hear,hear!!!

David Bourne, Hitchin, Herts

I will never forget this evening like I will never Abbado´s
13 years in Berlin with many concerts just as unique and overwhelming as yesterday´s performance.
On the one hand I am grateful that we could follow him during his best period as a conductor, on the other hand such a great performance of Mahler 3 makes me a bit sad as it shows how much we have lost in Berlin when he left in May 2002.

Jan Renner, Berlin,

I had a ticket, but I was too ill to go, so I heard it on Radio 3. Why wasn't it on BBC 4? As broadcast, it sounded too quiet. Mahler 3 is a huge Symphony; overwhelming in the right kind of performance but this was too delicate. The first movement kept fading away to nothing, and therefore sounded episodic. It's not chamber music and surely it shouldn't be played that way. Much of the performance, of course, was quite exquisite - I'd love to have been there - but only in the final Adagio - or so it seemed to me, did Abado and his glorious band even attempt to reach the sublime heights that Mahler intended.

By Friday I was fit enough to hear Haitink, the Concert-gebouw and Bruckner 8 at the RAH. Here was a real, robust, live orchestra with, perhaps, the most experienced maestro on the Planet; actual direct, over-whelming music-making, not some mystic fantasy. But I shall still listen to the Abado repeat.

Prof Geoffrey Broadbent, Southsea, England

Richard Morrison's review of Proms Mahler 3 by Abaddo and his reference to Bernstein's Mahler 5 of 20 years ago strikes a chord with me. I missed the Abaddo,my mistake, but saw Bernstein with the VPO at the Albert Hall. They started with Mozart's clarinet concerto and you just felt the sheer class of both conductor and orchestra.
Sitting where I was, to the right of the VPO it was easy to see both Bernstein and the audience. Towards the end of the Adagietto the audience just looked totally mesmerised.
This peformance, to my knowledge, has never been released on CD by BBC records probably for contractural reasons to do with Bernstein's estate. Please lend your weight for this and the Abaddo (?) to be released on CD in the near future.
Yours,

Douglas Anderson, Esher, Surrey

There are quite a few young conductors who have been given support by Claudio Abbado, among them also Gustavo Dudamel. Whereas you draw attention to " what Daniel Harding is trying to do", I suggest that Dudamel is already doing it.

Michael Knight, Geneva, Switzerland

Maestro Abbado is an inspiration to all who work with him and to all who attend his concerts. I too was there on Wednesday evening and witnessed his extraordinary skill with the baton and that floating left hand from which sublime music seems to flow. He is, quite simply, the greatest conductor alive today. The scandal is that this was not televised so a wider audience could have appreciated it. Shame on you BBC!

Victor, Cardiff, UK

At last , recognition that there are better ways of interpreting Mahler than the "cheap thrills" b ombastic flatulence so popular in some circles. Time to re assess and appreciate what Daniel Harding is trying to do., in this light. Harding is Abbado's protege, conducting and directing Abbado's pet orchestras, like GMCO and GMJO and is perhaps more intimately conected to the Abbado ethos than anyone else. At last now his intelligent chamebr like intensity might be appreciated, because it springs from Abbado. If Abbado s a great Mahler conductor, and ihe is, surely it follows thatt who he entrusts his orchestras to, and whom he respects, should deserve more appreciation from the shallow "know it alls" in this country.

Pat, Oxford, UK