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In November 2010, the Berlin Philharmonic | 0:00:19 | 0:00:22 | |
and their Chief Conductor and Artistic Director, Sir Simon Rattle, | 0:00:22 | 0:00:25 | |
performed at the Esplanade Theatre on the waterfront in Singapore | 0:00:25 | 0:00:29 | |
as part of the orchestra's tour of the Far East. | 0:00:29 | 0:00:32 | |
Playing to an audience of music students and school children, | 0:00:32 | 0:00:35 | |
the programme featured Mahler's 1st Symphony and Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances. | 0:00:35 | 0:00:40 | |
How did you find the audience in Singapore? | 0:00:49 | 0:00:51 | |
Well, we had a very, very young audience for when we were filming. | 0:00:51 | 0:00:55 | |
Lots of students, lots of people who had studied the music, | 0:00:55 | 0:00:59 | |
fantastically concentrated and very, very enthusiastic. | 0:00:59 | 0:01:04 | |
And some of the highest applause you'll ever hear. | 0:01:04 | 0:01:08 | |
But it was a great audience. | 0:01:08 | 0:01:11 | |
There's a big hunger for music there. | 0:01:11 | 0:01:14 | |
We wanted to take programmes that would show | 0:01:16 | 0:01:19 | |
all the different colours the orchestra could make. | 0:01:19 | 0:01:23 | |
You've compared the Mahler Symphony | 0:01:23 | 0:01:26 | |
with Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances, | 0:01:26 | 0:01:28 | |
this was the last piece that he composed, | 0:01:28 | 0:01:31 | |
what does it tell us about his whole life in music? | 0:01:31 | 0:01:34 | |
Well, it's interesting, because he remained deeply Russian, | 0:01:34 | 0:01:38 | |
but he was in what, for him, must have been endless exile in America. | 0:01:38 | 0:01:43 | |
But you really hear the city life in this piece. | 0:01:43 | 0:01:49 | |
And you here, actually, that he had become | 0:01:49 | 0:01:52 | |
a more and more sophisticated composer and orchestrator. | 0:01:52 | 0:01:57 | |
And it's one of the huge showpieces for any orchestra. | 0:01:57 | 0:02:02 | |
This was the first time in the history of the Berlin Philharmonic | 0:02:02 | 0:02:06 | |
the piece had been played in concerts. | 0:02:06 | 0:02:08 | |
Wow. | 0:02:08 | 0:02:09 | |
And so another journey of discovery. | 0:02:09 | 0:02:12 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:02:12 | 0:02:15 | |
And so to perform Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances, | 0:02:15 | 0:02:19 | |
here is the Berlin Philharmonic with their Chief Conductor and Artistic Director, Sir Simon Rattle. | 0:02:19 | 0:02:24 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:39:18 | 0:39:24 | |
The Berlin Philharmonic performing Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances | 0:39:30 | 0:39:34 | |
to an invited audience of music students | 0:39:34 | 0:39:36 | |
and schoolchildren here at the Esplanade Theatre in Singapore. | 0:39:36 | 0:39:40 | |
This was Rachmaninov's last completed orchestral composition, | 0:39:40 | 0:39:45 | |
first performed when he was 57 years old. | 0:39:45 | 0:39:48 | |
Twice the age that Mahler was when he wrote his 1st Symphony. | 0:39:48 | 0:39:53 | |
Every orchestra now plays Mahler, but the Berlin Philharmonic | 0:39:53 | 0:39:57 | |
seem to have such a particular relationship with the music. Why do you think that is? | 0:39:57 | 0:40:02 | |
What makes them such a perfect Mahler orchestra? | 0:40:02 | 0:40:04 | |
Well, of course, look, there's history. One or two orchestras have been lucky. | 0:40:04 | 0:40:08 | |
We played the first performance of the 3rd Symphony, for instance. | 0:40:08 | 0:40:13 | |
Some orchestras had a real history with Mahler, | 0:40:13 | 0:40:16 | |
and you can feel it underneath. | 0:40:16 | 0:40:20 | |
But, in a way, it's made for an orchestra, | 0:40:20 | 0:40:23 | |
which is willing to go for extremes. | 0:40:23 | 0:40:26 | |
And some orchestras are frightened to go to those places in Mahler. | 0:40:26 | 0:40:32 | |
These guys, not at all. | 0:40:32 | 0:40:35 | |
If you say to them, "OK, let's drive over the mountain," | 0:40:35 | 0:40:37 | |
they will drive over the mountain with great joy. | 0:40:37 | 0:40:41 | |
-Tell us about Mahler's 1st Symphony. -Well, there's a composer... | 0:40:41 | 0:40:46 | |
in his twenties, | 0:40:46 | 0:40:48 | |
but he'd hardly written for an orchestra before. | 0:40:48 | 0:40:52 | |
And he turns the symphony on its head. | 0:40:52 | 0:40:56 | |
I mean, he turned the symphony on its head so much that, actually, | 0:40:56 | 0:41:00 | |
the first performances, the orchestra would desert him on stage | 0:41:00 | 0:41:04 | |
because the reaction of the public was so hostile. | 0:41:04 | 0:41:07 | |
Now, it's hard to imagine. | 0:41:07 | 0:41:10 | |
It's such a fresh and alive and imaginative piece. | 0:41:10 | 0:41:16 | |
But it's a piece that takes you on a journey | 0:41:16 | 0:41:19 | |
that people considered at the time to be almost obscene. | 0:41:19 | 0:41:24 | |
The idea of having distorted children's songs, | 0:41:24 | 0:41:28 | |
of Jewish klezmer music, of marching bands, | 0:41:28 | 0:41:32 | |
it was a real puzzle for people. | 0:41:32 | 0:41:36 | |
And it's a type of trajectory... | 0:41:36 | 0:41:41 | |
of a young man's life, | 0:41:41 | 0:41:43 | |
ending in an extraordinary feeling of liberation and triumph, | 0:41:43 | 0:41:49 | |
of which there's no irony. | 0:41:49 | 0:41:52 | |
It was something that Mahler was hardly able to return to. | 0:41:52 | 0:41:57 | |
Bernstein said he didn't know another composer who had such a keen sense of how to begin things. | 0:41:57 | 0:42:02 | |
It seems to me that it's also about | 0:42:02 | 0:42:04 | |
the beginning of something much bigger than just the 1st Symphony. | 0:42:04 | 0:42:07 | |
Yeah. The beginning of the symphony, it's like all of nature breathing. | 0:42:07 | 0:42:11 | |
There's an A, which goes from the bottom of the orchestra | 0:42:11 | 0:42:15 | |
from the top, and it's very, very slowly opening a door into a journey. | 0:42:15 | 0:42:21 | |
But, of course, it's opening a door to all of his symphonies. | 0:42:21 | 0:42:26 | |
And the idea that you would have one note | 0:42:26 | 0:42:30 | |
that leads and leads and leads | 0:42:30 | 0:42:33 | |
through to the end... through to the end of the piece. | 0:42:33 | 0:42:38 | |
It's strange. I grew up in the city, in Liverpool, | 0:42:38 | 0:42:42 | |
where, believe it or not, | 0:42:42 | 0:42:44 | |
the first Mahler Cycle with all the symphonies | 0:42:44 | 0:42:48 | |
and the same conductor was played, | 0:42:48 | 0:42:51 | |
-as I was growing up. -Wow. -And I can remember | 0:42:51 | 0:42:54 | |
the players in the Liverpool Phil saying, | 0:42:54 | 0:42:56 | |
"Oh, Simon, we're off for our twice-yearly struggle with Mahler." | 0:42:56 | 0:43:02 | |
But for all of us as young teenagers, it was like a knock on the head. | 0:43:02 | 0:43:07 | |
It was one of those big farm horses kicking you on the head. | 0:43:07 | 0:43:12 | |
We would walk out into the night absolutely transfigured. | 0:43:12 | 0:43:17 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:43:17 | 0:43:21 | |
Four decades on from Simon Rattle's first encounter with Gustav Mahler's music, | 0:43:21 | 0:43:26 | |
here he is to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic | 0:43:26 | 0:43:29 | |
in a performance of Mahler's 1st Symphony. | 0:43:29 | 0:43:33 | |
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE | 1:42:16 | 1:42:21 | |
A tremendous reaction from the audience | 1:42:23 | 1:42:25 | |
at the Esplanade Theatre | 1:42:25 | 1:42:27 | |
to Mahler's 1s Symphony, | 1:42:27 | 1:42:28 | |
a piece that was vilified during its premiere in 1900. | 1:42:28 | 1:42:33 | |
The reaction couldn't be more different here in Singapore. | 1:42:33 | 1:42:36 | |
A true masterpiece performed by one of the world's leading orchestras, | 1:42:36 | 1:42:40 | |
the Berlin Philharmonic, | 1:42:40 | 1:42:42 | |
and their Chief Conductor and Artistic Director, | 1:42:42 | 1:42:44 | |
Sir Simon Rattle. | 1:42:44 | 1:42:47 | |
APPLAUSE DROWNS SPEECH | 1:43:08 | 1:43:12 | |
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE | 1:43:14 | 1:43:18 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 1:43:19 | 1:43:21 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 1:43:21 | 1:43:24 |