Maazel's Mahler Cycle 2011: Mahler Symphony No.3

Maazel Mahler Cycle: Symphony No. 3 (Royal Festival Hall, 8^th May 2011)

However much Mahler fascinates me it was with a little trepidation I was seated for this two hour, without interval, concert and of course armed myself with a chocolate ice-cream on hearing that once things were started there would be no remerging until the symphony itself finished to sing. Even for a Mahler admirer and for having heard some of his previous works I was not quite prepared for this experience. Two hours without interval may still sound daunting, but I can assure you time evaporated during Maazel’s spellbinding conducting of this Mahler symphony. This was an utterly mesmerising and epic evening.

As reviewed by the Guardian “Maazel’s Mahler is a cosmic experience” (Guardian, April 2011). Sarah Connolly gave a hauntingly lovely mezzo-soprano rendition of Nietzsche’s “Midnight Song”, especially commendable since Connolly covered for the planned performance by Christianne Stotjin at short notice. The first violinist Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay played with exquisite lucidity and led the strings beautifully in what was some very rousing and intense music making. The final movement in particular is utterly breathtaking and although I have considered some of the concerts I have been to in the past wonderful this is not so much something witnessed as an experience lived that leaves one speechless. The range of moods in the music covers a broad spectrum, from sweet religiosity, slyvestian flora and fauna to gripping passion in the final moments. The journey is one through the landscape of the human soul itself and in its final throes it is piercing, penetrating every cell both physical and metaphysical with its beauty. By doing so the music itself seems capable of transfiguring the human mass receiving its impact. It is a piece that in its closing makes love to the listener’s soul, imbuing it with new feeling, so that you leave changed through having encountered it. To put it in the words of a much more able and much admired music critic, Edward Said, this piece does indeed seem to demonstrate how Mahler's "drawn-out lines" may indeed "signify an ecstatic accepyance of mortality." (E. Said, Music at the Limits, 2009. p. 180) It also complied with a view posited by Donald Mitchell on Mahler, as noted in Said, (ibid) that it is necessary for "the music (to) carry you beyond lines and strict patterns into a heightened form of ritual."  

(Maazel’s cycle continues at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall with Mahler’s symphony No.7 on Thursday 26 May 2011 7pm)

Mahler’s music to Nietsche’s incredibly powerful words is indescribable and certainly conveys the depth of the sentiment that “all longing craves eternity.”*

*O Man, take heed!

What does the deep midnight say?

I slept! From deep dreams I have awoken!

The world is deep

And deeper than the day thought!

Deep is its woe!

Longing, deeper still than heartache!

Woe says: Pass hence!

But all longing craves eternity,

Craves deep, deep eternity.

(Midnight song by Friedrich Wilhelm Neitsche 1844-1900 as translasted by William Mann and printed in the performance programme.)