Mahler 7
Usher Hall 3/10/25
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Thomas Søndergård (conductor) Francesco Piemontesi (piano)
The first concert of a new orchestral season is always an exciting event, and this first RSNO concert was awaited with some degree of anticipation, featuring Gustav Mahler’s 7th Symphony, a massive work which is not frequently played. After a long, warm and dry summer, it did seem somewhat apposite that the audience was buffeted by Storm Amy, bringing rain and wind to Edinburgh, just as we were arriving at the Usher Hall. This, I think, explained the few empty seats around us in the stalls for what I would have expected would be a sold out concert.
The new season has brought some new players to the orchestra. The RSNO, like all fine orchestras, is constantly renewing itself from within and without, and we are delighted at the EMR to welcome Amadea Dazely-Gaist (Principal Horn), Jason Lewis (Associate Principal Trumpet), Cillian Ó Ceallachain (Associate Principal Trombone) and Asher Zaccardelli (Associate Principal Viola). I’m sure they will fit seamlessly into the well-oiled machine that is the RSNO.
The concert began with Oliver Knussen’s short ‘Flourish with Fireworks’ from 1988, a fizzing firecracker of a work, originally composed for the opening of the LSO’s 1988/89 Season. At this point, I’m going to make my annual plea for more light in the auditorium during performances. I fail to see the reason for making the hall so dark that you can’t read the (excellent) programme during the performance. In this case, the programme notes were explicitly helpful in describing the origins of the piece and many of the effects in it. Without the chance to read the notes, none of us were any the wiser and listened to a piece of complex modern music with no idea what we were hearing. Surely a compromise can be reached where the lights are dimmed a bit, allowing us to see the orchestra but also follow the notes in the programme. Exactly the same applied to the next two works in the programme, with the notes pointing to all sorts of things to listen out for in the music, thus making the listening experience far richer, but denied to us in the Stygian gloom! It’s doubly frustrating because the RSNO programmes are always excellent, putting the Edinburgh International Festival programmes to shame.
Knussen’s early death deprived music lovers of a bright individual voice, but the ‘Flourish with Fireworks’ got us off to a cracking start.
Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto from 1932 is one of the great concertos from the 20th century, and it was played tonight to perfection by the Swiss-Italian pianist, Francesco Piemontesi. Set in three movements, it is a tour de force not only for the piano soloist but also for the wind soloists. The concerto makes great use of the wind section, and the skills of Amadea Dazeley-Gaist (horn) and Adrian Wilson (oboe) were much in evidence. Henry Clay was superb in his cor anglais solo in the second movement.
Francesco Piemontesi was absolutely brilliant in the solo piano passages, sympathetically accompanied by Thomas Søndergård. Better known for his deeply moving interpretations of 19th century piano repertoire, he was no less accomplished here in Ravel’s tricky piece. His perfect technique and beautifully balanced playing was revelatory, his hands a blur in the ferociously hard third movement, but also deeply moving in the cantabile playing of the slow movement. A stunning encore of one of the ‘Feux d’Artifice’ by Debussy sent us off for our interval drink very satisfied and ready for the Mahler to come.
Mahler’s 7th Symphony, premiered by the composer in 1908 in Prague, but composed in 1905/06, has always been a slightly tricky piece to categorise, and for many years, was seen as something of a failure. The initial response to it was mixed to say the least, and the composer was going through a terrible patch in his life when it first appeared. He had been hounded out of Vienna, his daughter had just died, and he had just been diagnosed with terminal heart disease. The apparent failure of the 7th contributed to his depression, even though it follows a clear path from gloom to triumph at the end. It’s just that the journey can seem rather long and occasionally tedious, without the wit and surprises of the earlier symphonies. The naive countryside and folk elements of the first four Wunderhorn symphonies seem far in the past, and the musical language of the 7th is more uncompromising and complex. First audiences were perplexed, and indeed it really took until the 1950s and 1960s, spearheaded by Leonard Bernstein, for the symphony to be properly understood and enjoyed.
Fortunately, we are now much more open to the extraordinary musical language of the 7th, and can appreciate the amazing mind that produced it. Listening to the RSNO’s wondrous performance under their fine musical director, Thomas Søndergård, I felt I was hearing anew what Mahler really wanted to say. Despite all the terrible traumatic events in his life at this time, he was still perhaps the most famous conductor in the world, fêted wherever he went, but most of all, he wanted to be known and understood as a great composer. This performance reminded us of that fact, and the RSNO led us, spellbound, through its wonders.
From the very beginning, with the theme of its funereal march ringing out on tenor horn, Søndergård established a firm control over tempi and dynamics that never faltered throughout course of the work.
After a substantial and rather troubled first movement, Mahler chose to place three shorter movements in the middle of the symphony, two framing meditations described as ‘Nachtmusik’, perhaps invoking the spirit of Rembrandt’s famous painting, ‘The Nightwatch’. Two horns call to each other, one muted, establishing the idea of noises in the night, and the atmosphere of watchful darkness is further evoked by the gentle tinkling of cowbells, a sound Mahler was used to hearing in his summer retreat at Maiernigg in the Austrian Alps, where much of his composing was done.
The central Scherzo is a sinister sounding movement, sometimes described as a grotesque parody of a Viennese Waltz, the mockery deriving from Mahler’s bitter relationship with the Vienna State Opera from which he had been sacked. Multiple viola solos appear in this movement, stylishly played by Felix Tanner.
The fourth movement, also referred to as ‘Nachtmusik’, takes on the feel of an evening serenade, announced by Maya Iwabuchi’s tender violin solo, and taken up by the horn of Amadea Dazeley-Gaist, accompanied by the tender strains of guitar and mandolin.
All this dreamy nocturnal wandering was dramatically interrupted by the fiery timpani of Paul Philbert, sweeping us into the astonishing Rondo Finale, an orchestral tour de force by Mahler which powers us to a thrilling and triumphant end with a set of eight variations, capped by a dramatic coda. The brass section is heavily favoured throughout this relentlessly joyous movement, with parodies of Wagner’s ‘Meistersinger’ and Lehar’s ‘Merry Widow’ thrown in.
Mr Søndergård threw himself into this movement, and it was clear that the orchestra was having a blast! A word of praise here for the whole percussion section, as they rushed around the back of the orchestra playing bells, gongs, drums, triangle, cymbals, glockenspiel, untuned bells and tam-tam!
The final extraordinary coda brought shouts of bravo from the enthralled audience, and a prolonged ovation. Mahler still has the power to move any audience, and the sheer fantasy of his imagination never fails to excite. This is what great orchestras can do, and the RSNO is a great orchestra.
Photo Credit: Joe Budi O’Brien
