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Sunday, January 18, 2009

Making do....

What with the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra having to household its resources - no concerts on two consecutive Saturday nights (in the Capital of Culture??) - for 3 Bruch, 2 Mendelssohn and a Vieuxtemps violin concerto on Wednesday night, I just had to make do with the Digital Concert Hall, The Berlin Philharmonic, Bernard Haitink, and Mahler's 7th symphony.

This time I had the sound sorted out, and the symphony roared through my flat. Still need to find a way of linking the laptop to the TV - unfortunately that laptop which works better does not have an output slot....

How can one review an orchestra as perfect as this? The winds here are like a finely-tuned Porsche, whereas those of the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra are more like an old Soviet lorry which has difficulties in starting - as evidenced in Malov's wonderful performance of the Mendelssohn violin concerto.  Some of those solos, oh the trumpets, or the oboes - just brilliant!

Haitink is a fairly quiet conductor; I suppose he is not so young - and maybe it's nice for the orchestra not to have someone grimacing quite like Rattle.  I don't know the symphony well enough to review it in detail, but the way the themes and motifs moved round the orchestra - it was just brilliant! Next concert on Saturday (do they always do Saturdays? That might make it difficult to rush back in time from the Filharmonija, when they work).

I see I missed Zubin Mehta, Murray Perahia and Beethoven 4 - need to check the archives to find this.

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