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 [log in to unmask]