United Kingdom Mahler: Royal Scottish National Orchestra / Thomas Søndergård (conductor). Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, 22.2.2025. (GT)
Mahler – Symphony No.9 in D major
Several years ago, the Music Director Thomas Søndergård expressed a desire to undertake the Mahler symphony cycle – earlier this season – he directed a magnificent performance of the Second ‘Resurrection’ Symphony. The Danish maestro has revealed himself as a superb interpreter of the great symphonies that embrace diverse orchestral textures and bring out the challenges of humankind – most acutely manifested in the symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Mahler. Later this season, we will have an opportunity to hear his reading of Shostakovich’s Eighth and Eleventh Symphonies.
The Mahler symphonies are a challenge for any orchestra; in recent years, I have heard outstanding performances of Mahler’s Ninth; in Leipzig by the Gewandhaus Orchestra and in Edinburgh by the Budapest Festival Orchestra. They offered dissimilar interpretations of the Ninth, and this performance in Glasgow proved to be just as revelatory.
The opening movement, Andante comodo, was magnificent, with the measured start by the cellos, the horn, and the harp intoned the hesitant rhythmic motif, which Leonard Bernstein suggested reflected Mahler’s ‘irregular heartbeat’. The playing by the woodwind and brass was world-class, and the percussion group was noteworthy in the unforgiving blows from the timpani. Later, the tubular bells hinted at the march of time, or more succinctly, the funeral march, which as Berg suggested, gave ‘a vision of the hereafter’. In the second movement, the swiftly played waltzes and the rustic ländler, followed by old church hymns, flashed by in glittering intonations on the flute of Katherine Bryan and the clarinet of Timothy Orpen. Haunting moments were intoned on Adrian Wilson’s oboe, the contra-bassoon of Paolo Dutto, and the piccolo of Janet Richardson.
I must confess that I have never heard this orchestra play so well as they did in the Rondo-Burleske: Allegro assai. Sehr trotzig. The manic pace of the playing was extraordinary, with an astonishingly discordant theme from the solo trumpet of Christopher Hart. One could hardly believe how the musicians could play at such a level and bring out all the mocking sentiment portrayed in such a maelstrom; yet at the close, give an intimation of a falseness in warmth and emotion – as the composer noted on the score, ‘to my brothers in Apollo’ – succinctly expressed in a charming solo by the oboe of Adrian Wilson. It was a stunning tour de force – a truly, world-class performance.
The standards continued into the final movement, Adagio. Sehr langsam und noch zurϋckhaltend. Rather than indulge in lengthy phrases of songful beauty suggesting the hymn ‘Abide with Me’, Søndergård stirred the orchestra into a deeply impassioned farewell slowly descending to a still silence that seemed as if passing into an emptiness. One could hear a quotation from the composer’s Kindertotenlieder: ‘The day is fine in yonder heights’ in the brass chorale, and instead of a resolution, the strings ever so slowly brought us to the closing bars offering eternity rather than the tragic death of the hero. There was little or no indulgent phrasing or lingering on themes, Søndergård produced an exciting and dynamically forceful interpretation bringing out the composer’s love for life, and his farewell to his world.
There was remarkable virtuosity from the musicians in this concert, most notably, from the woodwind quartet of Bryan (flute), Wilson (oboe), Orpen (clarinet) and David Hubbard (bassoon). There were also the insightful contributions by Richardson’s piccolo, Amadea Dalzeley-Gaist’s horn, Igor Yuzefovich’s violin, and Tim Hugh’s cello. One would like to mention many more marvellous contributions but there were so many from this great orchestra. In all, this was one of the finest performances of a Mahler symphony that I have heard; it demonstrates the tremendous standards achieved by the orchestra under Søndergård, and that this collaboration between the conductor and orchestra can realise even greater successes.
Gregor Tassie