Il brillante direttore stabile della London Symphony Orchestra, nonché zelantissimo ambasciatore della politica putiniana nel mondo, viene aspramente criticato dalla c-blogosfera per le sue ultime performances:
I could not believe what happened in the Mahler 5th which was unremitting and heartlessly driven. In the first movement’s second subject, and even in the great Adagietto, he never allowed sufficient space for the aching beauty of the music to breathe. We never caught a glimpse of the ironic subtext to the naive and sentimental aspects of the score. Rather, we were subjected to a consistently hectoring barrage from the brass who spent much of the evening playing at the extreme limits of their volume range, an effect that proved completely unproductive. It undermined any sense of structure within movements, reducing them to a succession of unrelated, blaring outbursts. Hence that wondrous moment of light and hope at the end of the tempestuous second movement, where the brass chorale rises out of the terror, went for nothing, as did its reappearance at the end of the work. Gergiev seemed utterly incapable of not whipping up speed and volume at the approach to each climax, so that, ultimately, Mahler’s Fifth was harrassed to death. I was not alone in returning tickets.
