Saturday 3 October
Chicago, Symphony Center • Halfway through his fall residency with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, “Zell Music Director Designate” Klaus Mäkelä took on the Herculean task of tackling Mahler’s Symphony No. 9. The performance was charged with anguished energy, bringing out details I’d never really noticed, especially in the first movement. Mäkelä’s youthful tendency to overstate some contrasts, though, might not be to everyone’s taste, and I found myself a little annoyed by the all-out fortissimi in the second and third movements. The finale, though, drew expertly on the orchestra’s many strengths to bring the performance to a tense, crepuscular and devastating conclusion. Which is probably why the woman sitting in front of me thought it was the right moment to unzip her bag, unscrew her water bottle, screw the cap back on and zip up her bag, apparently unaware that, for the rest of the audience, time had been suspended.
Monday 5 October
Paris, Théâtre de la Ville • Alan Lucien Øyen’s Antigone was a poignant creation freely drawing on the Greek myth to explore timeless characters and their relationships through dance and theatrical interactions. The small cast was built around three legendary female performers from the Pina Bausch ensemble, whose distinct personalities brought depth and occasional levity to the succession of tableaux. The moving panels defining the performing space could tilt as well as glide, becoming additional performers. I left with a tight throat, unable to pinpoint what exactly in this strange alchemy of light, movement and words had elicited such an emotional reaction.
Tuesday 6 October
Paris, Philharmonie de Paris • The Cleveland Orchestra and their outgoing music director Franz Welser-Möst offered a programme combining Strauss’s Vier Letzte Lieder and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8. Golda Schultz’s powerful, luminous soprano might have done the lieder a disservice by making them sound solar and almost too effortless. As for the symphony, the polished, elegant sound of the orchestra resulted in a performance that sometimes lacked edges and internal tension.
Wednesday 7 October
Paris, Philharmonie de Paris • After a performance of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4 that left me unmoved (with Iris Scialom), Esa-Pekka Salonen led the Orchestre de Paris in a peaceful, introspective account of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, with tenor Andrew Staples and mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill. Salonen expertly infused each lied with its own combination of orchestral colours, demonstrating exceptional control with remarkably few, well-calibrated gestures. And yet I remained strangely outside the twilit soundscape, and the final Abschied, carefully detailed though it was, failed to reach me.
Thursday 8 October
Paris, UGC Maillot • The ageless Isabelle Huppert played against type as a struggling cinema extra in Marc Fitoussi’s Ni vue ni connue (cunningly called All About Corinne in English). The script’s delightfully self-referential examination of the less glorious aspects of the cinema industry, peppered with nice touches of humour, was vaguely reminiscent of Dix Pour Cent (aka Call My Agent). Its soundtrack by Bertrand Burgalat, eyeing Bacharach & David, felt slightly anachronistic, in an enjoyable way. I like French films when they manage to take unexpected directions.
Friday 9 October
Paris, Philharmonie de Paris • A second major American orchestra visited the Philharmonie in three days. In the first of two concerts on their European tour, the New York Philharmonic under their new music director Gustavo Dudamel tackled Mahler’s formidable Symphony No. 5. Clearly on a mission to showcase the orchestra, Dudamel seemed to overindulge its natural brightness instead of balancing it with much-needed subterranean melancholy. In the end, the experience felt at least as much like a successful PR experiment as like a genuine artistic endeavour — as illustrated by the stage manager cueing the applause whenever Dudamel came onto the stage.