Thielemann leaves Dresden with Mahler 8
OrchestrasChristian Thielemann stepped down tonight as chief conductor of the Saxon State Orchestra Dresden with a performance of Gustav Mahler’s 8th Symphony at the Semper Opera.
Thielemann, 65, is about to become General Music Director of the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden, foillowing Daniel Barenboim.
Why not just call it Staatskapelle Dresden
Because it changed its name 32 years ago.
I didn’t know that he did Mahler at all. Was this a first?
No, he did Mahler 3 in Salzburg and Mahler 8 in Munich
I know Thielemann had already conducted and recorded the Adagio from Symphony No. 10 and some of the song cycles: the Rückert-Lieder with Fleming and again with Garanča, and the Wunderhorn-Lieder with Volle.
I sit corrected then.
No, he “did it” in Munich, as well. But it is his only Mahler, AFAIK. A very strange place to start, too.
not true – he did Mahler 3 in Salzburg some years ago I was told
Was an orchestra involved or did he play/sing all the parts himself?
He also conducted the 3rd (on tour with the Staatskapelle Dresden, an dprobalby in Dresden also).
He did the 3rd Symphony last year in Dresden and in tour in Vienna with the Staatskapelle.
Yes. I was at the Vienna concert. Very well.
I looked it up and he’s conducted the third at least a couple times; in 2018 and 2023: https://classical-iconoclast.blogspot.com/2018/02/worth-wait-thielemann-mahler-3-dresden.html and https://klassik-begeistert.de/gustav-mahler-symphonie-nr-3-in-d-moll-currentzis-versus-thielemann-wiener-konzerthaus-und-musikverein-wien/
Thielemann also conducted Mahler’s Third…
I am not aware of the complete repertoire of Thielemann. At least I know that he did Mahler 3 last year with the Vienna Philharmonic. It was great. He did Mahler 8 and 10 in Munich years ago. Some of his lieder are also in his repertoire.
He did not do Mahler 3rd with the Vienna Philharmonic. He did conducted the piece in Vienna on tour with the Dresden Staatskapelle.
The only Mahler he did with the Vienna Philharmonic is some lieder in Salzburg with Garanca.
Dear Don, thanks for correcting me. You are right. I should have checked the facts instead of trusting in my faulty memory.
He conducted the third in the past couple years, although I can’t remember if it was with Dresden or Vienna.
Well, there aren’t many Mahler 8’s to catch these days!
Camilla Nylund SOPRAN I (MAGNA PECCATRIX)
Ricarda Merbeth SOPRAN II (UNA POENITENTIUM)
Regula Mühlemann SOPRAN III (MATER GLORIOSA)
Štěpánka Pučálková ALT I (MULIER SAMARITANA)
Christa Mayer ALT II (MARIA AEGYPTIACA)
David Butt Philip TENOR (DOCTOR MARIANUS)
Michael Volle BARITON (PATER ECSTATICUS)
Georg Zeppenfeld BASS (PATER PROFUNDUS)
*
Kinderchor der Semperoper Dresden
Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Sächsischer Staatsopernchor Dresden
*
Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester
Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden
*
Christian Thielemann DIRIGENT
What a great group a soloists!
(I wish I liked the work as much.)
Yes, it’s a horror: ill-structured and congested.
That’ll do as a cast.
He is still to conduct Mahler 8 tonight (8th) and tomorrow (9th)
Serious clash with semi final.
Not a difficult work to conduct: set the tempo and give the entrances. Job done.
I don’t quite understand why Thielemann gets so much hate. Is it because he’s regarded as a reactionary? To me he seems like a very fine conductor, without the artificial and superficial mannerisms that make particularly the HIP and HIP-adjacent conductors so attractive to a certain kind of vocal audience. Certainly seems like a logical choice to take over Barenboim at the Berlin Staatskapelle. Certainly much prefer Thielemann to his new neighbor Petrenko, whose Beethoven is identical to all the pseudo-HIP crap being recorded for the past decades by everyone and their grandmother. Glad that the likes of Thielemann and Nelsons exist to push back against the ubiquitous HIP orthodoxy.
Do you have to drag your hatred of HIP into everything? Give it a rest.
He apparently needs HIP replacements.
Don’t like it? Don’t read. Don’t engage. Unless you’re so insecure about the shaky foundations of HIPsterics that it undermines your faith in your little cult each time you read something negative about it.
It’s odd that some conductors decide to bow-out with an overstatement.
His Dresden tenure ends with a real bang, not a whisper!
Not “whisper”. I’m sure I won’t be the only one to point out that the quotation (from T S Eliot) to which you are referring is this:
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Thank you. The memory fails, sometimes.
Actually he did Mahler 3 in 2023, and toured around with it, including at the Leipzig Mahler cycle in the spring of that year. I heard it there, and didn’t think it was very good. Somewhat uninflected, rigid, by the book, lacking in atmosphere.
So is he going to take up Mahler now? Can we expect a Mahler cycle with him in Vienna that was a dreary as the Bruckner cycle? From every recording and Berlin performance I heard him do, Thielemann doesn’t seem to have what it takes to be a great Mahler conductor. Like Barenboim and some others, I suppose.
Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis.
We all love Thielemann
Can you define the word, “we”?
(I assume this means you, your spouse, and perhaps your cat.)
“We” don’t love him. I like some of his musicmaking, some other not so much.
But not love.
Did America ever apologize for the Dresden war crime?
Actually the bombing of Dresden was ordered by Churchill, and the initial bombing was carried out by the RAF. There was some follow up by the US Air Force. According to the lengthy Wikipedia article about the tragic bombing of Dresden, by the time the American planes arrived, there was so much smoke over the city that it was hard for them to tell what needed to be targeted.
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
(T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men)
Quotations are only worth quoting if you get them right.
In Dresden, however, the reverse happened.
He also conducted Mahler 3 in Leipzig last year.
He has done Mahler 3 before too, a number of times.
He should better leave his fingers off Mahler.
A Mahler 8 saga: In the 1970s I had tickets to a Solti performance in Chicago. We arrived to find Orchestra Hall locked: Solti had fallen and injured himself. A couple of days later, the Carnegie Hall performance went on as scheduled, conducted by Margaret Hillis, legendary founder of the CSO Chorus. Hillis was quoted on an instruction Solti gave her about a particularly tricky passage: ‘the musicians know how it goes, just put your head down and beat time’. That performance got LOTS of press coverage (a woman conductor, imagine!), but one prominent critic reported that, while Hillis ‘saved the show’, the performance wasn’t very good.
Happy ending, to some extent. A few years later, I got to hear Solti, Chicago, and Mahler 8 in Orchestra Hall. Memorable indeed. However, a prominent critic (I remember it as A.P.) reported that the live feed to Europe went out at some point, and much of what people over there heard was the 1971 recording. A.P. wrote that the live performance was better than the recording.
Yesterday night he conducted the 8th superbly. The chorus was a little on the small side, but was excellent. All singers were great. Great occasion! Much better than last year’s Nelsons’ in Leipzig which was mostly noisy.
What else do you expect? Theilemann is a dictator in the von Karajan mould but competent and no fool. Nelsons is a hack soup-stirer without the intelligence to make a musical statement worth listening to. If one has to have either one of them, and having worked under both, I begrudgingly choose the former.
Thielemann was also named Honorary Conductor (Blomstedt also holds the title) – potentially opening up return visits after a suitable gap. From orchestra, choirs and audience it was a genuinely moving send off and a positive end to the last 12 years.