New dawn at London’s Philharmonia Orchestra
NewsThe Philharmonia opens its season tonight under a new music director, the young Finn Santtu-Matias Rouvali.
The orchestra sees his arrival as a turning point.
Slippedisc will be reviewing every concert in the season.
Watch for Alastair Macaulay’s first review tomorrow morning. Alastair is the former chief dance critic of the New York Times and, before that, performing arts critic of the Financial Times.
“from Finland, and trained as a percussionist. He’s full of movement and energy on the podium. When he’s not busy rehearsing and performing, he works on his farm, and loves to spend time in the forest around his home near Helsinki”
Heads should roll in marketing.
Great to see a percussionist make it big!! (Think Simon Rattle, too.)
As well as Neeme (Xylophone) and Paavo…
And Larry Rachleff (Rhode Island Philharmonic) and Giancarlo Guerrero (Nashville Symphony.)
Looking forward to this. Richard Strauss at his most opulent should give this (usually) marvelous orchestra plenty of scope for their virtuosity.
Rouvali and Klaus Makela will soon have competing Finn-on-Finn Sibelius cycles available. Can Dalia Stasevska (BBC and International Sibelius Festival–also married to Sibelius’s great-grandson) be far behind?
This is the benchmark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LqVpopgqiI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGw___Eeh60
Fascinated as to how these recordings are available on You Tube, as I believe the concerts were not officially recorded?? Can anyone enlighten me?
I saw him a couple years ago with the Goteborg Symphony and was quite impressed with both. Kind of reminds me in appearance of Yahoo Serious, though.
Having just heard this concert broadcast live on Radio Three, I can’t say the performance of the Alpine Symphony moved my glacier very much. I own so many great recordings of the orchestral and operatic works of Richard Strauss that it takes a lot to surpass any of them. However, it’s great to hear such music LIVE again. Of course, hearing such orchestral music via one’s Radio is never comparable to being present in the concert hall, especially when BBC sound engineers still don’t really know how to record orchestral music properly. It sounds like an exciting appointment for the Philharmonia but I do despair over the lack of any decent British conductors taking up the reins off our orchestras. It really is pathetic.