, with that start of the coda in fortississimoIt was impressive despite the tubes. In the sky we continued with the final movement, The heavenly life (Heavenly life), where the exquisite and contemplative intervention of the German soprano maintained Nelsons’ idea not to deepen the emotional complexities of this score. In the end, almost twenty magical seconds of silence of the public, before the applause, were right.

The second concert, last Wednesday 26, began with Mahler. In this case, it was a movement entitled Blurry (Firecillas), removed from the original version of your Symphony no. 1 In 1896, for considering it a “youth error”, and rediscovered in 1966. The work began with a horn of the tube, but stood out for the exquisite phrase of the solo trumpet Gábor Richter with an attractive introspective atmosphere. Continued the first part with the Concert for two pianos in my olderby Felix Mendelssohn, a composition he wrote at age 14, in 1823, to play with his sister Fanny. The young Dutch soloists are also brothers and benefited from a great rapport. Both knew to find that classic-romantic exhibitionism that distills the cheerful initial, although they were quite conventional in the adagio not too much. Fantasy came in the crazy and sparkling allegro Final, which was the best of its interpretation. However, the Jussen brothers added, where several operetta themes are transcribed with jazz touches The batby Johann Strauss son.

But Nelsons fascinated again with the second part, dedicated this time to the Symphony no. 8 of Dvořák. He did it from the beginning, with that late idea of ​​the Czech composer to start a luminous work in Sol Mayor with his dark minor counterpart. A gloomy instrumentation, focused on cello, clarinets, bassons and tubes, with which the Lasto Director arranged the ideal atmosphere for the arrival of light through the flute alone. However, the best thing about the first movement was development, after that feigned repetition of the exhibition, where its intense movements on the podium activated the climax, with those glorious trumpets wrapped by the swirling rope. He adagio It was another impressive exhibition of musicality, with an orchestra delivered to the slightest detail of dynamics, articulation, phrasing or sound filling drawn by its director.

Another stellar moment of the night was the beautiful graceful cheerfulrarely heard with that natural melancholy and without losing his paused dance air. After the trio, Nelsons caused another chill again with the repetition of the main section in a much more ethereal tone. And that ability to look for differentiated sound planes in each repetition granted a surprising unit at the end, where the fantastic Lipsian orchestra showed again with the initial call of the trumpet, the song of the cellos, the variations of the flute or the screaming of the tubs in full algarabía. A whole sound party triggered by a director who has recovered all his magic and expressive fluidity on the podium.