GESUALDO CONCERT at Oude Kerk on 1st August.
The Gesualdo Six explored and exploited the architecture and the acoustics of the Oude Kerk to the maximum as they moved around the building thereby producing a great and wonderful variety of resonance, allowing their voices to swell into the different space.
For a festival whose avowed intent is to reveal and demonstrate love in all its forms I suppose it was inevitable that sooner or later we would, as the concert’s title suggests, get down to the nitty gritty and that sex would finally raise its ugly head.
It is usually a blue moon that is associated with love and romance but it was the rare phenomenon of a Blood Moon that the audience was hoping to see rise above the spires and gables of the Markt during last night’s Dille & Kamille open air concert in the centre of Delft.
For me, the high-spot of the evening was Alban Berg’s 5 Orchester-Lieder, The twelve piece orchestra, led by Ms Ferschtman, played beautifully with flutist Adam Walker and oboe player Pauline Oostenrijk making significant contributions. The five songs were sung nicely with gusto by soprano Ruth Ziesak.
Musically, it was an incredible evening, no doubt. But just as amazing was the sense of community in this small, enclosed space and the energy that developed from a crowd of avid listeners and brilliant musicians coming together to self-reflect, socialize and enjoy life and music.
The homage to Sir Simon Rattle and his time with the Berlin Phil begins with Hans Abrahamsen’s Three Pieces for Orchestra. Made up of three distinctly rhythmical movements, the piece accentuates the Berlin Phil’s profound sense of pulse through a constant rhythmical structure supporting the various melodies.
Magnificent is really the only word that does the piece, and this concert, justice. Under the baton of Martyn Brabbins, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the local Rotterdam Symphony Chorus, the music was not only breath-taking but, because of its scale the concert in the superb de Doelen, visually exciting too.
Gatti and the Concertgebouw go against the trend and finally go the distance with Mahler. There is engagement and passion on the last desks, which makes for the best interpretation I have ever heard of this symphony. Finally, we hear Mahler as the self-destructive, forever broken artist that he was.
