Mahler 2

After having sampled a Boulez concert (with Bartok's Music), I slipped into the Berliner's Digital Concert Hall to attend a performance of Mahler's Second Symphony "Auferstehung". Simon Rattle conducted the house orchestra with Magdalena Kozena (mezzo), Kate Royal (soprano) and the Rundfunkchor on duty. It's supposed to be a live concert, but I am not sure exactly how 'live' it is.

Anyway 'slipped' is the word as my initial attempts to connect were rebuffed because of server capacity problems. When I finally got in the first piece, Schoenberg's Survivor from Warsaw, was already well under way. It was the first time I heard this work which must still create some rather uncomfortable vibes in Berlin.

The Mahler symphony started without much ado immediately after the last bars of the Schoenberg had died down (one reason why I suspect it is not a genuine live event). I must admit not being a great admirer of this particular work. In Mahler's canon it's the symphony I return least often to. It's the scale, the melodrama, the pious claptrap that goes with it which feed my circumspection. Despite the scale and the use of progressive tonality, I also feel this is a work which belongs more firmly to the 19th century than anything else that Mahler has written. In a way Brahms' Fourth symphony sounds more modern to my ears. So, I've gradually come to sympathise with Debussy and Dukas who at the time left a Paris performance objecting that the music sounded 'too Schubertian'. I certainly prefer the more abstract and modernist late Mahler.

Kudos to Rattle and his Berliners then to prove my prejudices very wrong! I had to laugh a little at myself when I was sitting mist-eyed through the rousing finale. The great thing about this performance was Rattle's impressive grip on this sprawling mega-structure. There was nothing particularly new or revelatory about anything in this reading. Luckily no disturbing histrionics, only an occasional indulgence in highlighting an expressive detail. But the sentiment of a vast structure gradually, relentlessly unfolding was there from the beginning, a spellbinding ebb and flow stretching away over movements, culminating in that outrageous last stanza of the Klopstock hymn. Remarkably, those 80 minutes seemed only half as long. 'Zum Raum wird hier die Zeit', to put it with a Wagnerian cliché.

Enough said. It was a great performance. Rattle and his Berliners and the soloists put their hearts in it. My faith in the Resurrection has been re-confirmed. Also lately my confidence in Rattle has been on the rise. I have never been a great admirer of this conductor. Too many times I have been disappointed by recordings that show all the portents of perfection but in actual effect sound terribly dull and lifeless. But last year I was impressed by a performance here in Brussels with the Berliners in a truly terrifying Bruckner Ninth. And then now this riveting Mahler symphony ... Maybe Rattle is maturing, maybe he just doesn't shine in the studio. I will have to dig a little deeper in the Digital Concert Hall archives to recalibrate my view on this conductor.