Pietari Inkinen. Foto. Tanja Ahola

Pietari Inkinen, Conductor and Salvatore Accardo, violin, with Laura Claycomb, Soprano.

Review by Fabio Bardelli

Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Florence, Italy, Nuovo Teatro dell’Opera, 2012, october 19th

Béla Bartók: Concerto n. 2 for violin and orchestra

Gustav Mahler: Symphony nr 4  in G major “Das himmlische Leben”

FLORENCE: The program of this concert in Florence contains a curious combination of works apparently very distant between them, the 2nd Violin Concert by Bartòk and Mahler’s Symphony nr. 4. They are really very different works, but probably rather complementary in their differences: Bartòk‘s language is difficult and tied to the 20th century style, while the apparently serene Mahler‘s 4th Symphony, written about forty years before, describes a dreamed, lost or probably “never existed” world. Or, for someone, this Symphony could be a sort of Mahler’s reassurance to himself and to the listeners about the existence of a “heavenly life”. The Heavenly Life is in fact its subtitle, and refers to a children’s world, a lyric and innocent one, as Des Knaben Wunderhorntells, that is the text sung by soprano in the last movement. However, this is really a splendid symphonic pièce, masterly constructed and of great impact on the audience

Laura Claycomb, IMG artists, soprano soloists in the last part of Mahler´s Symphony no 4, “The heavenly life”

Pietari Inkinen
The Young Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen shows his very good technic and good interpretative ideas; he pays a great attention to the particularities of the score and to the general view of the orchestra. Obviously (Inkinen is only 32) symphonies such as this one and authors such as Mahler will become more mature in the following decades, but the global result is already really noteworthy. Beautiful was the third moviment, with a great attention to the athmosphere and to tymbric particularities, but the whole simphony was really well played
. Very good was the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino
. American soprano Laura Claycomb proves to be, in her short part, a good singer with the right voice for this work.

Salvatore Accardo, violin solist in Bela Bartok Violinconcerto

Salvatore Accardo

Bela Bartòk‘s red-hot writing and his Second Violin Concert, that is surely one of the most important and most difficult works written in 20th Century for this instrument, may seem on paper an ideal playground for Salvatore Accardo and his personality. Instead he prefers to emphasize the refined lyricism of each page, and he is really helped by the Finnish conductor and his presence. Accardo‘s view is probably too much lyric and not quite having a complexive view of the hard and vigorous score

.

However the soloist had really a warm success from the public that filled the large hall of New Florence Opera House to capacity (the hall is incomplete in its backstage, and, after completing the works, will host only opera performances)
. The soloist Accardo at the end of the first part of the concert gave also a beautiful encore.

Review by Fabio Bardelli