Thomas Sanderling
News & Reviews
Weinberg Premiere
in Wien
Thomas Sanderling conducted the Austrian premiere performances of Mieczysław Weinberg's final opera The Idiot at the Theater an der Wien with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra in April and May 2023.
Sanderling and Shostakovich in Tallinn
Thomas Sanderling conducted an all-Shostakovich programme (Symphony No. 11, Cello Concerto No. 2 with Marc Coppey) with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra on 4 March.
Sanderling conducts DSO Berlin at Babyn Yar
Thomas Sanderling conducted the Deutsches Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin in a special concert (Shostakovich 13) on 6 October to mark the 80th Anniversary of the Babyn Yar massacre.
Reviews
Veijo Murtomäki writing in Helsingin Sanomat, the leading Finnish daily, on October 12, 2013
Thrilling Shostakovich
Helsinki almost became the scene of the premiere of a score by Dmitri Shostakovich that had been missing for 70 years. Amid the horrors of war, Shostakovich wrote his cycle of six songs, Op. 62 (1942) – settings of English poems in Russian translation – for bass and piano. He later arranged it for orchestra (1943) and, when this got lost, made a version for chamber orchestra (1971).
The orchestral version, only recently discovered, was thrilling. It sounded sensitive and strong, military and macabre. In other words, a clear improvement on the chamber version, especially as Thomas Sanderling, who had already internalised his Shostakovich at an early age, succeeded in extracting extreme shades from the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra.
The poems had been restored to their original British versions, with which baritone Gerald Finley gave an impressive performance. The composer’s arrangement of Annie Laurie was totally authentic and pleasing.
Sanderling did a grand job with the Symphony No. 4 (1878/80) by Anton Bruckner: the HPO sounded as if it had been born again. After a lucky start, we got some imposing, devout, characterful and rich German romanticism.
