Lucerne Festival Orchestra/Abbado, Royal Albert Hall, London

Royal Albert Hall, London

Just three days after the irresistible energy of the Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra overwhelmed the Albert Hall, another unique ensemble made its Proms debut. The Lucerne Festival Orchestra is in the most literal sense a pick-up band: made up of players who spend most of the year working in other orchestras and ensembles, and come together each summer. That those other groups include some of Europe's greatest musical institutions is only one reason for the extraordinary sense of ensemble and tonal refinement that informs everything these outstanding musicians do. The alchemy that transforms them into perhaps the greatest orchestra I've ever heard, and certainly the finest around today, comes from Claudio Abbado, who has created in Lucerne an orchestra that corresponds precisely to his vision of what orchestral music-making should be.

Even in a work as massive and all-embracing as Mahler's Third Symphony, Abbado's approach is that of a chamber musician. Everything he did in this extraordinary performance was directed at sustaining an ensemble in which everyone listens intently to what all their colleagues are doing and responds instinctively. The result was totally coherent and miraculously transparent; other conductors may make the huge structure of this symphony into a more overtly emotional statement, but no one penetrates to its core more profoundly.

Nothing was overlooked. Every detail, every effect, was perfectly integrated in the whole, whether it was the sheer theatricality of the trombone solo in the huge first movement, the diaphanous upper strings veiling the offstage posthorn in the third, the perfectly natural woodwind solos that provided exquisite embroidery throughout, or the entry of the voices - the gravely beautiful Anna Larsson in the Nietzsche setting of the fourth movement, and Trinity Boys' Choir and the women of the London Symphony Chorus joining her in the Wunderhorn poem of the fifth.

It's a symphony of vivid juxtapositions and abrupt changes of musical perspective - Mahler's closest approach to Charles Ives in some respects - and here it seemed the most naturally organic structure in the world. No one who heard this performance is likely to forget it; Abbado's Mahler, like Furtwängler's Wagner and Klemperer's Beethoven in previous generations, is just peerless.

· Repeated on BBC Radio 3 on September 3. Box office: 020-7589 8212.

Contributor

Andrew Clements

The GuardianTramp

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