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Royal Theatre
February 26, 2006
"My time will come," Gustav Mahler famously remarked, adding, somewhat less optimistically, "fifty years after my death."
In the event Mahler was more or loss spot on, although the Great Mahler Boom of the 1960s was arguably fuelled more by the centenary of his birth, in 1960, than the fiftieth anniversary of his death, the following year.
As we now approach the 150th anniversary of his birth (and the centenary of his death) it is clear that the Mahler revolution was a permanent one: very few today would argue that Mahler was not one of the truly great composers.
Which brings me to Sunday's performance of the First Symphony, performed by the combined Victoria Symphony and Greater Victoria Youth Orchestra under the baton of Tania Miller.
Let me make it clear from the outset that there were many praiseworthy aspects of the performance and that the unaware listener would probably never have surmised that half the ensemble were not professionals, so well did the GVYO's young musicians fit in with their older colleagues.
The sound of the orchestra in full cry was certainly a powerful, rich and full one and arguably in itself sufficient reason for attending; I commend to your attention, in particular, the strings in the "reminiscence" section of the finale, lush and resonant.
The brass were powerful without ever becoming coarse - Mahler may be vulgar at times, but he is never coarse - and the offstage trumpets in the slow, atmospheric introduction were particularly effective.
Although Mahler's most characteristic wind passages are in his later symphonies - there is an E flat clarinet in the first, for instance, but it has little, if any, of the hallucinogenic diablerie to be found later - there are still some marvellous things for the wind, from the bubbling clarinet fanfare - superb here - of the introduction, to what has been called the "Jewish wedding" (sometimes "Klezmer") passage of the funeral march that constitutes the third movement.
Mahler was also the first symphonic composer after Berlioz to make significant and original use of the percussion and the battery of two timpanists and four percussionists added considerable weight to the proceedings.
Finally, while I'm on the subject of the orchestra, praise for principal bassist Mary Rannie for her excellently-tuned and full-toned playing of the theme of the funeral march (a theme Mahler himself knew as Bruder Martin, which some say is actually the original of the French equivalent, Frère Jacques). It is one of the orchestral double bass's few moments in the sun - or, in this case, gloom.
Tania Miller is to be commended for her attention to - certain - details of the score: for instance the repeats in the first and second movements (there is only one more repeat in all the symphonies, in the sixth), the great Luftpause in the finale, so often ignored, or Mahler's direction that the horns should all stand before the final Triumphal.
Despite all these things, I have to confess that I found the whole performance curiously and disappointingly polite - perhaps the last adjective one would or should associate with Mahler.
The opening movement, for instance, especially with the repeat in place, is fairly long and, unless tightly controlled, has a tendency to ramble. It also needs more contrasted dynamics than were on offer; now I'm prepared to concede that part of the problem may be the hall itself: we were promised 117 musicians on stage and some of them were barely on it; the percussion, too, were crowded into one corner, from where I suspect it was difficult to make their full impact.
Even so, given the general level of the symphony's introduction, for example, the fortissimos in the final coda should have pinned me to my seat.
They didn't.
Balances, too, were not always ideal, with the winds, in particular, too often being buried in a welter of sound. The overall effect was to offer a somewhat homogenised and sanitised view of the symphony - I can hardly imagine anyone in Sunday's audience being offended by the aforementioned "Klezmer" section of the third movement, yet for decades this was offered as a typical example of Mahler's "vulgarity".
And why, oh why did Miller - like all too many other conductors I could name - indulge in a mad race for the finishing tape? The very last tempo indication in the work, many bars earlier, is "nicht eilen" ("do not hurry") together with "pesante" ("heavy", "weighty"). The music actually has far more momentum if played so that the strings, for instance, can clearly articulate. (Kubelik's recordings are exemplary models in this regard, as in so many others, which is why I played his when I got home)
While I'm always grateful for the opportunity to hear live Mahler, especially with a full-sized orchestra as good as this one, there is, as he also observed, more to music than is contained within the notes.
And that's what was missing on Sunday.
On the subject of his Nights in the Gardens of Spain, Manuel de Falla remarked that "the music has no pretensions to being descriptive; it is merely expressive."
Whether or not de Falla was consciously echoing Beethoven's "Mehr Ausdruck der Empfindung als Mahlerey [sic]" ("more an expression of feeling than a painting" - written in one of the sketchbooks for the Pastoral), I could not say.
Sara Buechner was the brilliantly colourful soloist in what was once one of de Falla's most often-performed works.
After a suitably atmospheric introduction, her first entry was a harbinger of things to come, prismatic and confident. There is little which is overtly virtuosic in the music and so the soloist must depend more on colour and subtlety than steely-fingered bluster; in this regard, Buechner was an ideal performer - although she is far from lacking in technique, as certain passages, most notably the one with rapid-fire repeated notes, made clear.
I have to confess that, no matter how well-played (and it was, very) Nights is, in my opinion, a little too long for its material and after a while begins to sound too much like recycled Chabrier and Ravel.
Fortunately the performance ended just in time to prevent this feeling from becoming permanent. And, although the music has yet to fall from grace so far as to become downright obscure, it is still good to get a chance to hear the music in the flesh.
The concert is repeated tonight (Monday) at 8 p.m. For all my reservations, it really shouldn't be missed.
MiV HomeLast modified: Mon Feb 27 10:56:38 PST 2006