We’re very excited to announce that A View from the Podium is going to be the official blog of The Bridgewater Hall’s “Mahler in Manchester” festival. You can visit our welcome page here.

Mahler content is nothing new at Vftp, and you can continue to access all of it by visiting the “Mahler” category. The focus of the new series for The Bridgewater is “A Performer’s Perspective,” and we’ll have a new, narrower category for that series here.

I think this is going to be an exciting project. I’m hoping to lure some friends and colleagues into contributing. The festival begins on January 16^th with a BBC Philharmonic performance of Mahler 1 conducted by Gianandrea Noseda. Weather permitting, I’ll interviewing Gianandrea later this week, and that will be available as a podcast here.

The basic goal of the series is to focus on one unique challenge, question or problem at a time that is somehow unique to the piece at hand.

The BBC Phil are pairing Mahler 1 with the premiere of Nachtmusiken by Kurt Schwertsik- every symphony in this year’s cycle is being partnered with a new work commissioned by the resident orchestras. What could be a more appropriate celebration of a composer whose music remains forever modern and forever fresh?

I hope I can make this series a fresh one- I’m taking my inspiration from the great John Madden, the legendary American football coach and commentator. In addition to having a tremendous repertoire of vocal sound effects at this disposal, he had a gift for helping viewers to understand the decisions of the players and coaches in the game. Who knows, maybe I’ll even bust out a telestrator for one of these posts…