SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Mahler ’Resurrection’ Symphony: Melanie Diener (soprano), Dagmar Pecková (mezzo), London Philharmonic Chorus, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Simone Young (conductor)  Royal Festival Hall, London 17.10.2007 (JPr)

It was my wife (honest) who ended a number of comments about this memorable concert with the phrase – ‘for a woman’. It is absolutely true that you rarely want to write when dealing with a man that he is the father of two, had trouble with his hair or wore on the podium stiletto heels several inches high! It is the lot of the woman conductor that these thoughts go though the mind – unfortunately – and they really should not.

Sydney-born Simone Young has gone a long way to change the conventional wisdom about womconductors of her sex. She was the first woman to conduct at the Vienna Volksoper, the Vienna Staatsoper and the Bastille Opera Paris amongst many others, including being the first woman to conduct the most misogynistic organisation of them all, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in late 2005. At the time  - following on from the late 1990s when the VPO first voted to actually accept women into the orchestra -  Ms Young commented,  " I've been conducting there (Vienna) for five years but they only now have admitted the harpist into the orchestra. She’s been playing for 26 years and was never allowed to be a member of the orchestra. The classical music world is the most tradition-bound form of the arts and it is the slowest one to change. When I first was in the pit at the Berlin Comic Opera there was no applause. The audience simply thought I was a violinist. I heard a voice in the front row - this voice said roughly translated … 'get a load of this,  it’s a girl'."

The Vienna Philharmonic was ordered to accept women in 1997 if it wanted to continue getting state subsidies, but although technically open to female musicians it continued to keep them out by claiming that aspiring ones were not up standard. In the end, the orchestra was forced to break with its tradition of male exclusivity under pressure from American feminists who threatened to disrupt their US tours. They were backed up by the powerful International Alliance of Women in Music, an organisation representing women musicians in 31 countries who organised anti-Philharmonic demonstrations. It was indeed that harp player Anna Lelkes who was admitted as a permanent member to appease those critics but she remained the only woman initially. She was originally chosen because of the difficulty in finding a male harp player, but was only given a temporary contract. During the broadcast of her first New Year's Day concert, only her hands were allowed to be shown, and her name was left out of the programme. Then, after four years she was forced to retire even though she wanted to continue and 10 years on the situation is really no better than it was in the late 1990s.

These are the difficulties Ms Young's talent and success has fought to transcend, and her engagement to conduct the VPO was welcomed in musical circles where the orchestra's male only policy is naturally branded sexist and out-of-date.

Simone Young is considered one of the leading conductors of her generation; she has conducted a broad range of operatic and symphonic repertoires for major opera companies and orchestras. Having never spent very long anywhere it seems (including a brief time as music director of Opera Australia) she now seems at home in charge of the Hamburg State Opera and Hamburg State Philharmonic and has recently had her contract renewed until 2015. She has said how her ‘musical home has always been the German-speaking part of the world anyway’ and when asked about her motivation, she replies: ‘The best motivation is the audience. All musicians always want to present themselves in the best possible light.’

As is well known,  Mahler wrote his five movement ‘Resurrection’ Symphony over several years between 1887 and 1894. It is his treatise on life and, more importantly, death, a subject that obsessed the composer his entire life. He wrote the enormous opening funeral march first before creating the three inner movements and sprawling ‘Day of Judgment’ finale. The symphony  is a work of supreme emotional and spiritual richness : all of which  was entirely brought out by this admirable performance by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Simone Young.

This conductor was completely in tune with Mahler's uncanny way of stopping time: she opened a chasm (like the new installation the Tate Modern)  and then wrung out all of its possibilities before pressing on. She was  fascinating to watch, at exuberant moments conducting with her left foot raised from the podium, her arms, head and torso almost always in motion. That she studied piano is clear from the left arm and waggling fingers that appear to be accompanying the music as if to underwrite the contribution of the splendid musicians in front of her.

Not only was there continuity, confidence, spirit, attack, exhilaration and some very fine playing, but there was also an innate sense of almost operatic grandeur to the performance, similar to the recent Mahler 4 I heard under Bělohlávek. It is clear to me (at least) that Mahler performances are at their best when it is remembered that Mahler was a ‘man of opera’ even though he only conducted them and never had time to write his own.

So there was plenty of affect and emotion. The lower strings relished the opening sixteenths, imbuing them with plenty of grit, and projected the work's important bass lines throughout. The strings shone in the gentle Andante, an Austrian ländler that was like a distant memory of a sunrise during a romantic idyll on a faraway isle. This made the interruption by Mahler’s ‘cry of disgust’ outburst in the middle all the more chilling.

There was some spectacular brass playing throughout too, and in moments like the Dies Irae chorale in the finale they players were extremely moving and  coordination between the LPO and the offstage brass was flawless. Mahler's always characterful woodwinds were represented beautifully by the orchestra’s contingent, who included principals, Celia Chambers (flute), Robert Hill (clarinet) and Ian Hardwick (oboe). The solo violin playing of Pieter Schoeman, the orchestra’s leader, was immaculate.

Everything in the biography of the evening’s vocal soloists suggested that they would be an ideal pair. However Dagmar Pecková’s mezzo was tightly produced and slightly unsteady and so her contribution to the Urlicht movement was the one disappointment of the evening. There were no complaints about the soprano Melanie Diener, whose voice soared out warmly and with poignant clarity from the chorus, covering for her colleague’s deficiencies as their voices both sang out the angelic message ‘O glaube’ (O believe).

Simone Young, the LPO and the London Philharmonic Chorus gave me palpable shivers in the epic final movement, from the singers' wonderfully soft, extremely moving, low enunciation of ‘Aufersteh'n’ (Rise again) to the massive all-stops-out conclusion. What a powerful effect this concert had on us can be gleaned by the fact that together my wife and I got on a tube going in the wrong direction from Waterloo!

Back to Top                                                    Cumulative Index Page