Free to view: Claudio Abbado’s Mahler 9 at Lucerne
mainClick here to watch an epochal performance from August 2010.
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This made me cry. CA is so damn elegant.
(And no cell phones went off! Why can’t all Mahler audiences be like this one?!)
The Mahler 4 he did (2009?) with Rattle’s wife is better, and on DVD.
The 9th sort of drowns in its own sentimentality in this distended (2010?) performance, when he takes the last movement too slowly. (The long pause after the music of course is beside the point, and it was emotional in the hall.) A rare miscalculation by Abbado, despite beautiful playing. LB in the Amsterdam reading does the same thing — but he sets it up (!) in a slow first movement, and it works.
you find this too slow? well here is a pianist who plays Chopin at perfect speed while an Abbado student conducts (assuming they all learnt to conduct last movements too slow):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7KAvmSbH9c