Vänskä Returns – Mahler 5

When Osmo Vänskä steps on stage, players and audience alike know that an unforgettable experience is in store. Here he joins Paul Lewis, a uniquely insightful pianist, to perform Mozart’s 23rd concerto - a garden of delights, bathed in the sun of Mozart’s inimitable creativity. Piano and orchestra were never more intimately combined than here, and even when clouds gather and the mood turns melancholy, there is still joy to be found in every single moment.

Sunlight breaks through in Mahler’s fifth symphony, but the prevailing forecast is literally ‘stormy’! Beginning with a heavy funeral march, Mahler sets a stern and sombre tone. After this the storm breaks out, but Mahler is always pushing forward to a blazingly triumphant climax – inevitably, the sun will shine and the exhilaration of triumph, as only Mahler could express, will arrive. Before it does, though, he offers us perhaps his most treasured music, the Adagietto, which celebrates the tenderest, most intimate of emotions.

“A pianist must be true to elegance and nascent volcanic spirit. Lewis did that to near-perfection…” Richard Morrison, The Times