Mahler: ‘Symphony of a Thousand’

Sunday, 2 May 2010, 19:30
Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

Claire Rutter – soprano
Aga Mikolaj – soprano
Anita Watson – soprano
Sarah Connolly – mezzo-soprano
Catherine Wyn-Rogers – mezzo-soprano
Peter Hoare – tenor
Gerald Finley – bass-baritone
James Creswell – bass
Hallé Choir and Children’s Choir
City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus and Youth Chorus
Halle Orchestra
Sir Mark Elder – conductor

Gustav Mahler: Symphony No.8: ‘Symphony of a Thousand’

What the critics say

Geoff Brown, The Times, 4 May 2010

Grey skies; a cold wind. But nothing could stop Manchester’s magnificent orchestra celebrating the May Day weekend with boundless enthusiasm, polish and enough decibels to scrape the sky. On Sunday, as part of Bridgewater Hall’s Mahler cycle, Manchester presented an orchestra of 122 (the Hallé and BBC Philharmonic fraternally combined), eight vocal soloists, and a chorus numbering 390: just over half the forces advertised in the nickname of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, the “Symphony of a Thousand” (it always was an exaggeration).

No fancy interpretation was offered; none was needed. The conductor’s job in this work is to inspire, keep order, soldier on and always have some decibels in reserve. Aided by the BBC Philharmonic’s leader, Yuri Torchinsky, Sir Mark Elder steered the joint forces magnificently. Among the soloists, Sarah Connolly fielded the most eloquent phrasing in Part One’s vocal tapestry; while the Polish soprano Aga Mikolaj, sweetly radiant, came to the fore as Goethe’s Penitent in the Faust setting comprising Part Two. Gerald Finley was properly ecstatic as Pater Ecstaticus. But none could compare with the clarion glory of the massed Hallé choirs and Birmingham’s CBSO Chorus. I’ll long remember their mellifluous beauty as they launched into the final section, drawing us up into Heaven’s embrace.

Anna Picard, The Independent, 9 May 2010

The Bridgewater Hall saw the debut of a new orchestra last weekend as players from the BBC Philharmonic and the Hallé joined forces under Mark Elder for Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. The Hallémonic had a sound of its own – more robust than the refined glow of the Hallé, more disciplined than the BBC Phil’s High Romantic swell. And though both orchestras have been on a parallel journey, as part of the same symphonic cycle, minute differences in timbre and attack, sometimes even from the same desk, lent this occasionally sublime, often preposterous work new edginess.

This was the only concert in Manchester’s Mahler Cycle not to open with a new commission. Instead, organist Olivier Latry delivered a Messaien-influenced improvisation on the hymn “Veni Creator Spiritus”. Not for the first time, I wondered if the anonymous monk who first transcribed the plainsong did better than Mahler, whose own setting borders on bombast. Much more than in the Second and Third Symphonies, where poetry and prayer are an organic extension of the score, the orchestra’s role in the Eighth Symphony is that of accompanist, subsidiary to the bright chimings of the children’s voices (Hallé Youth Choir and Children’s Choir), the adult chorus (Hallé Choir and CBSO Chorus), and the eight soloists (including Sarah Connolly and Gerald Finley) whose euphoric cries describe Goethe’s glittering host of angels and saints in the second movement. If the fortissimi were dazzling, the suspenseful collective hush of “Alles Vergängliche …” was breathtaking. Above all, the attention to text was scrupulous.

Paul Driver, The Times, 9 May 2010

Pedal power

An improvised organ work and Mahler’s Eighth left Paul Driver shaken and stirred in Manchester

Manchester has an honourable Mahler tradition, thanks largely to the Hallé Orchestra’s conductor John Barbirolli, but he never managed to put on the oratorio-like symphony that is Mahler’s Eighth. The lack of an organ at the Free Trade Hall was a factor, although he apparently did prepare a performance, withdrawing it at a late stage.

The hall’s successor, the Bridgewater, is renowned for its organ — a tremendous construction by Marcussen & Son with more than 5,500 pipes — and both the Hallé under Kent Nagano and the BBC Philharmonic under Gianandrea Noseda have given the work there. But when these orchestras combined there last Sunday, and were joined by the Hallé Choir, Hallé Youth Choir, Hallé Children’s Choir and CBSO Chorus, under Mark Elder, it was only, I believe, the third time this “Symphony of a Thousand”, premiered in 1910, has resounded in Manchester.

It was a shattering experience, necessarily the high point of the city’s Mahler symphony cycle, marking the 150th anniversary of his birth, shared between these orchestras and the Manchester Camerata, with the blessing of Radio 3, and continuing at the end of the month with the Hallé and Elder performing Symphony No 9.

Every orchestra seems set on a Mahler cycle, either this season or next, but it is unlikely that any other will offer the substantial novelty of this one, where nine of the symphonies are preceded by a specially written work meant as a reflection of the Mahler, a stimulus made flesh.

The case of the Eighth was different: a responsive new piece was composed on the spot. Olivier Latry, titular organist at Notre-Dame in Paris, improvised for some 20 minutes on the plainchant Veni, Creator Spiritus, basis of the 9th-century Pentecostal hymn adopted by Mahler as the granitic basis of his symphony.

The hall is fortunate in being able to position the organ console on the stage, so that we were as intimate with the player as at a piano recital. That was also a bit of a shock, for while every movement a pianist makes is musical in itself, an aspect of phrasing, many of an organist’s are merely those of an operative — reaching out to pull stops, throw switches, press foot knobs. Latry’s legs seemed to twirl several times round his stool. He was all sinuosity as he encompassed his gamut of keyboards, and one realised what a theatrical performance one misses when an organist is hidden aloft. The musical fantasy was itself theatrical: spikily dramatic, tense and tumultuous, edgy and ecstatic. His excursion, amazingly assured albeit truly spontaneous, was at once a study in the possibilities of the chant and of the Marcussen instrument. From a booming pedals solo to a piccolo-esque display of the tiniest pipes, his “composition” unlocked timbral secrets and wonderfully “tempered” the hall for the symphony.

Not even the grandest burst of organ can upstage the opening of Mahler’s Eighth, though it includes an organ burst: a foundational chord of E flat, immediately curtailed so that the vast chorus can take over and thunder forth “Veni, Creator Spiritus”. (How nice that the programme book gave this as a music-type example!) Mahler’s skill in magnifying sonic effect while keeping texture uncluttered remains manifest throughout the 90 minutes. At least it did in this performance, whose wielding of prodigious tonal masses and shaping of polyphonic lines were equally arresting. Elder ensured perpetual clarity with no loss of atmosphere and drama. And the architectonic rightness only made the emotional impact rawer.

The consummatory ppp entry of the Chorus Mysticus at the end was breathtaking. The off-stage moments — Mater Gloriosa (Anita Watson) rhapsodising from on high, brass bands signing off the two great parts from opposite balconies — were thrilling. The other soloists — Claire Rutter, Aga Mikolaj, Sarah Connolly, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Peter Hoare, Gerald Finley, James Creswell — made a sumptuous textural layer. I realised with force and surprise that if musical history threw up an authentic successor to Wagner’s operas, it was in the form of this monumental, lyric, apocalyptic symphony.

Fiona Maddocks, The Observer, 9 May 2010

The excellent Mahler in Manchester series, an imaginative collaboration between the Hallé and the BBC Philharmonic, is nearing its final stages, with two concerts left to go. Last week, instead of alternating concerts, members of the two orchestras joined forces, together with eight top soloists, the Hallé Choir, Girls of the Hallé Youth Choir, the Hallé Children’s Choir and the CBSO chorus for the Symphony No 8, nicknamed – to Mahler’s horror – “Symphony of a Thousand”.

This uneven work, which explodes into life with a massive, full organ E-flat chord and choral outburst, joined an instant later by an exultant orchestra going hell for leather, stirs the heart merely by its abundance. Its subject, celebrated with visionary ambition and a shattering final climax, is the creative power of love. The hymn, “Veni Creator Spiritus”, provides a central motif for the first movement, while Part II sets the final scene from Goethe’s Faust, with all its explorations of that dodgiest of paradigms and paragons, the eternal feminine.

James Creswell, Gerald Finley and Peter Hoare sang Goethe’s hermits possessed of divine knowledge, with spiffing contributions from the children’s choir as young angels and ethereal soloists including Sarah Connolly, Catherine Wyn-Rogers and Claire Rutter. The various choruses were impressively drilled. Mark Elder, looking like a happy ghost by the end, marshalled an exuberant performance. And the united orchestra showed the value, musically speaking, of a hung parliament.