M and M

Mozart and Mahler. An interesting combination, for sure. In any case, it made for a lovely evening on Friday night, with Jeffrey Kahane directing from the piano on Mozart’s 25th piano concerto, and then conducting (after the interval) the slightly enlarged orchestra in a performance of Mahler’s 4th Symphony. The latter was a surprise to me in that I enjoyed parts of it a lot. I’d forgotten it, not having heard it in a long time, and in fact I must say I usually don’t go out of my way to listen to performances of Mahler’s symphonic works… so either I’m getting old and more forgiving, or this one has fewer of those elements I usually am not overly fond of from the composer. Hmmm….

Anyway, there it is. A good evening. One other excellent aspect is that Kahane is a fan of big dramatic gestures, and so this means great shapes of his body and clothing as he stands on the podium. He had a jacket with stiff shoulders, and pants with strong creases running down the back and front…. So that meant an interesting dialogue between the flowing, curved shapes of his gestures and the strong lines that his clothing wanted to maintain – and so another nice music-related sketching opportunity. I did not want to disturb those around me, and so did not do a lot, but I managed to throw together a sketch of one of his gestures… (Click on the image for a larger version.)

-cvj