How often do you get a performance of Das Lied von der Erde more or less at the end of your street? I found this was happening just in time and grabbed myself a ticket.
This was the Bath Philharmonia (or rather some of them, as they used the reduced orchestration by Glen Cortese for the Mahler) conducted by Jason Thornton and with Gavin Carr and Jonathan Stoughton as soloists in the Mahler. The concert was in memory of Gavin’s and Paul’s father, Martin, an avid supporter of the campaign for a proper purpose-built concert hall in Bath. (The latest relevant news is that it’s been found that the Southgate centre, where retail is king, is being used as a thoroughfare and people aren’t stopping to shop there. If it had had a destination venue within it, such as a concert hall, that might be different. I’ve also found out that this isn’t a recent campaign – a plan was proposed to build one south of the Abbey a century ago!)
The concert opened with Paul Carr’s Elegy for strings and Mozart’s Symphony no. 40. But the heart of it was the Mahler, which had the audience listening intently to a committed performance from all. If I single out some of the woodwind solos this is not to belittle the two vocal soloists.
I was in the gallery and had hoped to sit at the west end looking down the church, but it had been closed off for some sort of renovation – although it’s only a few years since the while church was renovated! So I was round the side peering around a pillar. I couldn’t always hear the tenor easily, but this may have been because of where I was sitting and/or the orchestration, as the brass in general came over strongly.