One of my great regrets with regard to singing came back in 2002 when I was for a short time in the Cambridge University Musical Society (CUMS) chorus. Members were invited to join a performance of Mahler 8 later that summer, and not knowing the full details I didn’t enquire further. With hindsight I realise this must have been an invitation (clandestinely made) to augment the chorus for Simon Rattle’s performances at the Proms and in Birmingham. What an opportunity missed!
This year though I did get at least to hear Rattle conduct at the Proms, in the second of his performances with the Berlin Philharmonic. The first half was less successful than the second. I am not very familiar with the prelude to Parsifal, but I felt there was quite a bit of raggedness early on as if this piece were a makeweight that had been rehearsed less than the rest (considering what was coming up, this was quite likely).
The Four Last Songs, performed by Karita Mattila, were also not what I’d hoped, which was a bit more of a disappointment. I can’t really put my finger on what went wrong except perhaps a general tendency to wallow and linger. As this is written into the score, there is no need to exaggerate it! But despite the slow tempi, I was held by her ability to communicate the essence of the songs across the distance to our seats in the gallery.
After the interval came a triptych of Schoenberg’s Five pieces for orchestra followed by Webern’s six and Berg’s three, separated by brief pauses but nothing else. (Apart from a change in the colour-coding. There is a strip of lighting behind the orchestra and illuminated panels above it with a design a bit like a watch mechanism seen sideways on. A nod to the current fashion for video to play during the music? So we got cool blue for Schoenberg (and Strauss), neutral orange for Webern and flaming red for Berg (and Wagner)).
This was the second time my daughter had heard the Schoenberg at the Proms. I liked the performance but I’m still not quite convinced by these pieces, which sound to me as if he was still exploring the possibilities of the new style rather than saying something in particular. The Webern was more like it. I usually find his music pretty baffling, but hearing it played with real precision of ensemble and dynamics it suddenly began to make sense. On the other hand, the same precision slightly detracted from the Berg, where I felt the second and third pieces in particular could have been a bit wilder. These are really minor quibbles as the performances were superb (I never thought I’d hear a xylophone sound quite so vicious). And I approved of the idea to play without major interruptions, though it was never going to be ‘Mahler’s 11th’ as suggested, if only because of the three distinct artistic personalities involved.
This concert, anticipated as a highlight of the Proms season, generated a lot of discussion on the BBC message boards. Here are some other reviews: Independent, Guardian, Observer, The Classical Source.
Incidentally, I was astonished to see in the programme that Simon Rattle is about to release a recording of the Nutcracker. I thought he didn’t do Tchaikovsky?!