Michael White enjoys three very different outstanding performances.
When music tourists go to Leipzig it tends to be for JS Bach, who lies buried (or seems to: there are disputes about whether it’s really him) by the chancel steps of the town’s Thomaskirche and presides in death over the rich, ongoing musical life of that famous church
But there’s no shortage of other composers whose names attach to Leipzig, one of them being Mahler, who took a job there in the 1880s conducting the Gewandhaus Orchestra: then as now one of the most venerable institutions of its kind in existence. By all accounts he was a tyrant on the podium and not greatly loved. But a century and a half later the love has grown; and I was in Leipzig recently for a massive Mahler Festival organised by the Gewandhaus with performances of all his 10 symphonies by a conveyor-belt of orchestras from around Europe.
