In Praise Of: Marin Alsop

Marin Alsop conducting the BSO, photo by Grant Leighton

In Sunday night’s programme notes for the London Symphony Orchestra’s concert, Marin Alsop penned a piece offering some insight into the evening’s programme of Mahler-orchestrated Beethoven works: “Spending time with Mahler’s ‘retuschens’… has been a revelation for me, albeit an unexpected one,” she wrote. As she took to the Barbican Hall stage sans sheet music to conduct both the Leonore No 3 Overture and Beethoven’s 7th Symphony with just the right amount of vigor, it became clear that spending time with them she had certainly done.

This closeness with her material and her performers is typical Alsop. The woman pours herself into her endeavours, and most importantly into engaging and educating audiences as she goes. To me, her passion, enthusiasm and respect for the work she presents is always evident, and it amplifies the quality of the concerts she conducts. If nothing else, I know that whenever I go to an Alsop concert I am going to be absolutely engaged with the programme — I haven’t quite yet come across anyone else that does that for me as consistently well.

“For me, [to be a music director is] a balancing of all the things you mention mixed with a healthy dose of intuition and curiosity. I try never to underestimate my listeners, but still try to program with them in mind.”

— Alsop on the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra website

Last night’s Mahler-saturated programme was one of many similarly themed ones orchestras around the world have been putting on this year to mark the anniversaries of the composer’s birth and death. I’ve been to quite a few just in London, and I have to say I found Marin’s bill, though completely void of any of Mahler’s own compositions (the other part of the evening was filled with some beautifully sung lieder composed by his wife Alma), perhaps my most insightful experience into the man and his workings.

And what about the performance itself? Well, lets put it this way: I have listened to recordings of Beethoven 7 already FOUR times today (and I’m considering a fifth go right now to compare the Barenboim/Berliner Staatskapelle reading… oh, there I went and pressed play!) Not even a listen to Andre Previn’s West Side Story jazz album has been able to shake the themes of the 7th from my head. I spent my normally sleepy-eyed morning commute scribbling in my Moleskin about my reactions, and my lunch hour looking for anything I could find online offering more detail about Mahler’s various Beethoven orchestrations (this and this were somewhat helpful). When a concert has that sort of effect on me, I’m counting it most definitely as a success. I was offered some mixed reactions immediately after the performance from concert-goers and players alike… some (like me) responded with gusto to the darker depths and seemingly more Dionysian intoxication that Mahler and Marin pushed from Beethoven’s score, while others found them more difficult to digest, preferring Beethoven’s brilliance to be left well enough alone.

However I feel that misses the point a bit. The question is not a matter of preference to Mahler’s or Beethoven’s original orchestration, but of whether the slight difference in the revised version can allow you to re-experience the symphony in a new light. And can it also make you more attuned to the importance of perceptive orchestration, in this case Mahler’s. These are the questions Alsop was asking last night, and under her expert guidance and the LSO’s superlative playing, I can most confidently answer yes to both.

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Last night’s concert was actually the UK premiere of Mahler’s arrangement of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony. I’m not aware of any recordings of this version in existence, so instead have been biding my time with Haitink, Bernstein and Barenboim. I’ve got last night’s performance still in my head, in particular the wonderfully heavy bass in the allegretto. Perhaps unsurprisingly Bernstein’s allegretto is doing it for me at the moment, while Barenboim’s final movement seems suitably frenzied for my liking today (perhaps a bit too much on any other day, but hey). If you have any other recommendations for me of this recording or others please share them in the comments below!

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