Twenty-First Century Mahler

The twenty-first century is still in the process of auditioning its first great Mahler conductor. With the age of Kubelík, Barbirolli and Bernstein long behind us, and even the legacies of Abbado, Tennstedt and Boulez beginning to grow fixed in the past, the time has come for a new generation of interpreters who are unafraid of the grandly scaled emotions found within Mahler’s scores. Of the younger conductors working today, Andris Nelsons has suggested he might be up to the task. Although his reading of the Fifth symphony – performed as part of a recent guest appearance with the Berlin Philharmonic – was not without its flaws, it had the merits of being consistently intriguing and frequently exciting; most importantly, it revealed a conductor who seemed to have little interest in playing it safe. Before the Mahler, however, the…