Sir
Simon Rattle began his recorded Mahler cycle
in Birmingham with a choral work, Mahler’s
Second; last Tuesday he completed it with
the vast choral Eighth Symphony and, as so
often with this symphony, it should prove
to be the crowning achievement of his own
cycle. This was a performance which, purely
as spectacle, had almost everything: cataclysm,
terror, and fire. If it lacked something,
too, it was in the performance’s rather human
view of the cosmic. Rarely did one feel that
Rattle brought sufficient sense of the symphony’s
themes of love, redemption and forgiveness
to a performance that scaled monumental musical
peaks on the surface but seemed understated
beneath it.
The
power with which Rattle started the work gave
the first movement the momentum it needed
for the pace he set. That Rattle held the
tension with an iron baton and displayed almost
tyrannical power (almost a contradiction for
this musician) in doing so was welcome (how
I wish he would do this more in Berlin); but
that the fluidity of the second theme seemed
to struggle because of it highlighted the
problems of taking the music so breathtakingly
fast. This conductor takes a particularly
visceral view of the ‘Veni, creator spiritus’
hymn and in part it is the weakest of the
two movement’s in his hands. ‘Accende lumen
sensibus’ did not so much erupt as simply
tear through the hall with the force of a
Hurricane; when the double fugue appeared
it did so with uncontrollable rage purging
the music of its natural weight. It is undeniably
exciting to hear, especially when the closing
pages are taken with such ferocious angst,
but it is the kind of catharsis that would
not pay repeated listening (this may well
be the case for some since the performance
was recorded – along with the first last weekend
– for release on both DVD and CD.)
On an
entirely different scale is Rattle’s handling
of the vast second movement (or, perhaps,
one should say movements since its form is
more complicated than its single structure
suggests). Moving between extinguishable darkness
to eternal light as Faust is wrenched between
the flawed Earth to the transfigured Heavens,
Rattle brings much to the movement that this
reviewer has not heard before. Has the prelude,
which opens the movement, ever sounded more
sombre and bleak than it did here? Has a chorus
ever sounded so rugged, yet so subliminally
aware of a spiritual journey as it did here?
At ‘Gerettet ist das edle Glied’ Rattle brought
out the astringency of the women’s chorus
without quite recalling its violent ancestry
in the first movement’s ‘Accende lumen sensibus’.
More extraordinarily, Gretchen’s intercession
(here sung most beautifully by Soile Isokoski)
was here accompanied by orchestral playing
that through its transparency and fantasy
recalled Messiaen – only Rattle could make
the parallel. The very ending itself – so
life affirming and ecstatic – had that final
sense of balance that was so conspicuously
absent in Part I.
The
soloists (excepting the disappointment of
not hearing Matthias Goerne as Pater ecstaticus)
were well matched. Especially impressive were
Christine Brewer, who brought both weight
and opulence to her parts, and the bass Daniel
Sumegi (himself a replacement), who conveyed
real dramatic power in his singing of Pater
profundis. Jon Villars – by no means the most
sonorous of tenors – achieved minor miracles
in the clarity and heft of his voice. The
combined forces of the CBSO Chorus and Youth
Chorus, the London Symphony Chorus and Toronto
Children’s Chorus raised the spectre of heaven
as well as the roof. And, for a German brought
up on Goethe’s Faust, the clarity of
the diction and phrasing was unusually precise.
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra,
if not always note perfect, followed their
old music director with unstinting conviction.
Pieter
Bonhoeffer
Editor’s
note: this review, replacing the scheduled
review by Seen & Heard’s editor, has been
translated (by the editor) from German into
English. Every effort has been made to keep
the original meaning as close as possible
in translation. The editor is grateful to
Pieter Bonhoeffer for providing this review
at such short notice, and under such unexpected
circumstances.
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