Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, Ladies of the Saxon State Opera Choir Dresden, Children’s Choir of the Semperoper Dresden, Christian Thielemann conductor, Christa Mayer alto: Gustav Mahler — Symphony No. 3
I went to an interesting talk in the afternoon, in the auditorium of the Mendelssohn house, near the Gewandhaus, about Mahler 3, and a Leipzig philosopher Gustav Fechner, who was at the University while Mahler was in Leipzig, and who was an Idealist philosopher who propounded a theory not so different from Teilhard de Chardin’s ideas in the 20th century, of all creation on a progressive journey of consciousness towards God – Fechner wrote a book which seriously propounded that flowers had souls…..Mahler had clearly read some of his books, the relevance to 3rd Symphony is clear, and maybe also, as someone suggested in the lecture, there’s possibly an impact on the 7th as well – Fechner wrote another book about Night and Day.
After the pre-concert talk by Stephen Johnson (whose talks are free and very interesting), and a surprise appearance with Johnson of Thomas Hampson, the singer, on to a concert I was looking forward to with great interest.
I got to know this work through the first Haitink recording. It is sprawling and wonderful, and every performance is always an occasion. What I love about it is its inclusivity of musical language – the landler, the schmaltzy posthorn, the folk-song, bound up with Nietzsche and a variant on the slow movement of the Op 135 Beethoven string quarter (in Mahler’s adagio). I’ve spoken before about break-out moments and certainly there’s a major one in this symphony, towards the end of the third movement, where the brass calls out from the depths for the world to move on towards God. The Nietzsche poem gives greater depth to that – again the reference to ‘ewigkeit’, but, as Johnson I think correctly pointed out, the 5th movement emphasises compassion, and it is this that prepares the way for the final Adagio, not Nietzsche.
Mahler is not natural Thielemann territory, and I wondered what he would make of the Third Symphony. Thielemann himself is quoted in the programme as saying “I have a plan for the future with Gustav Mahler, which consists of slowly approaching his work”
I found Thielemann’s reading of the Third Symphony very fine indeed, though not effacing the Proms performance of Bernard Haitink in 2017. The principal strengths of it were:
– a very clear handling of the huge first movement’s structure, taken at quite a fast pace (in terms of the overall work Thielemann’s timing was more like 90 minutes than the 100 sometimes quoted for this work) but weighty enough to deal with all the drama inherent in this movement
– Thielmann is very good – I guess it comes from his long experience of Wagner – at building climaxes and generating energy in an orchestra – I remember describing his performance of Tristan at Bayreuth in 2017 as ‘boiling’ at times. It’s interesting to hear how he somehow rather prioritises orchestral impetus and inner glow, rather than total accuracy or clarity of sound – he’s also by far the most energetic of the conductors we’ve had in this Festival, and was obviously conveying that energetic passionate approach to the orchestra
– He is also very good at maintaining flexible tempi – he can bend them to slow down for a big climax or to emphasise a point of beauty without making you feel he is pulling the music about – there were excellent examples of that in the first movement, in the run-up to the big climaxes and also in a wonderfully melancholy passage for lower strings after one of the big outburst
After the first 5 movements, I thought this was absolutely the best I had ever heard live. The finale (where Haitink was as his strongest) was however taken at marginally too fast a pace – surprising given all Thielemann’s involvement with Bruckner, sounding at times more Andante than Adagio. That sometimes detracted from the overall spirituality of the movement, but the crashing waves of the oncoming climaxes were superbly done, and the final blaze was taken quite slowly, which was all to the good
The orchestra played magnificently, particularly trumpets, horns, trombones and the posthorn
A very satisfying evening, rounded off with an English Language film about Das Lied von der Erde, introduced by Thomas Hampson
John's musical journey 