I’ve often been told of great occasions Bristol Choral Society members have taken part in before I joined, such as a Prom performance of the Gothic Symphony. Without a doubt joining the BBC National Chorus of Wales (and the BBC Symphony Chorus and London Symphony Chorus) for Mahler’s Eighth will join them in the choir’s collective memory. There can be few experiences other than performances of this symphony where so many people stand so close together, collectively creating something beautiful and uplifting.
It marked the final concert of Thomas Søndergård as principal conductor of the BBC NOW. My favourite among the soloists was Marianne Beate Kielland, who was a late stand-in; but I could only hear them obliquely. This isn’t the largest performance of the work I’ve sung in (the first ever one I did, in Green Park Station in 2000, had a choir of 600) but the BBC NOW was appropriately enlarged with suitably grand percussion – a real church-style bell rather than the tubular bell you usually get for example.
I was put in choir 2, but when given the choice of part, I opted for soprano 1; in fact there is little splitting, but you get a shot at a top C at the end of the first movement, and it was particularly satisfying to see someone on Twitter single this moment out for praise. In fact the chorus were complimented in a lot of the reviews.
It may seem a familiar work now (I’ve now sung it 3 times in the last 4 years), but there were 5 notes I’d never sung: ‘Er will uns lernen’. When I previously was in Choir II they were given to the young people’s chorus. No performance ever follows Mahler’s instructions to the letter – they just get too complicated about sorting out lighter voices and putting people in the front row. And the usual bar-counting and working out leads, although as I get to know the work better this is a little less perplexing. We choir 2 sopranos had one particularly nippy stand just before ‘Du schwebst’.
Lots of reviews as you might expect. The general consensus seems to be that it was a four-star performance. I’ll put some thoughts about the symphony itself in another post.