Just back from the Barbican, where Wigglesworth (substituting for Daniel
Harding, whose wife produced a baby girl this morning) conducted the LSO in
Mahler 10 (Cooke 2, more or less, I think) and Ian Bostridge in Britten's
"Nocturne").  First thoughts:

First half - Bostridge and Britten.  What more do I have to say? We were
sitting in the front row, a few feet to the left, and had a magnificent
view of the stick-like Bostridge's finely chiselled features as well as a
close-up listen to his remarkable voice, even more remarkable musicianship
and complete sympathy with Britten's world.  It doesn't get much better.

In the second half, the score-less Mark Wigglesworth launched into an
idiomatic and thoroughly well thought-out reading of M10 which has evolved
a long way from the BBC Music Magazine recording (relying on memory -
haven't heard it for a while) but which also realised all the promise of
that disc.  He now has the music deep in his soul.  I didn't get timings,
but he took things at a good pace, not rushing but moving along and never
lingering enough to dispel the sense of forward movement.  He's a very
small man - you could almost take him for a jockey - and he has a
virtuosically precise baton technique allied to broad and dramatic
gestures, but both feet stayed planted firmly on the podium throughout.
I can think of other conductors who would have bounced up and down more
enthusiastically, and some whose podium footwork would have launced a
conductor as lighweight as MW several feet into the air.  But MW stayed
firmly anchored to the ground, and this may be symbolic of something in his
approach to the music - he never got so emotionally involved that he lost
touch with the basics.

There has been endless discussion of how the drumbeats at the end of IV
and the start of V should be handled.  MW went for straightforward single
beats on a heavily damped and very deep-bodied bass drum - no drags or
ruffs for him - and he turned the volume knob all the way up and twisted
it right off.  I have never heard an orchestral drum hit so hard or sound
so loud.  Sitting where I was I couldn't see it happen, but I should think
the player must have nearly spun himself off his feet building up the
impetus to deliver such a thwack.  Five "f"s don't come anywhere near the
kind of dynamic marking you'd need for it.  Triple the number, 48-point
bold, double underlined, circled in red and highlighted.  I'm trying
to convey the impact - the Barbican was full of leaflets for the Kodo
Drummers, and some of them with one of their 1000-lb temple drums and the
tree-trunks they use for sticks could hardly have matched the ferocity
of the sound.  The strange thing is that it worked.  Perhaps we were all
thinking not of one New York fireman killed in the line of duty, but of
300.  Anyway, it was totally different from any other way I've heard it
done and I want to hear it that way again.

The flute solo was beautifully played and the closing passages were as
moving as I've heard them.  At the end, the silence lasted an almost
unbearable time before the applause began.  Wigglesworth looked like he'd
been through heaven and hell and back again, and I felt as if I'd been
present at something I'll never forget.

Ian
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