RSNO: Mahler Six
Usher Hall 18/9/26
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Alexander Malofeev (piano)
Thomas Søndergård (conductor)
The new season of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra got underway with a bang in the Usher Hall on Friday evening. The auditorium was pretty much full for a heady programme of Rachmaninov and Mahler, and there was a palpable sense of excitement when the Music Director of the RSNO, came onto the stage. This is Thomas Søndergård’s final season as Director of the orchestra, after 8 years at the helm, and it must be said that he has done a fantastic job in turning a good orchestra into a great one. I have been lucky enough to be reviewing the orchestra’s Edinburgh concerts for the last few years, and I have thoroughly enjoyed his thoughtful and elegant conducting, and how every player appointment has led to an improvement in the sound all over the orchestra. We heard the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra here during the Edinburgh Festival, and I marvelled at the homogeneity of their sound and the warmth of their tone, but I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the RSNO is now on a par with that great orchestra.
The concert began with a performance of Sergei Rachmaninov’s 4th Piano Concerto, a curious piece which is rarely heard these days. Written in 1925/26, and premiered in Philadelphia in 1927, it was not well-received, and the composer made many changes to it, without much success. The triumphs of his earlier concertos, especially 2 and 3, were such that he was disillusioned with the 4th, and indeed withdrew it completely in 1928. It was only in 1941, a couple of years before his death, that he returned to the 4th, and revised it considerably, with the premiere of the revised version taking place, also in Philadelphia, later that year.
On Friday, we heard the 25 year old Russian virtuoso, Alexander Malofeev, playing the concerto, and he gave a masterly account of it, sympathetically accompanied by the RSNO. The opening launches into life with a fire and fury which is quite surprising, and it continues in a way entirely different from Rachmaninov’s previous works for piano. The orchestration is lighter, the melodies less spectacular, and the interchange between soloist and orchestra create a sound that is somewhat more modern. The composer, now living in the USA, was well aware that his style was seen as rather old fashioned, with the music of Debussy and Stravinsky, not to mention that of Schoenberg and Webern, capturing the musical world, and the rise of Jazz, especially in the USA, taking over people’s imaginations. The influence of jazz can be heard quite clearly in the second movement, which begins with a soft solo piano opening, and expands slowly in a melancholic mood. Melody is to the fore here, and Rachmaninov was a master of melody. Mr Malofeev has a beautiful touch as well as dazzling technique, and his playing here was very in tune with Mr Søndergård’s reading.
The finale opens with a bang and follows its course through ups and downs until it reaches a breathless close. It may not be the star vehicle that nos. 2 and 3 offer a soloist, but it was clear that here was a fine talent indeed, a talent emphasised by a lovely quiet encore from Mr Malofeev, Purcell’s Ground in C Minor.
After the interval, we all settled down for a performance of Gustav Mahler’s enigmatic 6th Symphony, in a rendition that raised the roof of the Usher Hall. First performed in Essen in May 1906, I had long assumed that its dark character, and sense of foreboding, was directly connected to the traumatic events which affected Mahler, the loss of his job as conductor of the Vienna Opera, the death of his four year old daughter, Maria, and the news that he had a potentially fatal heart condition. However, all that was to come the following year, in 1907, and his mood when writing the 6th was, well, simply rather gloomy!
The first movement launches straight in with a pounding march theme, only to be derailed by a sweeping melody, which only Mahler could ever write. I’ve mentioned before that, some 35 years ago, my wife and I found ourselves in the Bohemian town of Jihlava, where the young Gustav grew up, and were fascinated by the huge town square, where military bands from the local garrison often played. You can hear the influence of these military bands in all of Mahler’s symphonies, and it is very noticeable in the first movement of the sixth. The lengthy interweaving of themes in this movement results in an amazing kaleidoscope of sounds, many drawn from the composer’s own experiences, both of Jihlava and also his summer sojourns as an adult in the Austrian Alps. The appearance of firstly offstage cowbells and later onstage ones is testament to this trait of incorporating real life noises into the music. It is amusing here to recall that, in early performances of the 6th Symphony, some members of the audience complained vociferously to the management of the concert halls about the noisy clinking of wine and beer glasses offstage, not realising that they were hearing cowbells deliberately scored by the composer. It’s important to realise also that during his lifetime, Mahler, was world famous as a conductor, directing the premieres of many famous works, and humoured to a certain extent as a wacky composer of overblown symphonies. How times change.
The second movement of the symphony is one of my favourites, a seemingly unending melody in the strings, tinged with melancholy perhaps, but generally oozing with calm and a sense of meditation. One almost wills it never to end, and it was supremely played by the RSNO.
The third movement, originally placed before the second but changed in order by the composer after publication, returns to the intensity of the first but without the tenderness of the major key melody, and leads us on to the colossal final movement.
This is punctuated by the famous sledgehammer blows, which bring a halt to any potential happy endings, and the whole movement shows the extraordinary virtuosity of Mahler’s orchestral imagination. Several times we are lulled into thinking that a great apotheosis is imminent with chorale-like brass moments and exciting crescendi looking for a climax, but each time, the fickle sledgehammer of Fate inexorably stops any movement in a happy direction. I’m glad that Mahler decided to cut the hammer’s final appearance at the end – it would have been too obvious and, in a way, less moving, as the awful A minor chord proves a more fitting finale to this great work.
Somehow, we don’t feel depressed at the end, marvelling more in the stupendous musical creativity that Mahler has demonstrated.
All the instrumental solos were quite brilliantly played, but I am going to single out principal horn, Amadea Dazeley-Gaist, yet again for the simply beautiful tone that she produces in the many stand out moments in the symphony. Sledgehammer wielder-in-chief, Simon Lowdon, deserves a special mention too for his bravura, and his perfect timing!
In total control, and deeply expressive in his conducting, Thomas Søndergård reminded us what a supreme Mahler conductor he is and his fluent movements on the podium are marvellous to watch.
A great start to the season!
