Mahler's Fifth ★★★★★
Performer: Orquesta Sinfónica de Düsseldorf. Dirección: Ádám Fischer. Lugar y fecha: L'Auditori (18/III/2024). Ciclo Ibercamera
There are few occasions to enjoy a very good orchestra with an excellent conductor. Maestro Ádám Fischer belongs to a generation with examples of merit. He may not be one of the most recognized, but in a concert that showed two extremes of the Viennese symphonic world, the beginning and culmination of the genre, he left a master class.
His work is worth highlighting, as he exhibited one of the paradigms of orchestral conducting: what the essence of a conductor means. Someone who, with his feet on the ground and the score in his head, showed absolutely effective gestures that at every moment indicated what he wanted to say and how. No fuss with the tickets; the musicians of a large orchestra dominate them. But he did point them out when that passage was relevant to the whole in Mahler's intricate score and also in Haydn's clearer one.
The concert began with a good staging of Haydn's Symphony No. 45 "Farewells", using lighting at will, but the version never went into the show. And yes, inside the work, showing the games of tension that would be fundamental in the classicism-romanticism path and in the language of those orchestral works.
Perhaps exaggerating some nuances – as in Mahler's Symphony No. 5 that closed the program –, this is a matter of preferences, Fischer delved into the Sturm und Drang of the time, with an adagio (I'm talking about Haydn ) subtle in dynamics and underlining that game of tension-relaxation that Mahler will bring to its culmination. His gesture gave character and stimulated the orchestra clearly. And he left the way open to sonorous magnificence (attention, I am not talking about basing the expression on volume but rather on underlining the counterpoint, the small phrase that indicates character, with a very tight and warm string).
There was never the dancing of the new generations on the podium, but rather a commitment to what he wanted to say, drawing the expression. There was respect for the score, excellence in soloists, continuity in the phrases and tensions and moments of calm that alternated with great expressive intensity. A lesson in management in turbulent times.
