SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Mahler and Strauss: Zlata Bulycheva (mezzo-soprano), Elena Mosuc (soprano), London Symphony Chorus, Valery Gergiev (conductor) Barbican Hall, London 20. 4.2008 (JPr)

Strauss: Metamorphosen
Mahler: Symphony No 2 in C Minor, 'Resurrection'


‘Gergiev’s Mahler’ is now nearly at an end and what an end this should be with Mahler’s Eighth and Ninth Symphonies and the part of the Tenth that Mahler himself orchestrated. This seems an orderly end to the cycle but here, somewhat stranded out of time, was his ‘Resurrection’ Symphony. Now, if I did not exactly hail Gergiev as a messiah when he began with Mahler 3 at the start of the season,  I at least can count myself as one of his earliest disciples and over the course of his sojourn through the other works in the series he has gained many more converts along the way.

I sat next to someone much more capable of following these complex scores than I am and he expressed admiration for Gergiev,  in that he had never gone wrong anywhere in the concerts that my neighbour had heard. He was also extremely moved by this concert and personally, while  I have had more extreme emotional reactions to Mahler’s Second Symphony in the past, I found  Gergiev’s performance engrossing and compelling.

Mahler’s sister Justine wrote,  ‘It was indescribable’ after the first complete performance the ‘Resurrection’ Symphony on 13 December 1895. Her brother had staked his future as a composer on this eighty-minute choral work,  based on the themes of death and resurrection. Audiences of the time were not used to hearing music quite like this with clashing musical chords, so much dissonance and so many rapid tempo changes. Moreover, in places it seemed more an oratorio than a symphony and nobody had much liked what they had heard from it before. Notoriously,  Mahler played the first movement to conductor Hans von Bülow who exclaimed ‘If that is still music, then I do not understand a single thing about music! Compared with this,  Tristan und Isolde is a Haydn symphony’. Now of course we recognise the 'Resurrection' as one of the great masterpieces of the symphonic repertoire.

In the first movement the hero (possibly Mahler himself) who died in the First Symphony is taken to his grave. The second movement reflects on happier past times. For the third movement, the hero no longer believes in anything and it seems that life was playing a joke on him. In the fourth,  his ‘soul’ finds a sort of peace before the fifth sweeps him on towards judgment day with blaring trumpets. The singers reassure the listener with the comforting words, ‘Rise again … my mortal dust, after brief repose! … Thou wert not born in vain’. Mahler made it abundantly clear that he never believed resurrection when he wrote ‘The trumpets of the apocalypse ring out … And behold, it is no judgment ... There is no punishment and no reward. An overwhelming love illuminates our being.’

Justine wrote of the first performance,  ‘The triumph grew greater with every moment. Such enthusiasm is seen only once in a lifetime! Afterwards, I saw grown men weeping and youths falling on each other's necks. And when the Bird of Death, hovering above the graves, utters his last, long drawn-out call there was such a deathly silence in the hall that no one seemed able to bat so much as an eyelid. And when the chorus entered, everyone gave a shuddering sigh of relief. It was indescribable!’

Mahler conducted this symphony thirteen times,  revealing his close attachment to his composition. He also programmed it for the farewell concert in Vienna that marked the end of his 10 years as director of the Vienna Opera. It was the first of his symphonies that he performed in America (New York, 1908) and the first of his own works that he conducted in Paris in 1910.

Gergiev’s interpretation of Mahler's Second Symphony brought us supreme emotional and spiritual riches. The enormous funeral march seemed rather brisk yet was never unnecessarily quick nor were the lower string attacks ever rough-edged or the brass raucous. Throughout the performance,  the excellent London Symphony Orchestra gave Gergiev their total commitment whether he asked for the most flutteringly light tone or outright percussive power. So, what to do about Mahler’s request for a five minute pause between the first two movements? Well,  it wasn’t five minutes here yet there was sufficient time for the attentive audience to reflect on what it had heard and to allow the soloists to enter in silence and without undue applause.

A wonderful other-worldly serenity ran throughout the second movement before the neuroses of the ‘what-was-it-all-for’ Scherzo where there was some genuine terror and angst portrayed in the music, particularly in the ‘cry of despair’ with the wonderful trumpets singing out  impressively. Unfortunately,  Mahler’s vision of a life beyond was regrettably earthbound in the heavily-accented German of the Mariinsky Theatre mezzo Zlata Bulycheva and her attempt at ‘Urlicht’ failed to cast its spell, spoilt by the vibrato in her voice. She was joined by another rather seemingly unnecessarily imported singer,  the Romanian soprano Elena Mosuc who imposed herself on the music of the Resurrection hymn somewhat against Mahler’s wish that the solo voice should emerge from the chorus.

Elsewhere,  the finale was uniformly spectacular from the opening B flat minor outburst to the final ‘resurrection’ in E flat. It featured excellent off-stage horn and trumpet calls as well as drums which contributed their fateful summonses to a ghostly march. On stage, the delicate beating of the side drum added to the heightened emotion before the Last Trump. The London Symphony Chorus were well-coached, refined,  and sang out boldly. Excellently paced and perfectly balanced,  these powerful final passages carried a great deal of tension and gravitas. At the full orchestral climaxes it was to Gergiev’s credit that the result was exultant and never ear-shattering.

The disappointment of the evening was that this was not the only item on the programme. The concert began with Strauss’s Metamorphosen,  that post-WWII paean to all that had been lost in his beloved Germany   - and something of the composer's self-abasement for the part he had played in this by staying and collaborating with the Nazis. It is music for 23 solo strings that, probably for economic reasons,  is gaining popularity in concert programming. Here it was superfluous to the Mahler and there is no real justification for its pairing with such an important work as the Second Symphony. It was given a typically energised performance under Gergiev’s direction and what remorse there is in the work seemed more neurotic than usual. Disappointingly before the very last note had faded and the conductor had lowered his hands,  some people began clapping just as if they had just woken up startled and thought that is what they had better do: or were glad it was the interval so they would soon hear the Mahler they had come for!

Jim Pritchard


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