Mahler YO/Abbado

by Robert Thicknesse

Concert

Usher Hall, Edinburgh

WHEN Claudio Abbado puts together a concert programme, you know he expects it to be something extraordinary; and when he performs it with the Mahler Jugendorchester, the devoted youth orchestra he founded 30 years ago, the chances are that it will. It is futile to describe a concert that was about perfect. It was designed to be a high-impact event, to show off every inch of this international orchestra's technique and stamina. Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta is more demanding formally and rhythmically than in any strict technical sense, but the first movement fugue unfolded with a sure-footedness -each succeeding strand of sound, full of gentle swells and ebbs, adding to an infinitely receding, layered landscape - that made light work of the rigours of the music's architecture. Abbado has a special line in control and passion, and these five minutes told you all you needed to know in the way the violas' first white-toned entry led through minute gradations to a climax of massive breadth. Succeeding movements were the same: the use of the strings as percussion in the second, the fantastical colours of the third, still extraordinary after nearly 70 years, the lightning strikes of the fourth - played with seamless progression. To have the volatile Martha Argerich come on after this was asking for trouble, but from the jolly-boating-weather opening of Ravel's jaunty Fifth Piano Concerto it was clear she was going to be a good girl. It is a piece of such demands that Ravel found to his surprise that he was unable to play it himself, and it is in effect a concerto for an entire orchestra of virtuosi, pure display. Argerich played the first movement with a lazy schmooze, accompanied the woodwind of the second with self-effacing charm, then caught fire in the third for a roaring gallop to the finishing line. This was infectious, exhilarating stuff, a rare view of soloist, orchestra and conductor in complete concord. Even those of us unconvinced by La Mer, Debussy's oh-so-studied 1905 seascape, were hard put to quibble with the finale. This last paragraph in the orchestra's CV is designed to show the teamwork that can produce sounds never heard before: gossamer string shimmers, glowing brass and sailing-by woodwind exploring each cranny of the art of mood-through-noise.