Chris Swithinbank

The Mahler in Man­ches­ter con­cert se­ries is reach­ing its cli­max as we clam­ber up to the final, vast sym­phonies whose am­bi­tions out­did all pre­de­ces­sors and Mahler 8 is the largest of them all, com­bin­ing the forces of BBC Phil­har­monic, Hallé, Hallé Choir, Hallé Youth Choir and CBSO Cho­rus, not to men­tion con­duc­tor Mark Elder and the eight vocal soloists. The jour­ney has been an in­ter­est­ing one, en­livened by the con­ceit of pair­ing each sym­phony with some new, spe­cially com­mis­sioned music, usu­ally bear­ing some re­la­tion­ship with its sym­phonic cousin. The new works have been var­i­ously suc­cess­ful (as are, of course, the Mahler sym­phonies) and while the hap­less tin­ker­ing of Uri Caine’s piano play­ing fre­quently being swal­lowed by the di­rec­tion­less mélange that was his Scenes from Child­hood pro­grammed along­side Mahler 5 may not have pleased every­one, it is the po­ten­tial for serendip­ity that is ap­peal­ing. Be­sides, as Gus­tav’s grand­daugh­ter Ma­rina notes in the pro­gramme, ‘an open, cu­ri­ous, de­mand­ing ear, will­ing to lis­ten, al­ways search­ing for some­thing lovely, some­thing true in the music of our own time — this is truly ho­n­our­ing Mahler’s music.’

Sun­day night’s pair­ing with Mahler 8 couldn’t have been more fit­ting. The ec­sta­tic re­li­gious el­e­ment of the sym­phony was echoed in a 20-minute im­pro­vi­sa­tion on the Gre­go­rian hymn ‘Veni, Cre­ator Spir­i­tus’, the text of which forms the first part of the Mahler, per­formed by or­gan­ist Olivier Latry. Latry has held one of the four posts as or­gan­ist at Notre Dame de Paris since 1985 and is steeped in the French tra­di­tion of organ im­pro­vi­sa­tion as the main mu­si­cal ac­com­pa­ni­ment to the Catholic mass. This tra­di­tion is strik­ingly mod­ernist when one com­pares it to the litur­gi­cal organ tra­di­tion of the British Isles and Latry’s mu­si­cal an­ces­try can clearly be traced back to the de­vout, if un­ortho­dox, Catholic Olivier Mes­si­aen, who held a sim­i­lar post at the Église de la Sainte-Trinité for 61 years, until his death.

Open­ing with the unadul­ter­ated plain­chant line, which dates from the 9th Cen­tury, Latry quickly set about mov­ing through kalei­do­scopic worlds of tim­bral and mo­tivic vari­a­tion, ex­ploit­ing every pos­si­ble colour and reg­is­ter of the 5,500-pipe Bridge­wa­ter organ. He moved with ease and agility through rau­cous se­quences of chords flung about the pipes to van­ish and re­veal the quiet, air-shak­ing depths of the low­est pedal notes. High bab­bling tex­tures with an al­most elec­tronic feel, rem­i­nis­cent of the gur­gling boys’ voices in Stock­hausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge, segued into gap­ing hor­ror movie chords. The im­pro­vi­sa­tion seemed to be­come a se­ries of in­ter­lock­ing chorales and arias, and its sym­phonic am­bi­tion was clear as the theme re­turned and evolved be­fore burn­ing out in the — only slightly in­con­gru­ous — final, fiery glow of an apoc­a­lyp­ti­cally joy­ous wall of major key sound. That is, of course, pre­cisely how Mahler 8 fin­ishes and de­spite Latry’s note in the pro­gramme that ‘an im­pro­vi­sa­tion must be spon­ta­neous […] I won’t lis­ten to Mahler’s Sym­phony No.8 be­fore the per­for­mance,’ one won­ders whether he may have at least half-planned the end­ing’s spirit.

Mahler’s Eighth Sym­phony is an un­usual work, closer in many ways to an or­a­to­rio than a tra­di­tional sym­phony, but one of the most sur­pris­ing things about Mahler’s music today — a cen­tury since this sym­phony’s first per­for­mance — is its moder­nity. The sym­phony is re­plete with jagged, dis­so­nant lines, com­pos­ite sounds built from cym­bal at­tacks and string de­cays, strange jux­ta­po­si­tions such as choir and way­ward solo vi­o­lin, and of course the har­mo­nium and man­dolins ex­pand­ing the stan­dard or­ches­tral palette yet fur­ther. The first cho­rus of Part Two, gen­tly dis­turb­ing an or­ches­tral still­ness with syl­la­ble-by-syl­la­ble text set­ting, is still stun­ning and was per­formed with great re­straint by the massed choirs, evok­ing Goethe’s awestruck po­etry. The sub­lime quiet of the pre-cli­max final stanza, ‘Alles vergängliche / Ist nur ein Gle­ich­nis’ [Every­thing tran­si­tory / is but an image], was sung with sim­i­lar del­i­cacy. A good vocal soloist is hard to find, let alone eight, but Ger­ald Fin­ley (of course) stood out as Pater Ec­sta­ti­cus. The Cana­dian bari­tone must rarely have so lit­tle to do in a con­cert — just twelve short lines — but his voice and stage pres­ence rarely fail. Sec­ond so­prano Aga Miko­laj, singing the role of the pen­i­tent, also im­pressed with con­trol and feel­ing as she sang ‘Neige, neige / Du Ohne­gle­iche’.

With 121 in­stru­men­tal­ists, 383 cho­rus mem­bers and 8 soloists on stage, Mahler was never going to end the ‘Sym­phony of a Thou­sand’ qui­etly. After the awe-filled hush of ‘Alles vergängliche’ the or­ches­tra grad­u­ally stirs be­fore ris­ing to one of the loud­est and most or­gas­mic fi­nales of the reper­toire. The Bridge­wa­ter Hall can only rarely have been treated to such a grip­ping and phys­i­cally pow­er­ful sound that con­veys the pas­sion and strength of five hun­dred plus per­form­ers emp­ty­ing the last ounces of their en­ergy into those final notes. This is the pas­sage of which Maher wrote, ‘that the uni­verse be­gins to vi­brate and re­sound. These are no longer human voices, but plan­ets and suns ro­tat­ing.’ It was greeted with rap­tur­ous ap­plause and a stand­ing ova­tion.

The sym­phony is ded­i­cated to Mahler’s wife, Alma, and, to re­turn to Mes­si­aen, it is strik­ing how, 40 years be­fore Tu­ran­galîla, the com­bi­na­tion of ec­sta­tic, human love and a be­lief in the holy joy of God re­sulted in a mu­si­cal out­pour­ing on a sim­i­larly large scale. It takes a lot of time, plan­ning and ef­fort to arrange a per­for­mance of this sym­phony — it took Mahler three years after its com­po­si­tion to or­gan­ise the pre­miere — and the col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts of BBC Phil­har­monic, Hallé and the var­i­ous choirs should be cel­e­brated as a won­der­ful mu­si­cal gift. It is the turn of the Ninth Sym­phony in a few weeks. It will take quite some­thing to out­shine Sun­day’s per­for­mance.