Mahler's 1st Symphony with Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic


Mahler's 1st Symphony with Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic

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In November 2010, the Berlin Philharmonic

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and their Chief Conductor and Artistic Director, Sir Simon Rattle,

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performed at the Esplanade Theatre on the waterfront in Singapore

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as part of the orchestra's tour of the Far East.

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Playing to an audience of music students and school children,

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the programme featured Mahler's 1st Symphony and Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances.

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How did you find the audience in Singapore?

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Well, we had a very, very young audience for when we were filming.

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Lots of students, lots of people who had studied the music,

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fantastically concentrated and very, very enthusiastic.

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And some of the highest applause you'll ever hear.

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But it was a great audience.

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There's a big hunger for music there.

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We wanted to take programmes that would show

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all the different colours the orchestra could make.

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You've compared the Mahler Symphony

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with Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances,

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this was the last piece that he composed,

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what does it tell us about his whole life in music?

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Well, it's interesting, because he remained deeply Russian,

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but he was in what, for him, must have been endless exile in America.

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But you really hear the city life in this piece.

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And you here, actually, that he had become

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a more and more sophisticated composer and orchestrator.

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And it's one of the huge showpieces for any orchestra.

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This was the first time in the history of the Berlin Philharmonic

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the piece had been played in concerts.

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Wow.

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And so another journey of discovery.

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APPLAUSE

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And so to perform Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances,

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here is the Berlin Philharmonic with their Chief Conductor and Artistic Director, Sir Simon Rattle.

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APPLAUSE

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The Berlin Philharmonic performing Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances

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to an invited audience of music students

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and schoolchildren here at the Esplanade Theatre in Singapore.

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This was Rachmaninov's last completed orchestral composition,

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first performed when he was 57 years old.

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Twice the age that Mahler was when he wrote his 1st Symphony.

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Every orchestra now plays Mahler, but the Berlin Philharmonic

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seem to have such a particular relationship with the music. Why do you think that is?

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What makes them such a perfect Mahler orchestra?

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Well, of course, look, there's history. One or two orchestras have been lucky.

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We played the first performance of the 3rd Symphony, for instance.

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Some orchestras had a real history with Mahler,

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and you can feel it underneath.

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But, in a way, it's made for an orchestra,

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which is willing to go for extremes.

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And some orchestras are frightened to go to those places in Mahler.

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These guys, not at all.

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If you say to them, "OK, let's drive over the mountain,"

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they will drive over the mountain with great joy.

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-Tell us about Mahler's 1st Symphony.

-Well, there's a composer...

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in his twenties,

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but he'd hardly written for an orchestra before.

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And he turns the symphony on its head.

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I mean, he turned the symphony on its head so much that, actually,

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the first performances, the orchestra would desert him on stage

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because the reaction of the public was so hostile.

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Now, it's hard to imagine.

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It's such a fresh and alive and imaginative piece.

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But it's a piece that takes you on a journey

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that people considered at the time to be almost obscene.

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The idea of having distorted children's songs,

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of Jewish klezmer music, of marching bands,

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it was a real puzzle for people.

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And it's a type of trajectory...

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of a young man's life,

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ending in an extraordinary feeling of liberation and triumph,

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of which there's no irony.

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It was something that Mahler was hardly able to return to.

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Bernstein said he didn't know another composer who had such a keen sense of how to begin things.

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It seems to me that it's also about

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the beginning of something much bigger than just the 1st Symphony.

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Yeah. The beginning of the symphony, it's like all of nature breathing.

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There's an A, which goes from the bottom of the orchestra

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from the top, and it's very, very slowly opening a door into a journey.

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But, of course, it's opening a door to all of his symphonies.

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And the idea that you would have one note

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that leads and leads and leads

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through to the end... through to the end of the piece.

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It's strange. I grew up in the city, in Liverpool,

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where, believe it or not,

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the first Mahler Cycle with all the symphonies

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and the same conductor was played,

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-as I was growing up.

-Wow.

-And I can remember

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the players in the Liverpool Phil saying,

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"Oh, Simon, we're off for our twice-yearly struggle with Mahler."

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But for all of us as young teenagers, it was like a knock on the head.

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It was one of those big farm horses kicking you on the head.

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We would walk out into the night absolutely transfigured.

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APPLAUSE

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Four decades on from Simon Rattle's first encounter with Gustav Mahler's music,

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here he is to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic

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in a performance of Mahler's 1st Symphony.

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CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

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A tremendous reaction from the audience

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at the Esplanade Theatre

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to Mahler's 1s Symphony,

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a piece that was vilified during its premiere in 1900.

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The reaction couldn't be more different here in Singapore.

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A true masterpiece performed by one of the world's leading orchestras,

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the Berlin Philharmonic,

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and their Chief Conductor and Artistic Director,

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Sir Simon Rattle.

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APPLAUSE DROWNS SPEECH

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CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

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Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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