Strauss, Mozart, Schubert (arr. Mahler):  International Mahler Orchestra, Karolinka de Bree (piano )Yoel Gamzou (conductor) St. John’s, Smith Square 22.02.2007 (JPr)

 

The International Mahler Orchestra was founded in 2006 by the young Israeli-American conductor, Yoel Gamzou and a number of colleagues to bring together some of the world’s most promising young orchestral players with more established ones from major European orchestras. It gives an opportunity for these young musicians to benefit from the experience. The orchestra intends to gathers several times a year for special projects in London, emphasising the works of Gustav Mahler and aspiring to give opportunities to promising young soloists.

 

More than 20 musicians from over 10 different countries came together for their Winter Concert in St. John’s, Smith Square, and amongst special thanks to many for their support I noted that the concert was ‘made possible by a generous grant by Maestro Benjamin Zander, who has inspired so many of us in our passion for Gustav Mahler.’

I found Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen a strange opener for a concert. This piece lasts about 30 minutes and is scored for just 23 individual string players. I have dwelt on this music before (review). Richard Strauss wrote it near the end of his life as almost a requiem to the Germany he had loved and lost. Undoubtedly extremely solemn (with its repeated fragments of the Eroica Symphony funeral march), perhaps due to the youth of the players, who Yoel Gamzou directed purposefully, I was overcome by more optimism than usual apart from near the end where I wondered if Strauss was thinking of the proverb ‘What one fool can destroy ten wise men cannot repair’, the only question being how much Strauss had supported the ‘one fool’ of his age … Hitler?

I was transfixed watching the piece every bit as much as listening to it. All 23 parts have exposed passages at some point but the whole group gave a seamless performance. Congratulations to them all but especially the violinist, Tristan Théry who led the orchestra throughout the concert by the example of his fine musicianship.

Following Metamorphosen’s supposed gloom we had Mozart’s seemingly sunnily lyrical and optimistic Piano Concerto No.14, k449. My background research yields the following fascinating information: according to the date that Mozart noted on the score this Piano Concerto was finished on 9 February 1784 and it would be the first of four he would write in a short period of about two months. He produced several piano concertos at the end of each winter, the following year he would write two more in February and March, in 1786, and a further two. Was this productivity ‘a burst of spring fever’ as I have read it might seem?  No, the real reason provides the evidence for someone like me who always knew that most composers are only in it for the money. These concertos were all written during or just before Lent that precedes Easter each year. In Catholic Vienna of those days the dramatic theatres were usually closed during Lent, so lacking competition from this popular form of entertainment, concert attendance soared, and musicians presented even more concerts during this time. Mozart often gave three or four concerts each week and he would need some new music to perform, hence the series of concertos. With such a busy schedule of concert appearances, Mozart certainly played this concerto himself; but the person for whom it was written was his piano student, Barbara (Babette) von Ployer. The third movement particularly mixes spontaneous melodic musical inspiration with a use of variation and long contrapuntal statements. It demands the studied fluid grace that the young Dutch soloist gave it in her eloquent and unfussy performance.

After the interval, Schubert’s ‘Death and the Maiden’ String Quartet was performed in an arrangement for string orchestra by Gustav Mahler. This has a fascinating history not fully covered in the programme notes on the night. At some point Mahler obtained a score of this Quartet in D minor and made detailed annotations on it indicating how the music could be scored for a string orchestra and even performed the second movement. He abandoned any plans for a complete performance after being criticised for removing the music’s intimacy. Years after his death Anna Mahler, his daughter, discovered the altered Schubert score and passed it on to the Mahler scholars David Matthews and Donald Mitchell, who published in 1984 the now often performed orchestral arrangement based on the composer-conductor's notations.

The title ‘Death and the Maiden’ derives from the source of its second movement theme, a Lied that Schubert composed on a poem of that title by Matthias Claudius. The song’s quiet introduction depicts the solemn tread of death, continues with the maiden's music of panic and fear, and ends with the words of death set to the music of its opening passages. For those in the know it is entirely possible to see from this what, in the first place, attracted Mahler’s attention to this music both here and in the ‘dance of death’ final movement.

There were some fine feats of virtuosity from the ensemble that radiated the joy of performing together. Melodramatic, histrionic, taut and precise by turns it was everything one could hope for. Yoel Gamzou’s direction of his players both young and old was highly commendable. He was the last student of Carlo Maria Giulini and has been selected as one of the 12 finalists in the forthcoming 2007 International Gustav Mahler-Conducting Competition in Bamberg.

So this was a good concert, but since it was in St John’s, Smith Square, the number of people on the platform was disconcertingly similar to the number in  the hall. All right, so it wasn’t that bad, but complete rows of empty seats outnumbered those with people in them and it was probably only a quarter full if that. This venue has always provided a reasonably-priced hall for the cash-strapped and of course such a venue is important otherwise where else would the IMO or similar groups be able to go? There has never been a support network from the hall in my experience to support the range of events it does put on in an attempt to build a regular audience. Finally I believe even the organisations St John’s used to attract are getting the message. Free dates for the hall used to be difficult to find but let us now look at April 2007 as an example. There are only 15 evening events this month, 5 of these are schools concerts, 1 is a university ensemble, 1 a county orchestra and a further one a youth wind group. Not major league stuff is it?

 

To keep going like this with little by way of ticket receipts the IMO like others must continue to rely totally on the deep pockets of its supporters and other sponsorships, as in their case, fixmyproperty.com and FirmVision.  Beggars can’t be choosers, and we should be grateful for them and those like Ben Zander and all the others mentioned in the programme for their generosity which made such splendid music-making possible even if there were few present to appreciate it .

 

Jim Pritchard