★★★★★ Simone Young leads an excellent ensemble through their most recent Mahlerian achievement.

QPAC Concert Hall
September 12, 2015

Almost 12 years ago I was “public enemy number one” for the Arts Editor of the Brisbane Courier-Mail because (unforgivable from a former Brisbane-boy) I had written that the Queensland Symphony Orchestra was then the worst in Australia. Hostilities lasted for about a week, with daily attacks in the paper, yet last year a member of the current QSO told me, “You were right”. Soon enough, Johannes Fritzsch was appointed as the new Chief Conductor and he began the essential process or rebuilding both quality and esteem in the orchestra.

Basing my judgement on their recent Mahler performances with Simone Young – the First Symphony in 2014 and, even more spectacularly, the massive Sixth this year – and having heard them under Fritzsch in a couple of operatic performances, I can say that the QSO is now an excellent ensemble: indeed, it is difficult to imagine any other of the Australian orchestras surpassing this most recent Mahlerian achievement.

The Sixth Symphony is a vast piece – probably too vast – demanding, for example, six trumpets and eight horns. Even Richard Strauss, an exceedingly fine conductor and orchestrator, considered it (and especially the enormous final movement) “over-instrumented”. It is true, I think, that the Finale is, though spectacular, musically the weakest movement. However, if it is to work (and Mahler always doubted his own ability to make his symphonies sound their best), it requires the intense musicality and high intelligence (not to mention the energy and conviction) which Simone Young brought to it.

There was an ineluctable ferocity in the fearful tread of the cellos and basses in the opening bars: fearful because their martial drive was surely Mahler’s prophesy of the cataclysm which would overwhelm Europe less than a decade after his symphony was completed. That minatory impulse of the music is, apart from the third (Andante) movement, ubiquitous in the work. The force of Young’s opening literally made me sit up with expectation, and that engagement never faltered: its 80-odd minutes seemed little more than half that length.

The orchestral response to her direction was inspirational; it was plain that everyone was, at the same time, concentrating hard yet thoroughly enjoying the experience. The trumpets were, in Keats’s words, “Silver, snarling”; the horns, by turns, mellow or anguished; the woodwinds lyrical or cynically tart (but never through any flaw in their intonation). Most of all, though, I relished the strings. Warwick Adeney’s many solos were splendid (there is a fatalism in Malher’s writing for the Concertmaster), but, throughout, the playing was of admirable accuracy: not just the insistent dotted rhythms, but the trueness of the pitch in the sustained lyrical sections, as well.

This confidence allowed everyone to play the music, to revel in its contrasts, and not worry about performing it. Take one example. The so-called “Alma Mahler theme”, which appears early in the opening movement (at bar 77), is marked Schwungvoll (“snappy” or “spirited”), but if the orchestra relaxes too much it can, instead, become kitsch. There was never any risk of that: the line was never crossed, yet we were always aware of the riskily exciting possibility (an echo of the “most beautiful” and sensual woman in Vienna). Or take another. There really is not a traditional “Trio” in the Scherzo movement (here the second, incidentally); instead, the “Trio” is broken up and keeps making unexpected appearances, as in a mosaic: there was never a hint of falsity or artifice in this performance.

Huge though the sonic and emotional scale of this work is, a conspicuous omission is voices, which were so significant in a number of Mahler’s earlier symphonies. Simone Young’s programme plan dealt with that difference adroitly: it began with a fine account of the Rückert-Lieder (from the time of this symphony), with the renowned Australian dramatic soprano, Lisa Gasteen. Some years ago, an accident caused a serious set-back to her career, but in this concert she was again the great musician which she had been. Every note was sound; no musical effect was overdone. In fact, the opening song, Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder (“Do not glance into my songs”) was sung very “straight” and the second (Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft; “I breathed a Linden perfume”) was gently elegant. The emotion was allowed to flower, utterly naturally, only in the third and fourth songs (“At Midnight” and “I have become alienated from the world”). Everything emerged from Gasteen’s deep sense of the language and the music which grew from it.

After the concert, the exhilaration of the musicians was almost palpable around the stage door; and so it should have been. Together, they had all achieved something very special and they realised that. The collaboration of conductor and orchestra – together with an eager audience – had created a truly precious evening.

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