In today’s Orange County Register online, I review the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Semyon Bychkov, who performed Mahler’s cheerful Sixth Symphony in town last night. Here’s an excerpt:
***
Members of the Vienna State Opera Orchestra were in two places, continents apart, Thursday. One contingent was in Vienna, performing waltzes for the annual Opera Ball, a high society event that made news this year with the attendance, by invitation from a quirky millionaire, of Ruby, an 18-year-old Moroccan girl at the center of a sex scandal surrounding Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
The other contingent, constituted as the Vienna Philharmonic, performed in Orange County for the first time in nine years. Under the direction of the Russian-American conductor Semyon Bychkov, the Philharmonikers had no time for nonsense, glitzy, scandalous or otherwise. A single piece rested on their music stands – Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 in A minor, nicknamed the “Tragic.” There would be no intermission, no encore, and certainly no dancing.
Classical Life 