BBC Philharmonic, Anja Bihlmaier conductor: Brahms Hungarian Dances No. 1, 3 & 10; Bartok Concerto for Orchestra.  Manchester Collective: Hannah Peel, Neon; Michael Gordon, Industry; Steve Reich, Double Sextet

I had thought at first this was something to do with the Manchester International Festival, but it wasn’t! Quote from the publicity blurb: “The orchestras and ensembles of Manchester and The Bridgewater Hall are thrilled to announce the launch of a unique collaboration. Manchester Classical will see the Hallé, BBC Philharmonic, Manchester Camerata, Manchester Collective and a host of stellar artists come together for a breath-taking weekend of music, food, crafts and free foyer entertainment, all in and around The Bridgewater Hall.”. I guess this is something akin to Classical Sheffield and their weekend, with the greater resources available in Manchester, including RNCM.

This was a nice and interesting afternoon in Manchester. I was rather wondering who would turn up for this for an hour on a Saturday afternoon, but in fact the hall was pretty full for both concerts – certainly in the stalls – and with a wider range of people there than in the standard evening concerts. It really does seem that there is an audience in Manchester for classical music that is a very price sensitive one – all tickets were £10. There were also more young people and children than there normally would be.

As you can see I went to two very different one hour concerts. The BBC Philharmonic had a very energetic conductor I had not heard of before, who’s currently the chief conductor of the Hague Residency orchestra. The Bartok I hadn’t really listened to at all since I last heard it live performed by Essa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia about 4-5 years ago. I love the unexpectedness and variety of the Bartok piece and the ways in which themes glisten brightly and momentarily and then disappear. The performance had many enjoyable moments but I did feel at times that the conductor was choosing speeds at one or two points – particularly in the 2nd and 5th movements – that prevented the orchestra from articulating the music as clearly as it might have sounded at slightly slower speeds eg the big trumpet tune in the finale. The same was true of the Brahms – the wind flurries that accompany the main tune of the first dance didn’t sound quite as clear as they should have done (and as they do , say, in the Abbado Berlin Phil recording). But overall I enjoyed this concert and it was well received by the audience – plus there was much less coughing and shuffling than normal (and no errant mobile phones) than in other concerts in Manchester I have been at recently.

The Manchester Collective show focused on various forms of minimalism. The group consisted of a violinist (Rakhi Singh) who I saw in Sheffield a year or so ago, a pianist, cellist, flute and clarinet and ?xylophone/vibraphone?. It’s very interesting to read John Adams’ excellent autobiography ‘Hallelujah Junction’ and realise the dead end that modernist serialism represented to composers in the 70s in the US, and the way forward that at the time minimalism seemed to offer. In some ways of course in turn minimalism is also itself a bit of a dead end – it is part of John Adams’ genius that he uses the tools of minimalism while building a much more complex orchestral palette. To my mind the most successful piece of the three performed in this show was the first, ‘ Neon’, by Hannah Peel celebrating [I think] the art of creating coloured neon lighting patterns in Japan and a lament for the art of traditional glassmakers. It was in three movements that were clearly differentiated and, within the constraints of the minimalist idiom had a melancholy beauty – it was also atmospherically lit on stage.   ‘Industry’ was a bit of a unique item – it’s for solo cello and some kind of plugged-in speaker that distorts certain notes on the instrument, and it consists basically of the same three-note – occasionally four-note – pattern getting louder and louder and more and more distorted, reflecting the grinding nature of the Industrial Revolution. It’s clearly worth hearing once but I am happy to leave it at that…… The final piece by Reich I found simply went on too long for the minimalist patterns it conveyed. Somebody had linked up a grainy black and white film of people dancing in what I assume was The Hacienda in the 1980’s, to show on a screen behind the players and this suited the music rather well, I thought. The musicians of the Collective were all very good indeed, particularly the xylophonist/vibraphone player

The Hallé with Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus and Leeds Festival Chorus: Sofi Jeannin conductor; Claire Rutter soprano; Rosie Aldridge mezzo-soprano; Sam Furness tenor; David Shipley bass

I am currently reading and enjoying Fiona Maddock’s latest book about Rachmaninov in Exile. Rachmaninov visited Sheffield City Hall on several occasions in the 1930’s, and described it as the ‘deadest’ acoustic he’d ever dealt with. Yup, you said it, Sergei Vasilyevich………..(though it does have beautiful art deco decorations)

Another Sunday, another big choral work……I have already been to one Halle Verdi Requiem this season and in the normal run of things would probably have given this one a miss. However, I am not doing that much musically over the next few weeks, and I had also been invited to a reception beforehand, so I decided to go along.

A little more than a year ago I went to a similar ‘end of season’ big concert -Walton’s Belshazzar’s  Feast – in Sheffield which was dismally attended. Someone somewhere had clearly decided it was going to be different this year. The big reception beforehand had free booze, the Lord Mayor and his consort of Sheffield were in attendance, and there were speeches about the next Sheffield classical music season. I wasn’t quite sure why I had been invited there, in truth – maybe as a Halle ‘friend’ with a Sheffield post code or maybe because I’m a trustee of the Sheffield Music Academy. Anyway I had a free beer and enjoyed the speeches while the concert itself was well attended, the hall as full as I remember it pre-pandemic, and the audience relatively diverse (for Sheffield concerts) and enthusiastic

This was a straightforward, well executed performance. I am not really a huge fan of the work, though the opening of the Dies Irae, the sound of the Last Trump and some of the lyrical passages are always affecting, and (as I’ve probably said before) the Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua. Hosanna in excelsis! section of the Sanctus is one of the most beautiful sounds in all music (the melody, the fluttering flutes) – I am always moved to tears by it. The best elements in this performance were the chorus and orchestra. Sofia Jeannin is a choral specialist and it showed in the precision and class of singing from two groups that I would normally judge to sound less impressive than say the Halle’s or one of the London big orchestra choruses. There were none of the usual over enthusiastic tenors getting a bit out of synch or ragged sopranos. The orchestra sounded in good form – plenty of bite in the noisy bits and e.g. a lovely bassoon solo in the Dies Irae sequences plus the fast breakneck downward string passages between the bass drum thumps were both clear and powerful. The off-stage trumpets were very much on-stage and created a strong sound. Of the soloists Rosie Aldridge impressed with a very powerful lower register of the sort that.one had assumed died with Kathleen Ferrier. The soprano had some beautiful moments but also some points where you wondered whether she would make or sustain some high soft notes; however she also phrased the music beautifully at times. Similarly the tenor made me nervous at times in his higher register. But these criticisms are minor and assume what this group of soloists undoubtedly were – at an international level

Halle Orchestra – conductor Sir Mark Elder; Gemma Summerfield soprano; Sarah Connolly mezzo-soprano; Andrew Staples, tenor; Ashley Riches bass-baritone; Hallé Choir and Associates choral director Matthew Hamilton; Ad Solem (University of Manchester Choral Programme) choral director Robert Guy

Guess when the complete “Kingdom” was premiered at the Proms…..1920? 1934? No…1999 (Apostles 1990)– which shows the deep neglect of the Apostles and The Kingdom for many years

Though, as I’ve mentioned, I never had that much of an affection for the Apostles till relatively recently, I have loved The Kingdom ever since my teenage years, when I listened repeatedly to the late 1960’s Boult recording – particularly the passage in Part 1 from ‘ And suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind’ to the end of Part 1, which I associate with summer sunsets blazing over South London as I looked out 16 floors up in our Council flat in Deptford listening to the Kingdom, particularly the glorious chorus ending that passage. I interpreted this work not at all in a Christian sense at the time, but in the sense Elgar probably meant it,  a celebration of something like Mahler’s ‘Creator Spiritus’, a life-giving creative spirit that leads us forward into new creative realms (although maybe at this stage Elgar was still a Christian – he definitely wasn’t later).

Unfortunately, I had serious transport problems with this concert, caused by rail infrastructure unable to deal with heat.  I was due to arrive at Manchester Piccadilly 1hr.30 mins before the concert; the train arrived at Manchester in fact an hour late, only 25 mins before the concert and I then had to rush at as much of a run as I could manage, getting to the Bridgewater Hall with 5 mins to spare.  I then discovered during the interval that the last train back to my village was cancelled and I made the difficult decision to abandon the 2nd half of The Kingdom, not wanting to spend a long time getting back home by other longer and more expensive routes. As I happens the train I then caught was 30 mins late leaving Manchester Piccadilly so I could have stayed for the 2nd half after all…… All very irritating….

But this saga does suggest an issue with the Kingdom – it has a less well-balanced structure . Whereas I would never dream of leaving a performance of the Apostles half way through – to miss the glorious ending would be criminal; if necessary I’d walk home! However, the Kingdom has a slightly different, lower profile, second half and doesn’t have the massed grand choral outpouring at the end that the Apostles does. There is the beautiful aria “The sun goeth down” sung on the Boult recording incomparably by Margaret Price and a lot of beautiful slightly dream-like music. The undeniable heart of the music is the first Upper Room sequence and everything after that seems a bit of an anti-climax

Elder started off the work wonderfully, with the Prelude, one of the greatest single pieces of Elgar’s music, offering a new R. Strauss-ian energy to the already rich sound of ‘The Apostles’. Elder’s handling of the Prelude was slower than Boult’s, lingering lovingly and in my view justifiably on many of the twilight colours of this work. Elgar’s own recording –  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phTdWz-jvSA&t=246s is quite remarkable and very different to Elder – faster and with more abrupt speed changes –  I assume Boult (who must have heard Elgar conduct the Kingdom on many occasions) was leaning more to the Elgar mode. Elder’s was I think just as convincingly yearning and emotional, in a more structured maybe less jagged way

The choral forces were hugely impressive in the Upper Room scene. The penultimate soprano top whatever ‘Glorified’ was among the most amazing sounds I have ever heard in a big choral performance of this kind, and the end note, with a sort of choral glossolalia was wonderfully done, brass blazing. The whole sequence of the music in the Upper Room in the first half worked all the magic and more it has ever done for me – the whirl of the orchestra as the holy fire spreads in the room, Peter’s beautiful passage about visions, the orchestral fluttering at the reference to the Resurrection, the gradual build -up of ‘In the Name of Jesus Christ’. When I heard Elder and the Halle perform this maybe 15 years ago I thought his conducting of this passage was a bit sluggish, but this time I thought it had energy and passion alongside that ability to let the music well up naturally when it needs to that I’ve mentioned before.  Ashley Riches sang outstandingly as Peter and put his heart and soul into his performance – you really felt he had become Peter during the performance. Sarah Connolly and Gemma Summerfield (not a name I’ve come across before) were excellent.

I heard and felt my adolescent self calling at the end of the first half, and, just as I used to take the stylus off the record at that point, so I happily left the hall. I shall listen to the Radio 3 recording in due course

Halle Orchestra – conductor Sir Mark Elder; Sophie Bevan, soprano – The Angel Gabriel/The Blessed Virgin Mary;  Alice Coote mezzo-soprano – Mary Magdalene; Ed Lyon tenor  – John; Roderick Williams baritone – Jesus; David Stout bass baritone, Peter; Clive Bayley bass,  Judas; 9 Apostles from the Royal Northern College of Music; Hallé Choir choral director Matthew Hamilton; London Philharmonic Choir artistic director Neville Creed

Although I’ve had a recording of this work for many years – the old Boult one (I remember hearing it on CD on a long coach trip from Kumasi to Accra with my staff c.2005 on my Walkman {!}) – I don’t think I really appreciated this work fully until I heard a wonderful live account of the work in 2012 in Manchester by essentially the same forces as I am now hearing in 2023. I sat in the front row of the stalls in 2012, and I had come back that morning from Dubai on a business trip – I had every reason to be falling asleep, but so fine was the performance, and so beautiful, the music, that I was totally attentive and completely overwhelmed by this work at the end  – one of those moments you know you are going to treasure till the day you die. I subsequently bought the same forces’ CD of the work.

So, unless I organise myself at some point to go to the Three Choirs’ Festival, this is probably the last performance of this I will ever hear, given its infrequent appearances in the concert hall, and the fact that there are few other UK champions for it apart from Elder. Rattle maybe – he did the D o G memorably with the Vienna Phil once at the Proms, which I would have loved to go to, but was away for – but apart from Ed Gardner I don’t see anyone else out there among the younger generation of UK conductors as being likely champions (and Gardiner I suspect would probably see championing Tippet as more of a priority for championing). Having said that, I see Klaus Makela is conducting Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast at the Proms, so maybe he can be persuaded of the riches of the English oratorio tradition…… And come to think of it Sakari Oramo has been a consistent champion of Elgar and the first performance of the Apostles at the Proms was given by Gennadi Rozhdestvensky in 1980……!!

A critic at the time of the Halle’s performance of this work at the Proms in 2012 described it as a ‘second-rate choral extravaganza’. I think that’s very unfair. For one thing, the text is concise (the critic describe it as gnomic but I suspect that may be because he doesn’t know his Bible. Elgar clearly does – and the words were selected by Elgar himself. While it is of course in King James or Revised Version wording, it is either from the basic Gospel narrative or passages from the Psalms, Proverbs and some of the Prophets plus Apocrypha, and it is brought together very concisely). The work is also well-structured – Part 1 focusing on Jesus’ ministry with Mary Magdalen as a central focus, and Part 2 on the Passion, Resurrection and Ascension, with Judas as a central point of focus . Although it is not dramatically as concise as Gerontius, certainly the Judas and Mary Magdalen passages are very striking. Musically there is some wonderful moments – the dawn sequence (apart from the embarrassing Orientalising bump and grind music of the Temple Singers), the beautiful setting of ‘Alleluia’ at points through the work, the wonderful choral writing – particularly the last 10 minutes of the work, and the musical material for Judas’ soliloquy. Words from Jesus and some of the other Apostles can drag a bit musically, I would say, but there is a mine of wonderful material in this work, and in overall terms it sounds much more Elgar’s own voice, with less use of Parsifal-like material (though of course leit motifs are a feature of both the Apostles and the Kingdom).

The Halle and LPO choirs sounded glorious, raising the roof in the final chorus. But they were also equally effective in the quiet passages – of which there are a lot in this work, and a challenge the combined choirs handled well. Alice Coote and Sophie Bevan had some lovely moments as Mary Magdalene and the Angel Gabriel, while Clive Bayley  – despite some wobbles of voice occasionally, and maybe an over-operatic approach – was an impressive (and with very clear diction) Judas. The orchestra under Elder sounded wonderful – sensitively accompanying, thundering forth when required, and always with enough space to allow you to hear the inner voices of the score. I shall definitely be listening to the BBC R3 broadcast of this performance on June 28th

Again there were some extraneous noise issues, as with Gerontius. Either because of a malfunctioning air conditioning system or a malfunctioning microphone somewhere, there was a dreadful, distant hum audible in very quiet moments, somewhere above the left of the stage, in the first half (a lot of people could be heard complaining about it at the interval). Luckily this disappeared for the second half, but it was a pity the gentleman immediately to my left dropped a metal bottle of water on the floor during Judas‘ soliloquy, and Jesus seemed to have a mobile call for him from the stalls at some point in the second half. Oh well………..It will be interesting to see how the R3 broadcast deals with these problems

Director, Deborah Warner; Set Designer, Hyemi Shin; Costume Designer, Nicky Gillibrand; Lighting Designer, Adam Silverman; Choreographer, Kim Brandstrup. Cast: Wozzeck, Christian Gerhaher; Marie, Anja Kampe; Captain, Peter Hoare; Doctor, Brindley Sherratt; Margret, Rosie Aldridge; Drum Major, Clay Hilley; Andres, Sam Furness;  First Apprentice, Barnaby Rea; Second Apprentice, Alex Otterburn; The Fool, John Findon. Conductor, Sir Antonio Pappano.

I think I’m right in saying I’ve heard this work only once before live. This was the previous ROHCG production in 2013, with Simon Keenlyside as Wozzeck, and Karita Mattila as Marie, conducted in the previous Keith Warner production by Mark Elder.  This, a new production by Deborah Warner (who I once spent a week with in the 80’s haring around  Egypt in a bus touring a Shakespeare production she was directing), was a very absorbing and intense performance. Having just listened to 11 Mahler-only concerts it was very interesting to hear the similarities and differences in this work to Mahler – the use of a wide variety of styles, including a dance band, military music and a honky-tonk piano, plus using a huge orchestra are points of similarity; the basic atonal idiom is obviously different but at times of high drama like the last two transition passages we could be listening to Mahler’s 11th – or maybe 12th – symphony had he lived to write them.

It’s a very bleak work – like Peter Grimes (the links between the two works are obvious when you think about it, including both central figures drowning, and powerful orchestral interludes) it’s the story of someone who is inherently a poet but unable to express himself and who is living a miserable and squalid life. That needs to be reflected in the stage design. The visionary part was very convincing – the blood red moon looming at the back of the stage, and the row of dead leafless trees. The bleakness was well conveyed by the movable stage blocks conveying the essentials of Wozzeck’s house, the doctor’s surgery, street scenes and so forth as well as the use of the entire stage at key moments such as Marie’s killing. However the mechanism used to effect the frequent scene changes seemed rather overcomplicated – while the revolving disk centre stage worked well the various screens moving up and down seemed fussy. One of the screens was in some way slanted so that shadows of blocks and people could be seen moving across quite a wide section of the stage, which was interesting, but overall this use of screens seemed at times fussy and distracting. Costumes were grey and black except for Wozzeck and Marie.

The personen-regie was very good indeed and made the 100 minutes or so fly by – I totally believed in these characters and the horror and injustice of their lives. The injustices though are individual – people not caring for each other – rather than the communal focus of Peter Grimes. This makes the need for credible acting all the more important, and all those involved achieved this.  Christian Gerhaher was outstanding as Wozzeck, his shuffling walk the epitome of a down-trodden overburdened man. His career as primarily a lieder singer meant he offered us exceptionally clear diction, and beautifully nuanced singing – for example his singing of the fragments of the Lord’s prayer. Anja Kampe was equally convincing as Marie. I was interested to hear Clay Hilley as the Drum Major – he has been Berlin’s Siegfried recently and stood in for the first cycle Gotterdammerung Siegfried at Bayreuth last year – it sounds as though he would be impressive in that role. In the lesser roles Peter Hoares and Brindley Sherrard were particularly as the Captain and Doctor.

The orchestra sounded wonderful under Pappano  – the last 10 minutes or so of the performance were remarkable in their intensity

Halle Orchestra – conductor Sir Mark Elder; Alice Coote mezzo-soprano; Michael Spyres tenor; Neal Davies bass; Hallé Choir choral director Matthew Hamilton; Hallé Youth Choir and Alumni director Stuart Overington

Surprisingly the number of ‘Gerontius’ performances I have been to over the years has been very small. I don’t think I’ve heard the Halle and Elder perform it before – though I had a ticket for a performance of theirs in 2017 I couldn’t go – some work related crisis……I heard Boult conduct it at the Proms in 1970 and Colin Davis with Anne-Sofie von Otter in 2005. I am pretty sure I heard Janet Baker sing it – possibly with Davis again – at some point in the 70’s.

Why on earth is it that, 120 years on, The Dream of Gerontius remains compellingly popular? It has Newman’s dreadful fusty late Victorian verse, and a Prelude almost embarrassingly over-indebted to Parsifal. The kind of theology embedded within it is alien enough to me, a liberal Anglican,  let alone a much much wider secular audience. The character Gerontius often sounds priggish, pompous and over assured of his salvation (though maybe that is the point – however I don’t know how much dramatic subtlety I would credit Newman with……) A large part of what makes the work gripping, I think, is the drama of Part 2 – whatever the theology or assumptions behind it, Newman is undoubtedly daring in envisaging what being a soul might feel like and what it might talk about after death, and Gerontius’ priggishness is undoubtedly deflated by the judgement he receives. And the glorious music, of course – to me, although Part 1 has some lovely musical moments, the work really starts to take flight at the ‘Profiscere’ and continues at an exalted level after that both dramatically and musically. I think also – though some would disagree – that the Wagnerian echoes (again Amfortas stands rather obviously behind Gerontius’ agonies in Part 1) recede in Part 2, and Elgar’s authentic voice breaks through more strongly.

A word in parenthesis about unswitched off or unsilenced mobile phones……occasionally I’ve heard a notification call at a distance, which has been momentarily distracting but not really an annoyance. This time though, just as Michael Spyres was finishing his (very moving) ‘Take me away’, a 5 note notification call opened up right next to me – 5 rows from the front of the stalls. I thought it must be mine, so loud and close was it, even though I knew in my head I had switched the thing off (but had I leaned on it so that it had come on by mistake….?) and I spent a minute panicking, into the Angel’s Farewell….in the end I knew it couldn’t have been mine (and I confirmed this was the case when I got out of the hall) but it was very upsetting and disturbing, caused sadly not by somebody careless and unheeding but by someone elderly who clearly  had forgotten to check.

This was a very fine performance indeed. Part of Elder’s way with this music, and the weight of tradition the orchestra carries with it, is to be unrushed, to let the music unfold naturally, to flow like a broad river, but without ever seeming to be sluggish ; the Prelude sounded grand but not grandiloquent; the ‘Profiscere’ was deftly handled with just the right amount of kick as the choir takes over from the bass; ‘Praise to the Holiest’ sounded expansive, but not in a loose way – just very much alive, with all the details able to tell. The orchestra at the end was just radiant, as the Angel’s Farewell surged. Perhaps my only quibble was that the orchestra didn’t quite produce enough of a blindingly vehement audio-flash when Gerontius faces God, finally

Michael Spyres is a ‘baritenor’ (not a phrase I’ve come across before) but who is clearly up for all the demands of this role.  I thought he was very good indeed – he had the power for ‘Sanctus Fortis, Sanctus Deus’, and ‘Take me away’, and the last two lines from the latter were very moving.  I look forward to hearing him at the Proms in the Trojans in early September. Neal Davies was a good, though not outstanding bass. However Alice Coote was quite exceptional – every phrase was beautifully pointed, every word crystal clear. Her soft singing at ‘My work is done’ and ‘Softly and gently’ was absolutely beautiful – the latter I thought eclipsed even Janet Baker’s recorded account with Simon Rattle (which is the highest praise I can offer).  The choirs sounded marvellous – ‘Praise to the Holiest’ was really thrilling – the soprano wave at the climax was spine-tingling and the final note of that section was seemingly endless, and glorious

A great performance then of a work that does need inspirational leadership of the sort that Elder provided to engage a modern audience. The audience seemed to regard it all as a bit of an event and unfortunately  the applause started before the measured pause at the end was over. A pity….like the mobile call………….

Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Semyon Bychkov: Mahler Symphony No 6

And so to the final concert, after 12 previous live musical events (plus two one-hour sessions of Bach), 11 talks, and one film over 11 days…….

This was (here I go with those superlatives again) a magnificent performance. I doubt if I have ever heard a better one live (I have heard Haitink, Chailly, Boulez and Harding conduct this). The reasons for this were, I think:

1. That the orchestra played magnificently – soaring strings, wonderful first horn, very striking  – in several sense of the word – timpanist, a beautiful warm sound, but at the same time playing as though they were putting a special effort into this performance; their playing had a few minor fluffs, but that somehow emphasised the emotional commitment of the playing – they weren’t a super-orchestra on auto-pilot
2. That Bychkov conducted the work superbly – all the tempi made absolute sense. He also – marked as being necessary in the score but not always observed – took the repeat in the first movement. He played the Andante 3^rd, which to me makes more emotional sense, and is the way I got to know the piece in the recording I had as a teenager (Bernstein NYPO). There were many memorable moments:
   1. The slowing down (but not suddenly and not crassly) for the Alma theme in the first movement
   1. Within quite a fast basic pulse in the first movement, the sense of quiet and ethereality of the passage with the cowbells
   1. The sweep of the end of the first movement
   1. The slow winding down of the slow movement towards its end
   1. The glorious string sound and broadening of tempo for the climax of the slow movement
   1. The careful gradation of tempi in the finale – this can very easily seem episodic, and the conductor has to get the sense of crisis upon crisis building up in the music, with the first two hammer blows as only temporary relief. Bychkov did this superbly
   1. The broadening of tempo before the third hammer blow (which Bychkov like most did not seek to reinstate)

              These are only some of the memorable moments from this performance.

___________________________________________________________________________

So, all in all, summing up the Festival in an obviously subjective and fairly general way, I’d say that the only performance I felt was sub-standard as a performance, from a conducting perspective, (though well played) was the 1^st Symphony. I was out of sorts for DLVDE and so can’t comment on that. The evening with Das Klagende Lied was interesting and absorbing. Symphonies Nos 2, 4, 7, and 10 received very good performances. The stand-outs for me were Symphonies Nos 3, 5, 6, 8 and 9., particularly Nos 5, 6 and 9 The orchestras were all strikingly good in their different ways. A marvellous 11 days!

MDR Symphony Orchestra, MDR Radio Choir, Dennis Russell Davies conductor, Chen Reiss soprano, Sophie Harmsen alto, Attilio Glaser tenor: Gustav Mahler — Totenfeier; Gustav Mahler — Wunderhorn and Rückert-Lieder in arrangements for voice and orchestra (selection); Gustav Mahler — Das klagende Lied ((revised version in two movements from 1898))

Leipzig this afternoon was particularly bonkers, with huge numbers of football fans singing loudly in the main town market place, a huge number of police cars about, and continuing large numbers of Goths promenading, with many in black 19^th century gear. But there was a place of stillness in the Thomaskirche, and about 45 minutes of music by Bach, Mendelssohn, Byrd and a modern Norwegian composer, Ola Gjeilo, performed by the Boys Choir and members of the Gewandhaus orchestra. The most substantial work they performed was the Bach Cantata BWV59 – ‘We mich liebet, der wird mein Wort halten’. I sang along with a hymn – shared between congregation and choir – with words by Luther and an older melody arranged by Bach, which felt great!

The evening concert was not as high octane an evening as others in this Festival, but certainly a worthwhile one to go to. I hadn’t known that Totenfeier, the first version of the first movement of Mahler 2, had emerged from a discussion with Richard Strauss about death, and an agreement that both should write symphonic poems on the subject! Strauss’ contribution was Tod und Verklarung – which, it has to be said, is  a much less original piece than Mahler’. Totenfeier is essentially the same as the final version but without the enlarged orchestra that entails – this version has 4 horns and I think double woodwind, with maybe 3 trumpets and trombones. Where there are differences musically, they tend to be cuts to the earlier version rather than additions to the later one, and some inner voices particularly woodwind sometimes get lost because of the reduced number of instruments. A fascinating piece to hear…

The Mahler songs chosen from Des Knaben Wunderhorn  and the Ruckert lieder tended to be rather sweet-toothed and as a group a bit bland. It is a pity some of the more macabre Wunderhorn ones weren’t chosen as a contrast. Sophie Harmsen sang them very well.

Das Klagende Lied was revised by 1898 and that was the version we heard in the concert – there are recordings of the original version and it would be interesting to hear that. So views that this sounds, as a piece written by Mahler as a Conservatoire student, like ‘pure Mahler’ are a bit suspect. Nonetheless it is remarkable how much foreshadowing melodically there is of the 2^nd Symphony as well as occasionally of the 1^st. It was very well done by the Leipzig Radio forces

Gewandhaus Orchestra, MDR Radio Choir, Leipzig Opera Chorus, St. Thomas Choir Leipzig, Gewandhaus Choir, Gewandhaus Children’s Choir, Andris Nelsons conductor, Emily Magee soprano (Magna Peccatrix), Jacquelyn Wagner soprano (Una poenitentium), Ying Fang soprano (Mater gloriosa), Lioba Braun mezzo-soprano (Mulier Samaritana), Gerhild Romberger mezzo-soprano (Maria Aegyptiaca), Benjamin Bruns tenor (Doctor Marianus), Adrian Eröd baritone (Pater ecstaticus), Georg Zeppenfeld bass (Pater profundus): Symphony No 8.

The other thing that’s happening in Leipzig at present is the largest annual Goth festival in the world- https://wave-gotik-treffen.de/english/info/info.php . There are huge numbers of people in black, many with chains, women with spiked hair in unusual colours and heavy make up/white faces, and blokes with pony tails, various sort of hats, particularly top hats, and tatoos. There’s even a Pagan Village somewhere – most are middle-aged, some staying in the same hotel as me.

So…..on now to the big one. The last Mahler 8 I heard was in early 2020 in Birmingham conducted by Mirga. It was quite driven, but very good. The other Mahler 8’s I’ve heard over the years have been conducted bu Colin Davis and Pierre Boulez – I remember also Charlie Groves in the Ally Pally, oddly, in about 1971 (which felt very much like the huge exhibition space in Munich, holding 3000 people that was the site of the first performance in 1910, and Mahler’s greatest public triumph), and a performance that might have been at the old Free Trade Hall in Manchester by Kent Nagano in the mid 1990’s. Mirga’s was probably the best I’ve heard. I found myself remembering before the concert started about my father – who had left school at 14, who had little knowledge of classical music and had only ever been to one or two concerts but who was nevertheless so bowled over by watching a Proms Mahler 8 performance on TV that he instantly demanded a recording of it for his next birthday present – we should make no assumptions about who can be responsive to and affected by Mahler’s music…..

I used to find this work difficult to take in – what was in particular Goethe’s Faust doing alongside a medieval hymn. Various talks and books – particularly Stephen Johnson’s book ‘The Eighth’ – have led me to more fully understand that both parts of the work’s text are glorifying Eros, the creative Spirit, the anima – whatever we might call it, that which leads us on to be more human, more creative, more fully aliive

Certainly everything seemed fully alive in this performance, where things came spectacularly together, and I thought it had to be the best I’ve ever heard live. The combined forces of the various choruses weren’t huge (see picture) but, given the acoustics of the hall, they sounded wonderful anyway –from where I was sitting the men sounded slightly stronger than the women, because all the men were in the middle of the choir seats in front of the organ, while the women extended to the wings on either side. The children – including the Thomaskirche boys’ choir – sounded very clear. The orchestra played extraordinarily well, sounding particularly sumptuous. The soloists for the most part sounded great, though the tenor seemed to be straining occasionally – the ones well-known to me, Emily Magee and Georg Zeppennfeld, were also those who stood out as soloists. .

Most importantly from my perspective Nelsons got all the tempi right – there was nothing which sounded too slow or too fast. To give some examples, the slow down for the huge orchestral build up to, and the choral shout off ‘Accende’ in the first half was at first enormously expansive and then with the choral entry  shot forward. The venom of ‘Hostias’ was just right. The slow down at the end of the first movement just before the entry of the additional brass was wonderfully managed, so that it sounded majestic rather than like Mirga’s bolting horses. In the second part the strings were encouraged to be gloriously sumptuous at the beginning, and the various changes of mood – eg to and from the celestial boys’ music – were handled without bumpiness. Stephen Johnson had mentioned in his pre-concert talk that there’s a particular moment after Dr Marianus’ concluding passage, where glockenspiel and celesta glitter, and high flutes and clarinets ponder, which sounds both like the conclusion of Das Lied von der Erde and seems to reflect on Mahler’s view of himself as a stranger everywhere, almost as if he’s wondering whether the concluding glorious noise is really what he wants. That passage was particularly poignant in this performance. The chorus and the orchestra at the end were overwhelming, and  – praise be – there were particularly effective gong crashes, which sometimes get overlaid with other orchestral sounds in some of the live and recorded performances I’ve heard

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 7^th 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 5^th 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