Markus Eiche, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Sydney Opera House Concert Hall
Wed 10, Fri 12, Sat 13 February 2010 8pm
Thu 11 February 2010 1.30pm
Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra began The Mahler Odyssey 2010-11 with a programme revolving around Mahler’s First Symphony. I attended both the Thursday afternoon and Saturday evening concerts, sitting in the front circle during the former and the mid stalls during the latter.
The programme began with Richard Strauss’ symphonic poem, Don Juan. Strauss and Mahler were friends as well as rivals, and Don Juan was premiered just weeks apart from Mahler’s First Symphony in 1889. At this time and throughout most of Mahler’s life, his compositions were considered controversial while Strauss’ received adulation and success.
The performance by the orchestra was energetic and slick, with athletic strings and wind, heroic brass and a general sense of the grandeur of the Romantic era. Boisterous climaxes were interlaced with more subdued, intimate affairs and themes were combined and transformed throughout before an unexpected sparse, quiet ending in the minor key. This is the Don Juan that looks for total love and fails to find it, in contrast to Albert Camus’ idea that Don Juan loves each woman with the same passion and becomes dependent on that repetition.
Mahler’s Blumine movement, which he dropped from his First Symphony, was performed next in the programme. Upon hearing the first performance I regarded the work as short and pretty, and it seemed obvious that it did not fit with the rest of the symphony. At the Saturday performance, I was imagining what this simple, uncomplicated serenade would sound like in the first half of the symphony, between the first and second movements. The possibilities for development and expansion of the movement’s material were evident, particularly in sections like the dual between oboe and double basses.
The first violinists moved their seats back to make way for baritone Markus Eiche in preparation for the next part of the programme, Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer). The four-movement song cycle, composed 1883-5 contains many themes that also appear in Symphony No. 1. For instance, in the opening bars of the first song, Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht (On my sweetheart’s wedding day) Mahler achieves a ‘cuckoo’-like call through the interval of a descending fourth in the clarinet that reoccurs in various pitches, rhythms and timbres throughout the four movements of the song cycle and the entire First Symphony.
The orchestration and interplay between instruments and voice were quite striking in this song, especially where the voice and pianissimo string accompaniment were interrupted by the clarinet ‘cuckoo’-like calls in the first verse in D minor. Eiche’s low and midrange tones were crisp, but a little too much pharynx resonance was apparent at times. For instance, on the highly expressive line “Hab’ich meinen traurigen Tag!” (It will be a sad day for me!), his high notes sounded squashed, lacking the warmth and clarity from his lower registers.
The contrast of the second verse in Eb major was well delivered, with lighter and more animated woodwinds complimenting the interaction between the solo violin and flowing vocal line. The point of the climax at the end of this verse could be said to serve as a simple, yet powerful initiation into Mahler’s world. That is, the point where the Wayfarer pleads with nature to never cease its eternal cycle of flowers blooming and birds singing, before he returns to his solitary world of resignation and agony in the third verse in D minor.
Eiche beautifully portrayed the return of the nature-loving Wayfarer in the second song, Ging heut’ morgen übers Feld (I went out this morning into the fields). The main melody in D major – that would be heard again after interval as the primary theme in the first movement of Mahler’s First Symphony – was handled superbly by Eiche, who maintained tonal depth and clear diction over the lightest and most bouncy passages. For the comparatively sombre final verse in B major, Eiche demonstrated a clear and consistent pianissimo sob that was particularly moving, especially on the final line “Nein, nein, das ich mein’, Mir nimmer blühen kann!” (No, no, that happiness can never bloom for me!).
After all these vacillations between the beauty of nature and personal angst, the orchestra broke out in a stormy fortissimo D minor for the third song, Ich hab’ ein glühend Messer (I have a red-hot knife). From the front circle of the Sydney Opera House concert hall it sounded like Eiche was being overpowered by the orchestra at times, an effect that may have been intentional given that it is the Wayfarer who is the victim in this violent outburst.
The fourth and final song, Die zwei blauen Augen (The two blue eyes) contained a theme that not only would be heard after interval in the third movement of Mahler’s First Symphony, but in every single concert of the Sydney Symphony 2010-11 Mahler Odyssey: the funeral march. Leonard Bernstein pointed out in his 1984 television essay The Little Drummer Boy that Mahler was obsessed with death to the point that he included a funeral march in every single major work. The effect of the orchestra’s and Eiche’s performance of this quiet and minimal song, with its subtle chromatic variations and changing meter was hypnotic. It left an unsettling feeling that was strong enough to draw attention away from the anxious anticipation of the main event after interval.
The beginning of the First Symphony, with its bare opening consisting of the note A spread over seven octaves, could have easily been confused with the orchestra tuning up! The sustained notes continued in a meditative hum, as several of the symphony’s main themes were slowly introduced: the ‘cuckoo’-like call, fanfares (played by trumpets offstage) and a chromatic bass motif. As the cuckoo calls became more frequent and the trumpet players tiptoed onstage, it suddenly became apparent that the cuckoo motif was really a preparation for the main melody from the second Wayfarer song, Ging heut’ morgen übers Feld.
Vladimir Ashkenazy was very delicate in his interpretation of Mahler’s symphonic treatment of the song, especially during the exposition where the melodies from the first verse are reintroduced and a gradual, but steady increase in tempo is required. He managed to hold back and not get too carried away with the short, but momentous crescendo/decrescendo, so that the simultaneous presentation of the first and third verse material in the next section was truly a celebration.
The development section was played steadily, enabling one to become immersed in the variations of the main motifs and the process of the song’s various melodic fragments conjoining in different shapes. It also made one more deeply aware of Mahler’s use of suspense, not only as a way of playing with the listener’s expectations, but also as a way of making the most out of structural landmarks like the recapitulation and ending.
The main section of the second movement was a lot of fun to watch and hear, as the synchronised bowing movements of the string section made the music even more visceral. It was also clear from the smiles on the player’s faces how much they enjoyed this part. The movement as a whole is an appropriation of Mahler’s 1880-1 song, Hans und Grethe. The trio section contains a sublime symphonic treatment of the song’s melodic material which comes across as a reverie, like an imagining of the song itself in the midst of the jaunty outer sections.
The third and fourth movements were a major contrast to the first two, with the humour becoming darker and the nature motifs turning into something more demonic. The third movement contained the children’s round Frère Jacques played by the gloomiest instruments of the orchestra in the minor mode and at a funeral march tempo. After having recourse to the fourth Wayfarer song and returning to the mock funeral march, one got the feeling of being under some sort of murky spell as the movement wound to a close.
An extremely loud cymbal crash shocked everyone back into consciousness at the beginning of the fourth and final movement, as the orchestra launched into an inferno of wild strings and demonic fanfares. The beginning of this movement was so raucous that some audience members had to leave. This is music that was completed in 1899 – over a decade before Stravinsky’s infamous Rite of Spring – and it can still be considered violent over a century later.
Well and truly initiated with Mahler’s dualities by this point in the concert, the listener could understand how all this violence could lead into a cantabile sentimental passage for strings and horns, complete with woodwind calls, chromatic wanderings and lots of rubato. The themes introduced at the very beginning of the symphony were heard in many different forms as the stormy/sentimental duality continued, and the expectations of the audience were violated as certain sections seemed to be abandoned prematurely, creating tensions that needed to accumulate for the life-changing release at the end.
There was a great feeling of unification and universality at both concerts during the applause after the conclusion of the symphony’s last movement. It was as if the liberation I felt was what everyone else felt as well, like a giant wave of energy that allowed us to walk out of the concert hall on air together just for a few moments before returning to our own individual lives. While all parts of the programme were engaging having experienced them all once on Thursday, I was mostly excited about hearing the symphony itself again before Saturday’s concert and afterwards, as well. The rest of the Mahler concerts played by Sydney Symphony are sure to be monumental events and 2010-11 will be a special time in Sydney’s musical history.
