Lorin Maazel is 70 years old in March.  Last week he conducted the London
Symphony Orchestra in a series of concerts of orchestral showpieces and his
own compositions.

Until I heard him in action with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in
the 1990s, substituting for an indisposed Klaus Tennstedt, I lumped Maazel
with the likes of Mehta and Muti - glam glitzy batonists getting rich on
guest fees.  The LPO concert of Strauss "Four Last Songs" and Brahms' 1st
Symphony revealed someone who was admittedly a watchable podium dancer, but
whose directions where unmistakable and who drew out an orchestral sound of
rare depth and richness.  Afterwards LPO players enthused about the man's
star-quality.

Since then I've enjoyed the panache and unforgettable phrasings of
Maazel's orchestral recordings (e.g.  Tchaikovsky "Manfred" and "Hamlet"
with the VPO), and appreciated the luxury of his programmes.  He visited
Birmingham's Symphony Hall in 1998 with the Bavarian Radio Symphony
Orchestra: Beethoven "Coriolan" and Violin Concerto (with Hilary Hahn),
Stravinsky "Rite of Spring" - ending with Strauss "Rosenkavalier" Suite
as an encore!  A lavish banquet compared to the slim pickings of most
80-minutes-or-less concerts nowadays.

THURSDAY

On 17 February at the Barbican Centre, another rich programme: Ravel
"Mother Goose" excerpts, Maazel's "The Empty Pot" (narrator Jeremy Irons),
Dvorak's Cello Concerto (Mstislav Rostropovich) and Tchaikovsky's 4th
Symphony.  This was a gala concert raising funds for Sargent Cancer
Care for Children, which supports a team of 50 specialist care workers
throughout the United Kingdom offering practical and emotional support
to children with cancer.

Maazel wrote "The Empty Pot" for orchestra, children's choir, boy soprano
and narrator. The story is a Chinese fable which tells how a small boy,
derided by his friends as an "empty pot," rises by his honesty to be Emperor
of China. It began quietly but arrestingly with a decorated pentatonic
melody on three flutes, and, despite first-performance nerves, was a
charming piece, the boy soprano's part placed in its husky low range, not in
the piping treble of cathedral choir solos. The performers received only one
curtain call. As well as other works for children's forces, Lorin Maazel
will soon start an opera, in collaboration with playwright Ronald Harwood,
based on George Orwell's "1984."

I'm sure Rostropovich has played the Dvorak Concerto hundreds of times
over the past fifty years, but there was no suspicion of routine in this
performance.  The first movement was more straightforward than in the
Karajan/BPO recording, and Slava's personality was irresistible throughout.
Even the less ardent sections brought a lump to my throat.  I first heard
Rostropovich play this work with the Halle Orchestra in the late 1980s,
and remember the ecstatic duetting with leader Michael Davis in the last
movement - that passage was just as elevated with LSO leader Gordan
Nikolitch.  The audience soon rose in a standing ovation.

During the interval, I learned that some LSO players were feeling the
strain of such a long programme, and had Mahler 2 to rehearse from 1000
the following day.  I wondered if the orchestra's stamina would hold out
for Tchaikovsky 4.  I need not have worried.

Tchaikovsky's maudlin 5th Symphony is to me what Sibelius' Violin Concerto
is to Ian Crisp - it appears all too often in concert schedules for my
liking.  I'd rather emote to the torrid 4th.  Maazel was in his element,
his baton visually whipping the orchestra into a most unBritish frenzy.
He constantly encouraged the brass, which bayed like pitbulls, and took
the scherzo at an incredible lick.

I recalled Pierre Boulez' pale "Petrushka" a few weeks previously, a
LSO performance drained of Russian gusto.  He made the strings play the
Coachmen's Dance with short neat bowstrokes.  Encountering this was like
having the lights suddenly turned on and the music switched off at a
party..  I'm sure Maazel's new CD features that passage with full
bowstrokes and bootkicking weight of tone.

As Maazel took his second curtain call, the leader lifted his bow and the
orchestra played and sang "Happy Birthday." Maazel was overcome and rooted
to the spot.  The audience rose in ovations once more.

SUNDAY

The March BBC Music Magazine has a feature about the overexposure
of classical masterpieces.  Leonard Slatkin, for instance, "harks
nostalgically back to the time when the Hammerklavier and Mahler's Second
Symphony were so rarely performed that they became ipso facto special
events.  'But they're now done on such a regular basis that that
specialness has completely evaporated.'"

I thought of Slatkin's comments before I attended Maazel's next concert
on 20 February - with Mahler's 2nd Symphony.  I've now heard six live
performances, from the sublime (Rattle/VPO at the Royal Albert Hall) to
the ridiculous (Davis/BBCSO swallowed up by the acoustic of Westminster
Cathedral).  I last heard the LSO play "Resurrection" under Myung-Whun
Chung, whose first movement was so slow *I* felt dead at the end of it.
This time, I had every confidence that Maazel would resurrect the
symphony's "specialness."

The LSO violins were not divided, losing the antiphonal interplay which is
a feature of Rattle's latter-day performances and Klemperer's EMI CD.  That
aside, the first movement displayed the Maazel Mahler hallmarks of weighty
tone and memorable ways of expressing the musical phrases: slowly and
beautifully sounded.  Mahler asked for a five-minute pause between the
first and second movements.  In practice, audience and musicians usually
murmur and rustle for a bit.  Head bowed, Maazel stood impassive below the
podium.  Conversations petered out.  The whole audience stared at Maazel's
back, willing him to carry on.  The tomb-like silence lasted another two
minutes before he ascended to the podium again and cued the second
movement.  That silence said a lot for Maazel's aura...

I was as usual swept away by the rest of the symphony, and will just
draw your attention to two of many highlights.  Maazel sustained the
first of the finale's grave-opening crescendi quite beyond belief, and I
nearly choked on the tumult of percussion.  The Barbican isn't the most
atmospheric hall for "Resurrection"'s offstage effects, but it became more
enveloping when the four horns and four trumpets, which had played offstage
earlier, entered the hall and played from opposite sides of the stalls for
the final peroration.  Sylvia Greenberg and Cornelia Kallisch were the
soloists, placed at the front of the platform.

Another standing ovation for Lorin Maazel at the end.

   http://www.lso.co.uk/

James Kearney
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