Magnificent Mahler Symphony no 2. Jakub Hrůša, Philharmonia Orchestra

Photo: Roger Thomas

Visceral and intense Mahler Symphony no 2 ("The Resurrection") with Jakub Hrůša conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall with Camilla Tilling, Jennifer Johnston, The Philharmonia Chorus.  How lucky I was to attend with friends who between us have clocked up hundreds of performances of Mahler's Second over the last fifty years.  Proof that the better a piece is, the more there is to discover. Every good performance yields insights : in a market now oversaturated with safe and predictable, it's a joy to hear an approach that derives fresh from the score itself, rather than from market expectations. 

With his foundations in Czech repertoire, Hrůša doesn't do "routine" Mahler. I heard him do Mahler in 2017 when he conducted Mahler's Symphony no 4 with the Czech Philharmonic, then again in 2018 when he conducted Mahler Symphony no 5 with the Philharmonia. Please read my article "How Bohemian was  Gustav Mahler?" HERE. With this Mahler Symphony no 2, the answer is that Mahler was Mahler, drawing on roots far deeper than "just" the Austro-German tradition, addressing universal human issues with highly individual and original passion.  As in most of Mahler, there are extremes in this symphony,  but they're not there just for effect. They serve a purpose. What can be more extreme than the contrast between death and life ? Death is shocking, and it is final, whether or not you believe in resurrection in any conventional sense.  But Hrůša appreciates what Mahler might have meant. The  Klopstock hymn Mahler quotes offers "Unsterblich Leben!....Wieder aufzublüh’n, wirst du gesät! Der Herr der Ernte geht Und sammelt Garben Uns ein, die starben.". This image of regrowth and renewal as part of the cycle of Nature pops up again in Mahler : "Allüberall und ewig blauen licht die Fernen! Ewig... ewig... " 

The first movement was inspired in part by the funeral of Hans von Bülow, who Mahler venerated.  Yet it begins with a great burst of energy. It needs this kind iof emphasis, since it's is a herald of what is to come.  Haitink has taken this movement very slowly, focussing on the way a body shuts down gradually before oblivion, a very good insight indeed.  A funeral march is processional, but its destination is never in doubt. No-one ever gets away ! Hrůša maintains a steady pace, but makes clear the figures in the background that propel the movement - lines that fly in sequence, strings sometimes bowed, sometimes plucked, pizzicato like running footseps, always flowing. Not for nothing did Luciano Berio incorporate Mahler's Second into his Sinfonia, making connctions with a river, fed by many tributaries, flowing into an ocean, refreshed again by rain. Another image of the cycle of Nature. Hrůša's Allegro maestoso is "Mit durchaus ernstem und feierlichem Ausdruck", the dignity all the more moving because it carries in its flow a sense that passage is not in itself an end. That final rushing descent into the abyss had a powerful kick, echoing in the silence of the Luftpause. Hrůša and the orchestra knew that it's there to signify the silence of oblivion, purgatory before resurrection. Pity the RFH audience thought it was time for a coughing epidemic. 

The unrushed Andante acted as a foil to the urgency of the Allegro. Although much is made of the Ländler aspects, these too exist as part of the wider concept, for peasants live in harmony with the seasons and with the cycle of natural change. Though peasant dances can be crude, it doesn't follow that performance needs to be crude, so Hrůša's emphasis on the vernal aspects of this movement renminded us that even in dark times, things happen under the earth which will eventually bear fruit.The third movement again brings contrast, which Hrůša magnified when the cymbals and timpani, centred in the middle of the platform, exploded into life. I nearly jumped out of my seat, but that was fine. Mahler knew what he was doing when he wrote this shockingly bold introduction. This schrezo quotes Mahler's song Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt. Like Dionysius, St Anthony is drunk, preaching to fish who hear but do not actually listen. Perhaps the song is used to indicate the futility of words, which is ironic, since in this symphony Mahler begins to use voice as part of his orchestral toolbox.  On the other hand, though, the fish represent a life force much more powerful than mankind.  Their actions speak louder than pious prayers.  Hrůša was particularly effective evoking the fluid energy in the leaping figures which suggest the movement of fish, leaping upwards, out of their natural watery environment, scrapping exuberantly, being true to their natuures, and swimming away, free. A glorious climax: summer is marching in, references to Pan, Dionysius and Mahler's Symphony no 3. But yet again, though a sudden wild diminuendo at the very end, gongs reverberating. Urlicht (here with Jennifer Johnston) is a cry of anguish, much like the agony of childbirth. For indeed, this is a turning point in the symphony. Like childbirth, there is a purpose to suffering "Ich ließ mich nicht abweisen! Ich bin von Gott und will wieder zu Gott!". 
 
The extremes inherent in this score can be overdone, but not on this occasion.  In the all-important final movement, Hrůša had thought through the dynamics of the Royal Festival Hall and in the orchestra.  The doubles basses sat just behind the harps, together magnifying impact : the darker sounds like the earth, the brighter sounds like heaven.  Magnificent rolling percussion, swept by turbulent strings, as another march develops, this time an irrepressibly energetic march, the brass sassy, bells ringing in celebration. For all we knoiw this might be the march of the life force exemplified by the fishes, hence the cheeky screams from the lower woodwinds, and the defiant, swirling figures, the sudden diminuendo and the wailing trombones, their chill turning to more sublime, otherworldy figures from which the phrase "Das himmliche Leben" emerges,with woodwind calls. 

The offstage brass ensemble was seated outside the auditorium, just outside the Green-side door,  invisible but with just the right degree of audibility. Usually in this hall, they get put into a box, often the Royal Box but the effect is often too strident.  This also allowed the finer details, like the delicate woodwinds and pizzicato to shine clearly. Later, when the offstage brass returned, the horns stood above the orchestra to the left of the conductor, while the trumpets stood to his right, spreading the balance with much better effect. The importance of spatial elements can't be stressed enough - this is "a symphony that contains the world", past, present, future.  Every instrumental voice matters, just as every mortal who has ever lived or died. At last the voices are set free, the soloists, Camilla Tilling and Jennifer Johnston, leading the choir. Though the diction of the choruses wasn't ideal, I'd much rather hear them sing with musical intelligence like this, the reverence better integrated with the soloists and orchestra.  In any case, they echo the words the soloists sing, and this symphony is so well known that most people know what the texts mean. When the male voices cried out "Bereite dich zu leben!" everything came together in magnificent climax.  

This concert will be broadcast internationally, online on BBC radio3 on Monday, 9th March

Voices of 1945 - Salonen, Vaughan Williams, Strauss and Stravinsky

Voices of 1945 at the Royal Festival Hall, with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra in Ralph Vaughan Williams Symphony no 6 (here in the 1950 revision), Richard Strauss Oboe Concerto in D and Igor Stravinsky Symphony in Three Movements. This continues Salonen's long series of programmes that make connections between composers and their responses to the changes in the world around them. This approach is especially important now that music is presented out of context on playlists and short clips.  Programmes like this creates juxtapositions that enhance depths of understanding, even of well known repertoire.  The underlying theme of this concert was war : all three composers reflecting on the impact of war, each in their own different way.

Vaughan Williams would not be drawn on what his Symphony no 6 might be "about", but that in itself intensifies what it might mean. Of his third symphony, he  explicitly stated that it was "wartime music", inspired by his experiences as a stretcher bearer in France. "It’s not really lambkins frisking at all, as most people take for granted". Thus the sixth has no cosy title to throw the unwary off track. The onus is on the listener to listen sensitively, and understand the piece from within. To hear music as no more than sound is to deny emotion and humanity. Salonen conducted the introduction so the brass seemed to scream in a communal wail of anguish. The quieter "pastoral" themes on strings, woodwinds and harps felt haunted, swept away in the tumult.  In the second movement tension built up steadily, the three note ostinato figure at first muffled, the cor anglais offering a moment of contrast before the relentless fusillade of brass and percussion. This  gives context to the saxophone solo in the scherzo, enhancing its strange, alien nature. Its jazziness is seductive, yet it suggests disorder, the breaking-up of safe structural certainties. The bass clarinet served as lament.  The final movement, with its ambiguous pianissimo, suggests not peace, but perhaps a numbness so great that even music cannot fully express. Unlike thethird symphony, there's no room even for wordless voice. Muted flutes in unison, rather than the fanfare of brass with which the symphony began.

Richard Strauss's  Oboe Concerto in D heard here in the 1945 version rather than Strauss's own revision from 1948, with soloist Tom Blomfield, Principal oboe of the Philharmonia. With his typical self-deprecating humour, Strauss dismissed it as "workshop excercises written to prevent the right wrist, freed from the drudgery of wielding the baton from going to sleep, permanently". Perhaps, but like Vaughan Williams, Strauss, who knew all too well about the destruction of German culture, (remember Metamorphosen) didn't want to be drawn into discussion, especially at a time when his homeland was under military occupation.  In any case, the solo part requires tour de force virtuosity, not only in terms of technique but in expressiveness. The first movement is exquisite, its elegance near filigree, an evocation of a more civilized, idealized past.  The timbre of the oboe matters, too : darker than a clarinet, richer yet more bittersweet.  In the final movement, D minor not major, suggests a subtle shift of mood, swiftly swept away by the blazing allegro at the conclusion.

Salonen's long series of Stravinsky concerts with the Philharmoniaa were outstanding. When Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements premiered in 1946 the composer wrote "Each episode is linked in my mind with a concrete impression of war.....the first movement inspired by a war film, a documentary of scorched-earth tactics in China", the second movement by the images of peasants "scratching and digging in their field" and the third "A musical reaction to newsreels I had seen of goose-stepping soldiers. The square march beat, the brass-band instrumentation, the grotesque crescendo in the tuba - all of these are related to those repellent pictures".

Even if he was later quoted (by Robert Craft) denying this, the structure of the symphony reflects turbulence and discord. The Symphony in Three Movements  operates like a kaleidoscope, of multiple aural images, fragmentizing and re-surfacing in new combinations. It's like collage, as used in the cinema where different frames are put together to create impressionistic density, images proliferating in layers and patterns. Stravinsky would have been well aware of Sergei Eisenstein. Hence the many quotes from other works, notably"primitivism" of the Rite of Spring, ritual now a force for sacrifice but not necessarily regrowth, and music planned for use in the film of Franz Werfel's novel The Song of Bernadette  whose visions give her faith, and from Beethoven's Symphony no 3, "Eroica". none of which would have been incorporated without purpose.  The inner movement is brief respite before savage, angular ostinato figues return.  One might, perhaps,  read into the piece insights into Stravinsky's predicament, looking back on his past and anxiously ahead, but the energy of this performance was such that it wholly convinced on its own terms.

Philharmonia's New Chief Conductor - Santtu Matias Rouvali

Snttu-Mthias Rouvalli  photo :Kaapo Kamu

The Philharmoniua Orchestra has just announced : 

The Philharmonia Orchestra is delighted to announce the appointment of Santtu-Matias Rouvali as its next Principal Conductor, only the sixth person to hold the title in its 75-year history. Following in the footsteps of the legendary Riccardo Muti, appointed as the Principal Conductor of the Philharmonia in 1973 at 32, 33-year-old Rouvali is one of the youngest-ever artists appointed as Principal Conductor of a London orchestra.

Rouvali will take up the position for the 2021/22 season. His five-year contract with the Philharmonia will see him working with the Orchestra for 10 weeks a year right across its programme, including leading its flagship London Season as Resident Orchestra at Southbank Centre. Reviews of his performances there have praised his innate musicianship and communicative flair: “…he is the real thing: music unmistakably flows from him,” (Sunday Times).

Rouvali will also conduct the Philharmonia across its UK residencies programme and for further weeks on international tours, also developing recording projects, and working with the Orchestra on its award-winning digital, outreach and audience development programmes.
Speaking about the appointment, Santtu-Matias Rouvali said: “I am honoured to be the new Principal Conductor of the Philharmonia. This is the start of a great adventure: London is such an exciting place for orchestras, and the Philharmonia is at the heart of classical music life in this city. The players of the Philharmonia can do anything: they are enormously talented and show an incredible hunger to create great performances. There is huge possibility with this orchestra, and we will do great things together.”