In the Dark

It was just over a year ago that I last went to the National Concert Hall in Dublin. That occasion was the opening of a new season of concerts for 2023-4 by the National Symphony Orchestra. After a year away on sabbatical, last night I went to the season opening of the next year of concerts by the National Symphony Orchestra, this time under the direction of Mihhail Gerts. I’m hoping to see more of the forthcoming season than I did the last!

The programme for the concert is shown in the picture. The first half was dominated by legendary mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly, resplendent in a turquoise frock, who sang six songs by Alma Mahler (born Alma Schindler) who was of course the wife of Gustav Mahler whose 1st Symphony we heard in the second half. Gustav famously (and reprehensibly) told Alma that she had to give up composing music when they married (which they did in 1902). Until then she had written not only songs but also piano music. Few of her compositions survive, however. Apparently she destroyed many of the manuscripts herself in later life. Of the fifty or so songs she is thought to have written, only 17 (including the 6 we heard last night) still exist on paper. She at least responded by outliving him by more than 50 years: Gustav died in 1911 and Alma Mahler passed away in 1964.

It’s very unfair to compare Alma Mahler’s settings with those of Gustav Mahler, who was a master of the orchestral song cycle. The compositions we heard all all quite short, three or four minutes, and are definitely influenced by Wagner. The first song, for example, deploys the famous Tristan Chord and there are passages that are clearly influenced by the Wesendonck Lieder. None of the manuscripts are dated, but in terms of style they do sound like late Romantic works from around 1900 when she was very young. Overall these works not at the same level of achievement of either Richard Wagner or Gustav Mahler but, with Sarah Connolly in fine voice, there was much to enjoy. I had never heard any of these songs before this evening, and it left me wondering what Alma Mahler might have achieved musically had she continued to compose. We’ll never know.

Before these songs we heard the concert overture In Nature’s Realm by Antonín Dvořák. This is also a piece that feels very late-19th Century (it was composed in 1891). It’s a sort of homage to the beauty of the composer’s native Bohemia with distinct echoes of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, I thought.

After the interval wine break we returned for the second half which consisted of (Gustav) Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D Major. This is a very familiar concert work nowadays, but it’s worth remembering that it didn’t exactly set the world on fire when it was first performed in 1889 and Mahler revised it extensively before it arrived at the form now usually performed. Like all Mahler symphonies it covers a vast territory. One of the most famous Mahler quotations is “the symphony is a world”, but in the case of his own symphonies each movement is a world. The first movement begins in hesitant and fragmentary fashion before bursting into life with a metaphorical evocation of daybreak. The second movement is earthier and more forceful, quoting from folk songs and country dances. The third is my favourite, with its humorously up-beat references to Klezmer music before ending in a kind of funeral march. The final movement is tempestuous at first, then calm, then erupts into a glorious finale.

Last night’s performance was broadcast live on RTÉ Lyric FM but what radio listeners won’t have got was the thrilling sight of a symphony orchestra in full flood. At the end of the last movement, members of brass section stood up to give extra power to the climactic resolution of the piece. Mahler does “loud” very well indeed, but I was impressed by the spectacle too: the lights gleaming off the array of trombones and horns as they blasted out the final phrases (in another context I would call them “riffs”). Great stuff, and very well received by the audience.

P.S. On the way into Dublin to see last night’s concert I realized that the Irish Rail timetable had changed while I was away so, instead of terminating at Connolly (the station, not the mezzo-soprano), the train I was on went all the way through to Pearse, thereby saving me a bit of time walking. It only takes about 20 minutes (for me) to walk from Pearse to the NCH, in case you’re wondering, and I do like a bit of a walk to stretch my legs before sitting down for a couple of hours at a concert.