Having completed eight symphonies and mindful of the precedent that no composer since Beethoven had completed more than nine symphonies, Gustav Mahler did not officially title Das Lied von der Erde as a symphony, despite labelling it as such in its subtitle. We know that the composer had suffered the loss of his daughter, a professional snub and the diagnosis of an incurable condition in the period that preceded the work’s composition. We also know that he became captivated with Bethge’s free translations of classical Chinese poems. These texts, if I might summarise inadequately, tend to be based in the more mundane aspects of life while alluding to the usual larger imponderables that preoccupy human thought. In many ways, this perfectly reflects Mahler’s tendency to grandiloquence via transforming and reshaping the banal.
Das Lied von der Erde is demanding of all its performers. There are many moments where attention is focused on small sections of its large orchestra, moments when it is impossible for any player to hide. On the other hand, there are abrupt and spiky orchestral tutti that have to be timed perfectly. There are times when string players have to hold very long pianissimo pedal notes and these have to be perfect to achieve their effect. The players of ADDA Simfonica were superb, of course. The singers spend the full hour on stage, and the tenor especially needs to work hard to be heard. The alto, on the other hand, has to negotiate the half hour of final song with total control. In this performance, Ramon Vargas and Cristina Faus were very much more than competent. Their voices seemed perfectly to match the demands of this work. The perfection was probably achieved via rehearsal. It was clear from the start how much time and effort all involved had devoted to getting every detail right.
And a work like this does have to hang together. Six unequal and varied movements, a change of soloist each time, a vast orchestra often called upon to play with the detail and intimacy of chamber music, all of this demands a director with more than the usual amount of control, accuracy and interpretive vision. ADDA’s artistic director, Josep Vicent, seems determined that the resident orchestra should take on challenging repertoire such as this work. And a mixture of Josep Vicent’s obvious talent and his orchestra’s dedication and determination to achieve the highest standards has thus now firmly established their partnership among the elite. I do not care which city you are in. I don’t care about reputations. I do, however, trust both my ear and my experience and for me at least this is as good an orchestra and conductor as can be found. They are worthy of their audience’s adoration, and they will surely make an international name for themselves in the very near future.
Das Lied von Der Erde is not the kind of work where an audience will naturally stand and cheer at the end. It tends to leave an audience in a reflective mood, and it also tends to live long in the memory. This audience did cheer, eventually, after the applause had continued for several minutes and the performance will live in the collective memory as long as it exists. But it is a mark of this hall’s audience’s priorities that, no matter how long the applause has lasted, it always ends with abrupt expectation with any signal for an encore.
As a footnote, I cannot
offer this review of the week in Alicante’s ADDA without mentioning the extraordinary
performance of José Antonio Marco Almira and Pamela Pérez that brought Daniel
Schnyder’s Bass Trombone Concerto to vivid life just a couple of says before
the orchestral concert. If one thought that the trombone part of this piece was
demanding, one might pause to think of the job done by the pianist. What a
performance!
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