“Enthusiastic applause and acclaim for outstanding Maestro Pietari Inkinen” in Cagliari

Pietari Inkinen’s performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection”, at the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari was described as one of the theatre’s major musical events of the season.

Writing for L’Ape Musicale, Sergio Albertini described the performance as “magnificently shaped by Pietari Inkinen” and highlighted the “remarkable artistic level” of the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari’s orchestra and chorus. He praised Inkinen’s “exceptional technique” and his “profound grasp of the symphony’s architecture”, noting how he made clear the work’s progression “from darkness to light” while drawing both intense emotional force and finely shaded lyricism from the orchestra.

Musicamore also underlined the impact of the performance, calling it “a true Event” for the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari and praising the full commitment of the performers in following “Maestro Inkinen’s assured direction”. The review concluded by noting the enthusiastic applause and acclaim for the “outstanding Maestro Pietari Inkinen”, the soloists Teresa Iervolino and Nicole Wacker, the chorus prepared by Giovanni Andreoli, and the orchestra.

You can find the press quotes below:

“Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 was magnificently shaped by Pietari Inkinen, with soloists Teresa Iervolino and Nicole Wacker, revealing the remarkable artistic level of the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari’s forces.
CAGLIARI, February 14, 2026 – In January 2019, opening its symphonic season, the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari programmed Mahler’s Second Symphony under Donato Renzetti. That season was strongly marked by Mahler, including the Fourth Symphony conducted by Massimo Zanetti with soprano Fatma Said, and Das Lied von der Erde under Lü Jia. Seven years later, this monumental symphony returns with a clear generational shift: on the podium, Pietari Inkinen.
In an era filled with chatter about “young conductors,” it is worth recalling some milestones in the career of the forty five year old Finnish maestro. The music of Richard Wagner has occupied a central place in his artistic path. In 2023 he led the new production of the Ring at the Bayreuth Festival, staged by Valentin Schwarz. At the same festival in 2021, he conducted Hermann Nitsch’s semi staged Die Walküre. His acclaimed Ring cycles for Opera Australia in 2013 and 2016 earned him the 2014 Helpmann Award for Best Musical Direction and the 2016 Green Room Award for Best Opera Conductor. In 2014, his production of Das Rheingold at Teatro Massimo in Palermo received the Franco Abbiati Prize from the Italian Music Critics Association for Best Production.
An exceptional technique marked his first-ever performance of this vast symphony. He stood before an orchestra and chorus bathed in a distinctive sonic glow, reflecting the high level reached by Cagliari’s artistic forces. One hopes for a national or international tour to showcase this quality more widely, and perhaps even a broadcast on Rai Radio3.
Gustav Mahler, one of the last towering figures of late Romanticism, was at the same time a precursor of twentieth-century music. His complex personality and writing openly expressed emotional and physical suffering. His Jewish heritage and music grappling with existential uncertainty stood in contrast to a fin de siècle culture that often masked instability behind superficial confidence.
Despite Austrian antisemitism, Mahler’s rise as a conductor began early. In the summer of 1880, at age twenty, he secured his first post at a small summer theater. Seventeen years later he became Kapellmeister and then director of Vienna’s Hofoper, later the Staatsoper, the most prestigious musical institution of its time.
Mahler took six years to complete the Second Symphony. In 1886, after finishing his completion of Weber’s unfinished opera Die drei Pintos, he experienced a hallucinatory vision of himself lying in a coffin surrounded by flowers. This inspired what became the first movement, initially titled Totenfeier (Funeral Rites). Uncertain whether it should stand alone as a symphonic poem, he set it aside until 1893, when he decided it would form the opening of a new symphony. All movements were drafted except the finale. The genesis of that conclusion came in February 1894 at the funeral of Hans von Bülow, when Mahler was struck by the choir singing Klopstock’s chorale Aufersteh’n: “It was like a lightning bolt for my soul.”
Inkinen demonstrates a profound grasp of the symphony’s architecture, a work of formidable interpretive difficulty. He makes fully clear the progression from darkness to light, highlighting individual sections with a richly varied dynamic palette. He draws from the orchestra both intense emotional force and, in the second movement Ländler, a melancholic and seemingly fragile lightness.
In the first movement he underscored contrasts without exaggeration, immediately conveying the searing character of the great funeral march. The cellos and especially the eight double basses delivered a snarling despair through powerful, dark bow strokes and striking plunges into the low register. In the development, the English horn melody and the sharply articulated horns, distorting the “Dies Irae,” stood out vividly.
The second movement’s strings and winds evoked a gently unsettling pastoral atmosphere, an attempt to counter the pain of existence. Inkinen fully respected Mahler’s marking “Sehr gemächlich,” very leisurely and pleasant.
The timpani opened the third movement impressively. Inkinen allowed the sarcastic cantilena to reveal life’s absurdity, while the bright clarity and flawless intonation of the trumpets shaped a melody tinged with nostalgia. The orchestra erupted in a staggering fortissimo, a desperate cry.
The primordial light of Urlicht was beautifully sung by Teresa Iervolino, her warm, well projected mezzo voice rising above the strings. Positioned on a platform behind the violins, she carried effectively; Nicole Wacker’s later entrances were more subdued, particularly in ensemble passages with the chorus in the final movement. Here Inkinen faithfully observed Mahler’s direction “very solemn but simple.”
The finale unfolded as an apotheosis. The brass, the nightingale like call over the graves, the chorus entering in triple pianissimo, and the mezzo’s final solo “O glaube, mein Herz!” were unforgettable. Inkinen maintained total command of the movement’s complexity, bringing contrapuntal textures into striking clarity. The chorus, meticulously prepared by Giovanni Andreoli, delivered one of its finest performances, proclaiming “Aufersteh’n” in triple fortissimo and embodying the ascent from despair to hope and light, culminating in the resounding conclusion with organ, timpani, bells, and the two harps integral to Mahler’s radiant sonic heaven.
The audience responded enthusiastically, attentive and deeply focused in a way rarely experienced in Cagliari.”
Sergio Albertini, L’Ape Musicale

“It has often been said that there was a time when a performance of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in C minor for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, “Resurrection,” represented a true event even in the most important and celebrated musical centers of the world.
For our city and for our Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, it still does, and this evening it truly was an Event. Not only because of the involvement of 195 artists from the Chorus and Orchestra, together with the two soloists, Nicole Wacker and Teresa Iervolino, and conductor Pietari Inkinen, but above all for what this extraordinary journey from death to resurrection left in the emotions, the consciousness, and the very being of each listener.
Simply having fulfilled practically all of the composer’s demands could almost be considered a challenge successfully met: there was the organ in the Finale representing the “Divine Voice” (though one might have preferred it slightly more powerful); there was the offstage band suggesting the call from beyond (with a few small blemishes easily forgiven); there was the rute in the large and richly equipped percussion section guiding the Scherzo (as well as the bells in the Finale, which perhaps could have been a touch brighter and more radiant). Above all, however, there was the full commitment of all the performers in following Maestro Inkinen’s assured direction.
He chose what is perhaps the most customary interpretive path today: clarity and structural cohesion in every movement, without seeking out particular “calligraphic” moments or strongly personal trademarks, which nonetheless exist in abundance in the score of the Bohemian genius.
Thus, we had to forgo extreme emphases (and therefore many “ppp” dynamic markings and “ritenuto” tempo inflections) in favor of a continuous sense of flow in the musical discourse, which carried us toward the final apotheosis.
The first movement made of the “Totenfeier” more a tragic meditation than a true human tragedy (with some appreciable glissandi from the strings that are not always heard). The Andante perhaps conveyed more of a pastoral spirit (almost serene in its rustic Ländler) than a nostalgic, painful wound. The Scherzo was well paced rhythmically, though without that frenetic sense of chaos some conductors drive toward the “desperate cry” that concludes the movement and opens the music to the Urlicht, the “primeval light,” fairly well sung by Iervolino and adequately supported by the conducting (though, in my view, without reaching that feeling of “the soul speaking” that I have sometimes heard on recordings).
In the Finale, the sonic outbursts were sufficiently executed, alternating with moments of orchestral suspension (though never reaching that profound stillness that could serve as the other side of catastrophe), and the Chorus, at its entrance, even with a pianissimo that was not extreme, fulfilled its role.
In conclusion, an excellent performance by the Orchestra (some imperfections — such as the double pizzicato at the end of the Andante not perfectly synchronized, very few rhythmic slips, a wish for greater brass presence in the Finale, and other points already mentioned — do not diminish, for example, the very fine playing of the woodwinds in the demanding Scherzo, the solidity in the “march of the dead” of the majestic concluding movement, and, in my view, the deeply human oboe in the Urlicht; above all, they largely dispelled my initial concerns before the concert) and also by the Chorus, which, seated at the beginning and then rising theatrically as prescribed by the composer, contributed to greater stage presence and vocal power (though perhaps even more would have been needed to overcome the well-known acoustic challenges of our stage).
Enthusiastic applause and acclaim for the outstanding Maestro Pietari Inkinen, for the two soloists — soprano Nicole Wacker and mezzo-soprano Teresa Iervolino — and for all our chorus members prepared by Maestro Giovanni Andreoli, as well as the orchestra musicians.”
Giorgio Pitzalis, Musicamore

[Photo: Angelo Cucca / Teatro Lirico di Cagliari]