A SUBLIME MAHLER FAREWELL FROM THE CBSO
CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★
Mahler’s orchestral song cycle ‘Das Lied von der Erde’ (‘The Song of the Earth’) has been straitjacketed into the symphony-in-all-but-name category. This arose from a notoriously unreliable source, his widow Alma, who claimed that Mahler superstitiously refused to name it as such because, as the concert programme has it,”no major composer had lived long after completing their ninth symphony. Beethoven and Bruckner seemed to prove the point.” So Mozart (41 symphonies) and Haydn (104 Symphonies) weren’t major composers? Nonsense of course but Alma was a serial mythologist. Listening to this passionate performance under conductor Alpesh Chauhan, making a welcome return to his home city, confirmed that song is the essence of this work and reinforces the judgement that Mahler was a genius when writing for voices. Which needs, of course, voices capable of doing justice to this sublime and vocally demanding work. Demanding not just is vocal range and amplitude but in emotional sensibility and understanding.
No problem here for the soloists, mezzo soprano Karen Cargill and tenor Brenden Gunnell, who encompassed all the challenges the work entails. I have been fortunate to review both singers with the CBSO in recent years. Gunnel was a passionately heroic Gerontius in Elgar’s oratorio in 2023, while Cargill’s Mahler credentials were evident in two different performances of his Symphony No.2 and of his ‘Rückert Lieder’. Gunnel’s heldentenor was ideal for the rousing opening blaze of ‘Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde’ (‘The drinking-song of the Earth’s sorrow’) which has something of Dylan Thomas’s “Rage, rage against the dying of light,” in its refusal to abjectly capitulate to death. The song sets the tone for the work as a whole. It’s not a maudlin, lachrymose ‘Long Goodbye’ no more than is the ninth symphony, although both are sometimes interpreted as such. Gunnel sang its thrice-repeated line ‘Dunkel ist das Leben, ist der Tod,” (‘Dark is life, dark is death’) acknowledging its bleak existential weight and wrly gave ’life's long vanity’ its due. But there was death-defying bravado in the exhortation for his companions (all of us) to ‘raise your cups’ and drain them down’. The desire for peace, rest after strife, was beautifully captured by Cargill’s ‘O give me sleep, for I have need to rest’ in ‘Der Einsame im Herbst’ (‘The lonely one in autumn’). The orchestral playing was exquisite with Chauhan ensuring that Mahler’s chamber-music texture was realized. Mahler’s never one-sided, for ‘a lovely sleep’ can be getting your head down after a night on the tiles as in ‘Der Trunkene im Frühling’ (‘The drunkard in springtime’) with Gunnel in raucous good humour and the orchestra providing piquant touches like the solo violin and flute’s bird imitations. The work’s apotheosis ‘Der Abschied’ (‘The farewell’) belonged to Cargill whose hushed ‘Ewig…ewig’ (Ever...ever) magically opened the door to eternity. It awakened another line from Thomas, ‘And death shall have no dominion.’
The concert opened with Chauhan’s bracing reading of Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ symphony. Speeds have increased over the decades and the opening movement is sometimes taken at a fair clip as if we were seeing the sights from a speeding charabanc. Here we had time to admire the scenery, the CBSO strings caressing the long musical paragraphs. I remember Walter Weller’s 1980s CBSO ‘Pastoral’ when the ‘Scene by the brook’ was so slow that it stagnated but Chauhan kept it flowing and there was plenty of excitement in the thunderstorm sequence. Reservations? The peasants were a little too clean, refined and light on their feet, like the faux folk dances put on for tourists. It’s fashionable to deride Klemperer’s ‘Pastoral’ as ponderous but his rustics had dirt under the nails and their hobnail boots had the authentic thud as they danced.
Norman Stinchcombe