I was a bit surprised to see Jeffrey Tate billed as the conductor for Der fliegende Holländer. "He conducts Mozart" I thought to myself. Well, it was slightly slower than usual - about 2.5 hours run time - which enable one to listen more careful to the orchestration and melodic lines. Egils Silins was a competent Holländer - with sufficient gravitas and lyricism in his voice. Stephen Milling was a very good Daland. Anja Kampe was OK as Senta - her high notes were a bit forced which left one on edge sometimes. The production was beginning to lose its novelty - the rustling of the wet curtain during the overture was a terrible reminder for those who didn't visit the bathroom beforehand ...
Those of us London-centric folks easily forget there are great concert halls in other parts of the world. I remember as a young kid buying DG LPs with von Karajan on the front cover conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. So as my first visit to the city, a visit to the Philharmonie to listen to the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra was a must. Ivan Fisher started the evening's concert with Haydn Symphony 88. A light and delightful work. As I'd expected, the acoustic of the hall was amazing - probably a good 2.5 second of reverberation - and much more generous than the Royal Festival Hall in London. The strings sounded sweet and the timpani came through clearly with definition. The audience was then treated to Béla Bartók's Seven Pieces for Choir and Chamber Orchestra: the Berlin Phil reduced in size occupying only half of the stage while the Netherlands Youth Choir took the other half. These young performers (all female) sang in Hungarian from memory - not easy at all - and rea...
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