Kevin John Edusei led the RSO with clear calm and charged energy.
Classic
Radio Symphony Orchestra at Musiikkitalo on 29.11. Kevin John Edusei, conductor. – Mahler.
by Gustav Mahler the seventh symphony in E minor has been given an additional title Symphony of the Night, Symphony of the Night. It does not come from the composer himself.
The additional name evokes romantic images, which are misleading. A nocturnal mood prevails in the symphony, but it is often nightmarish.
The extreme parts of the nearly 80-minute, five-part symphony are marches. Restless Mahler had a compulsion to march, a compulsion to march forward on a path of life colored by suffering.
Sick Tugan Sohijevin he was replaced by a Ghanaian-German with roots Kevin John Edusei. This poised Maestro kept the vast and multi-phased symphony under his control brilliantly.
Edusei led with clear calm and charged energy. He unflinchingly pursued the symphony’s path of life, kept the direction and the horizon in sight through all the winding stages.
Edusei regulated the flow voltage very reliably. The RSO was allowed to roll often with all its power, until suddenly the flow slowed down, became thinner and quieter. Changes in tempo and characters were very natural in Edusei’s hands.
A symphony the slow first part started as a heavy mournful march, which at some point started to sound like the frolicking of clowns. Edusei knew how to mix the sublime and the banal, the beautiful and the blatant, which belongs to Mahler’s symphonies expressing the contradictions of life.
The second movement, Nachtmusik I, is also a kind of march. The nocturnal crowd seemed to vacillate between major and minor. Edusei captured the eeriness of the atmosphere.
The third movement, the Scherzo, was a waltz of shadows in which a midnight ghost danced in the middle of Vienna. Edusei conjured the intoxicating charm of the waltz into sounds and gestures, which could however be distorted into flatness.
Fourth part Nachtmusik II plays very mysteriously. There, the sound became thin and transparent. Harp, guitar, mandolin and solo violin conjure up a romantically in love and idyllic nocturnal serenade atmosphere. However, it was deceptive: beneath the surface there was a silent horror.
The fourth movement was apt to bring out the chamber music skills of the RSO, which were needed in the entire symphony. The symphony was full of delicate and fine solos by the woodwinds, brass and strings, which made it grateful to be played by a top orchestra like the RSO. Above all, in the symphony, the orchestra was able to enjoy all its sounds with glowing richness and intoxicating volume.
Nocturnal ones the colors disappeared in the finale, whose C major was illuminated by glaring daylight. Now Edusei unleashed a full blast from the orchestra and a motley circus of instruments.
The grandiose finale rubberized its emptiness. It had all the makings of a great musical victory party, but what victory was celebrated here with such theatrical jubilation: a battle against the shadows of the night? The pathos of the finale is deliberately hollow and banal.
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