It was with Mahler and the Philharmonia that the Royal Opera’s new music director first made a mark with London audiences. His Puccini may or may not be considered wholly idiomatic but Jakub Hrůša is one of the most distinguished Mahler conductors of his generation. All the more surprising then that tonight’s concert did not attract a bigger crowd. Could it be that the Mahler boom has peaked? Or does the Seventh still put people off? The UK has seen many renderings of this work since Leonard Bernstein’s LSO scorcher of 1966 yet there were swathes of unsold seats, more so than for Kirill Petrenko’s twin accounts here on either side of the COVID pandemic.
In Music’s Odyssey, Robin Holloway’s recent study of the Western classics, we get the case for the prosecution, Mahler’s lopsided score viewed as ‘not so much a suite as a hotchpotch, very uneven, not adding up or making overall sense – as programme, life-saga, poetic vision – any way.’ Treating this five-movement hybrid as a prematurely post-modern concerto for orchestra has become the popular coping mechanism. Still, one expected the Philharmonia’s Mahler to be Old School. Not as spacious necessarily as Otto Klemperer’s or Giuseppe Sinopoli’s but thoughtful, warm and cultured. In line with Hrůša’s Mitteleuropean career profile, violins were seated antiphonally. Cellos were centrally placed with eight double basses to the left and harps on the right.
The players might have responded more consistently to Hrůša’s clear baton work and quasi-balletic gestures had not the performance got off to a troubled start. Amid a noisy barrage of coughing, the opening tenor horn solo went badly awry. Sadly this was not the only wind and brass casualty of the night. Despite much exquisite detailing at lower volume levels, it was obvious that all was not well pretty much throughout. Keeping the show on the road took priority over the conductor’s self-stated intention ‘to try to embrace [the music’s] experimentalism as an integral part of its identity, and to give it a coherent sense of direction and wholeness.’ The subtlety of the first movement’s Alpine interlude offered a rare moment of repose in an uneasy soundscape.
Delayed by the clattery comings and goings of audience members, the second movement started much like its predecessor but survived awkward corners to project a not unruffled, finely detailed Central European charm. There followed a central scherzo swift, spooky and unpredictable if not always ideally poised and a second Nachtmusik that felt overlong despite nicely audible mandolin and guitar. Trombones, tuba and trumpets fall silent hereabouts. Not however that jinxed horn. The ending was beautifully realised, giving us a glimpse of what might have been and a properly potent fade. The ‘empty’ finale – is it exultantly invigorating or cavernously cynical or both? – was sculpted to no great purpose despite the conscious crafting, pockets of rural delicacy and flair infiltrating the general clamour. Applause was copious as it always is these days after anything long and loud.
While the Mahler was deemed sufficient unto itself, the concert was preceded by a free chamber event in which Jessie Montgomery’s Break Away preceded the sextet version of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht.
