This year’s Choral Sundays at the Proms are a wonderfully mixed bag. Mighty choral touchstones are represented by Mendelssohn’s Elijah, both the Verdi and Mozart Requiems and Beethoven Missa solemnis, but there’s also an enticing strand of curiosities. Looming largest among these has of course been Brian’s Gothic Symphony, but emerging now from its sprawling shadow are less obscure but no less interesting works – Britten’s Spring Symphony, and last night Mahler’s folkloric Opus 1 cantata Das klagende lied.
While a work of the composer’s youth (he was just 20 at completion), Das klagende lied proved sufficiently “strange and powerful” to strike even the mature Mahler with its assurance. Its historical neglect must in part be accounted for by the musical forces it demands (four harps set the curve for the main orchestra and are supplemented by an offstage band, high-lying chorus parts, solo trebles and a quartet of soloists), for its sophisticated simplicity and operatic scope make it a supremely attractive score.
Setting a tale familiar from Mahler’s childhood, the cantata’s triptych of movements (a later, revised version features just two) trace the tragic rivalry between two brothers in vivid episodes, culminating in a folk-Gothic denouement worthy of Poe.
The choice of ENO’s musical director Ed Gardner (pictured right) as conductor both reflected and shaped the cantata’s operatic leanings in performance, intensifying its vividly orchestrated colours and gestures. While a performance from Jurowski and the LPO back in January read the work as a straightforward tragedy, powering from ominous opening horn calls through to closing orchestral stab with predetermined certainty, Gardner’s approach was rather more discursive. Allowing the cumulative logic of the episodes to build gradually, his climactic closing at no point felt inevitable, animating the musical struggle against the tragic rip-tide with dramatic effect.
The BBCSO were in full soloistic flight, with horns, piccolo and first oboe conjuring Mahler’s forest vision of Walmärchen with colourful precision. The circling motifs appear in many guises, but their return at the opening of Hochzeitsstück all dressed in gleaming golds and silvers was an astonishing transformation of timbre, aided by the subversive echoes of the offstage band up in the gallery.
Balancing Mahler’s orchestral virtuosity are choral parts of equally demanding texture, and the luxurious casting of the BBC Singers (in very augmented form) offered us the security and flexibility no amateur chorus could have mustered. The physical weight of sound coming from them brought heft to the fragile tale, knitting the fragmented narrative strands into an expressive central mouthpiece.
Soprano Melanie Diener (pictured left) returned again to London in the work, and again both she and mezzo Anna Larsson - a late replacement for an indisposed Ekaterina Gubanova - suffered slightly in the balance, with the rather covered quality of Larsson’s upper register dulling the communicative intensity of her delivery. The men fared better, with Stuart Skelton proving his starry worth once again in his handful of entries, and Christopher Purves rivalling the brass for resounding tone. Six trebles from Westminster Abbey, focused and with absolute poise, turned the dramatic screw furthest, with two climactic solos crying out above the texture.
Prefacing the Mahler was Brahms’s Violin Concerto, propulsively driven by soloist Christian Tetzlaff. While his legato is as silkily spun as a philanderer’s endearment (showcased in the organic narrative of the Adagio with its unbroken line of development), it is his willingness to physically grapple with Brahms’s often chordal writing that animated this performance.
Showing no fear of the grainier textures of the Allegro, he did battle with complete assurance of victory, never splashy or wasteful with his gestures, but using the full gamut of registers. Though willing to retreat to the merest mothy caress, his volume in full spate is tremendous, flung out like the sword arm of a hero to pierce each listener. While Gardner’s orchestra offered efficient support at times their blend played against them, cutting too smooth a figure to take on Tetzlaff’s consciously rough-edged aggression. An encore from Tetzlaff yielded an urbane, whimsical performance of the Gavotte from Bach's E major Partita, as contrasting an approach to Nigel Kennedy's of the previous night as it would be possible to find.
A Choral Sunday with a distinctly operatic edge, this was a welcome first appearance from Ed Gardner to the 2011 Proms, a reminder of the conductor’s ability to translate his affinity for the dramatic to the concert hall. Appearing again to conduct the Last Night with music from Bartók, Liszt and Britten, his will be a welcome return.
