Seen
and Heard Concert Review
Three Choirs Festival (6) :
Mahler
Eighth Symphony, Judith Howarth (soprano), Janice
Watson (soprano), Gillian Keith (soprano),
Sarah Connolly (mezzo soprano), Catherine Wyn-Rogers
(mezzo soprano), Adrian Thompson (tenor), Alan Opie
(baritone), Stephen Richardson (bass); Festival Chorus;
Choristers; Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Andrew
Nethsingha Gloucester Cathedral, 11.8. 2007 (JPr)
Unlike my colleague John
Quinn,
this concert was only my second ever foray to the Three Choirs
Festival, held as I am sure readers of John's reviews
know, for a week each August and shared between the
cathedrals of Hereford, Gloucester and Worcester. The festival
concentrates on the large-scale choral repertoire featuring
the Festival Chorus made up of an ensemble comprising the Lay
Clerks (and occasionally the boys) of the
three individual cathedral choirs augmented by members of
local choral societies from the three Festival cities. Many other major ensembles and distinguished soloists
are involved too but much of the musical programme retains the
ecclesiastical quality of its early years, now mixed and
matched with the works of British composers, including some
whose careers are closely associated with the Three Choirs
Festival. Pre-eminent amongst these are Vaughan Williams, Delius, Holst and, of course, Elgar.
My
genuine surprise was hearing and reading about how old the
festival is and this must have passed me by the only other
time I was there. The first recognised one was held in 1715
and publicity for it in
1719,
addressed ‘Members of the yearly Musical Assembly in these
parts’. Over the years it developed into two day events before
settling into its current format. The only interruptions have
been caused by the two World Wars.
I
was last in Gloucester for a Three Choirs foray into Wagner
when they performed some extracts from Parsifal in 1998.
Now I was back for a fairly rare performance of music by his ‘disciple’, Mahler.
The performance of course was a sell-out.
The Mahler performed as this year’s festival director Andrew
Nethsingha’s farewell to Gloucester (before taking up a post
at St John’s College, Cambridge) was an ambitious attempt at
the Eighth Symphony (‘Symphony of a Thousand’). The chorus was
banked up high at the end of the Nave
and left a
cramped area for the resident orchestra who this year was the
always reliable Philharmonia. Naturally, the reduced
orchestration was used and this I suppose cuts down on strings
and brass from the massive vocal and instrumental forces
required in Mahler’s score of eight soloists (3 sopranos, 2
altos, tenor, baritone, bass), a children's chorus, and mixed
double chorus. Even so, the
cut-down numbers spilled into the North and South Transepts.
The soloists made up an impressive array of artists of
international renown; Judith Howarth, Janice Watson, Gillian
Keith (sopranos), Sarah Connolly and Catherine Wyn-Rogers
(mezzos), Adrian Thompson (tenor), Alan Opie (baritone) and
Stephen Richardson (bass).
Before
assessing the performance I would like to draw on more
thoughts from David Matthews writings in ‘Mahler and
Parsifal’ which are very pertinent to the Eighth Symphony.
He writes: ‘The idea that a man can be redeemed by a woman’s
self-sacrificing love is, of course, central to Wagner’s
operas; it is also an idea that Mahler, as a Wagnerian
Romantic, was only too willing to adopt. It was quite natural
for him to cast Alma in a symbolic role (a role she was less
able to play than Cosima Wagner). For both Wagner and Mahler,
the idea has a common origin in Goethe’s Faust, and it
was to the last scene of Faust that Mahler turned when,
in his Eighth Symphony, he sought to combine the religious
aspiration of his earlier symphonies with the human aspiration
of the middle-period works in a huge synthesis … Mahler’s
conception here of human sexual love as a spiritual force is
very different from the orthodox Christian view presented in
Parsifal, that redemption is only possible through
ascetic self-denial … the conception of the Finale is
quasi-operatic and is the nearest Mahler got to writing a
Parsifal of his own’.
The printed Three Choirs Festival programme
told the international audience - the Festival attracts
visitors from all over the world - little about
any of this. It's a compendium programme of course, covering all
the concerts given during festival week which precludes too much
detail but with Mahler, as with Wagner, there are
always other stories to tell.
As for the
performance it is more than likely that with large numbers
involved there is a good chance things may go wrong. Under
Andrew Nethsingha’s metronomic baton the symphony raced by
possibly coming in well under 80 minutes. I don’t know whether
it was my seat or whether I was getting acclimatised to the
acoustics but whilst everyone was on a page of the score
during the early minutes I am not certain it was the same one.
The first movement seemed to whip along at a more impetuous
Allegro than the composer intended bringing its own problems
of ensemble and intonation. This movement rushed to its end.
Mahler's description of this symphony as one where ‘the
experience of the music should be overwhelming, it should
leave you feeling, however briefly, that this is
unquestionably the greatest piece of music ever written’ was
met more by the second movement which created a greater sense
of atmosphere, this heightened mystery brought about mainly by
the sparer orchestration here, it all slows down a little in
places and so there is more spirituality evident but not that
much was allowed as the race to the end of the work always
seemed to be pursued to everyone’s disadvantage. The orchestra
didn’t seem to be concerned with any intricate details or
invest their playing with much real feeling but they were
never less than a competent accompaniment to an often exciting
wall-of-sound from the Festival Chorus and Choristers.
The soloists seemed under pressure throughout with some
occasional straining and stentorian delivery. It was Janice
Watson’s (Una Poenitentium) that suffered most towards the end
but they were all vastly experienced. Gillian Keith’s voice
soared sweetly from on high as the ‘Mater Gloriosa’, Catherine
Wyn-Rogers was her always reliable self as ‘Maria Aegyptiaca’
making light work of what others find difficult, Adrian
Thompson radiantly invoked the Eternal Feminine and Sarah
Connolly’s ‘Mulier Samaritana’ also deserves special mention
for controlled resonant singing.
Andrew Nethsingha relentlessly urged on his forces even when
some of the music called for a little restraint. His was a
wonderful achievement undoubtedly but that of an ardent
enthusiast, rather than someone steeped in Mahler. It was
obvious that another rehearsal or two might have helped
communication enormously and have removed any number of
seemingly ragged entrances. It was so loud most of the time
too that there was nowhere really to go in the final crescendo
but he seemed to engender the necessary excitement to bring
the audience to their feet. Mahler won in the end …though
seemingly against the odds.
Jim Pritchard
