Page 200 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

strange if a music director left thinking he’d ticked all the boxes. I really
wanted to round off the Wagner project with Tristan und Isolde but we

couldn’t afford it, which of course doesn’t close the door to ever doing it in

the future, should that prove workable.”

Elder’s immediate focus is on his Hallé swan song in Edinburgh, and a

programme that matches the Mahler with Lili Boulanger’s spiritually dense
setting of Psalm 130, composed in her sick bed with the help of her sister

Nadia a year before her premature death. For that, they’ll be joined by the

Edinburgh Festival Chorus.

Then there’s the small matter of the deconstruction of Mahler’s Fifth the

day before the performance, with the audience sitting on beanbags around
and within the orchestra. “What I don’t want to do there is simply give a

guided tour of the symphony. When I did that some years ago, people wrote

in to say they’d bought tickets for a concert, not a lecture. It’s very
important to get the tone right, give context and deeper understanding, to

engage in an uninhibited way.”

Nor does Elder want to repeat the horror he faced on his last working visit to

Scotland. Stuck by a sudden bug he was unable to complete a week’s

engagement with the BBC SSO. “I was smitten overnight and couldn’t have
conducted a bus that day!” he recalls. All is about to be remedied though. “I

enjoy the SSO very much and will be with them again before Christmas,
conducting Sibelius, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky.” So much for retirement.

Sir Mark Elder presents Mahler 5 Inside Out with the Hallé Orchestra on 16

August, followed by a full performance of the Mahler symphony and Lili
Boulanger’s Psalm 130 on 17 August, both events at the Usher

Hall. www.eif.co.uk