Last Thursday, the Mahler Academy Orchestra and Philipp von Steinaecker visited the Amsterdam Concertgebouw for the first time. And it felt as if Gustav Mahler himself was back in the building where he conducted his own work several times. Words are inadequate to describe this transformative experience. Colours, atmospheres, balance, tempo – basically everything was different from what we are used to. With Von Steinaecker conducting marvellously from memory, always as a beacon of calm and overview. (…) The use of rubato and portamenti worked phenomenally. It was marvellous how the clarinettists suddenly raised their heads like meerkats (“Keck”, Mahler wrote) and how the pizzicato of the violins sounded like a real Viennese zither. (…)
The first highlight of the season has arrived!

Steinaecker plays out this high-wire act with courage and conviction, pushing it to the very edge without ever letting the thread snap…

He and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra do not shy away from the abyssal shadows lurking beneath the supposed idyll, and after the interval, they launch an outright attack, sweeping away Wagner’s defamatory tirades against Mendelssohn’s music. The Scottish Symphony emerges gleaming with spray—whipped up, surging, and overflowing—right to the limits of what the Kammermusiksaal [of the Philharmonie] can contain. Dramatic bliss.