Dandy, BBC Philharmonic, Storgårds, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - a destination attained

The opening and closing concerts of a season tend to be statements of intent – to pursue a path of exploration or (latterly) to celebrate a destination attained. John Storgårds’ final programme of the BBC Philharmonic’s series at the Bridgewater Hall was definitely the latter of those.

In the opening concert he gave us The Planets, a Beethoven piano concerto and a new work by Grace-Evangeline Mason. For the final one, he chose Mahler’s Third Symphony: the longest, most affirmative, most philosophically indebted to Nietzsche and in some ways most challenging of the whole cycle. For listeners, it has the fascination of a great journey, to be experienced for its landscapes and vistas as well as all the twists and turns of the way, and offering a sense of achievement in its culmination.

Storgårds brought it to that in just over 100 minutes without interval – about average for the work, whose performance duration has often been in a range between 90 and 120 minutes, the very variability being an indication of how approaches can differ and how much the music can be taken to require energetic enthusiasm or meditative mystery. The truth is that it calls for both, and makes its greatest impact when both are present.

The warmth of the audience’s reception at the end showed that the experience had been a powerful one: that was its achievement, and it was an endorsement of the recent decision to extend Storgårds’ relationship with the orchestra as its chief conductor.

(The work is also a very ambitious undertaking to put on – perhaps why it’s the least often performed of the Mahler symphonies, with its requirement for a contralto soloist for one relatively brief movement and then, with both a three-part ladies chorus and a children’s chorus, for one more, plus a very large orchestra and special effects such as bells and an off-stage “posthorn”. It betokens confidence in Storgårds and the future that this was all achieved).

The ladies of the Hallé Choir were combined with the CBSO Children’s Chorus and CBSO Youth Chorus in a city-to-city combination of resources, and who else but Jess Tandy, who memorably sang Sea Pictures here with the Phil in 2022, could bring the warmth of her tone to the setting of “O Mensch! Gib acht! …” from Also Sprach Zarathustra?

That quotation from Nietzsche, speaking of pain, joy and eternity, is in some ways the key to the whole philosophical underpinning of the work. It’s about Nature, but, as Mahler saw it, that means “everything that is frightful, great and also lovely”. The duality and contrast of those feelings is something that the music can and must express, and from the start this was clear in John Storgårds’ reading. The blast of tone from nine horns on the movement’s anthemic minor-key opening theme (curiously like a distortion of the big tune from the finale of Brahms’s First Symphony), together with the mighty upward rush of the Philharmonic’s cellos, led by Peter Dixon, was a grim statement indeed – almost grotesque – and its solemn tread sustained itself through all the explosions, pauses and interruptions to which Mahler subjects it in the first part of his sprawling, episodic, variation on a sonata-form first movement. But that gives way to a major passage that’s all cheerfulness and light, beautifully expressed here, and which was powerfully built to the first big climax of the work.

Such was the subtlety of Richard Brown’s solo trombone that the passage that followed became a marker in itself – an intimation of strange fantasies, sympathetically followed by the strings and the solos from leader Zoë Beyers and the wind principals – and that would recur later in the movement. The tempo changes were finely calculated, as tension rose and the unsettling quality of the music became more palpable, and the whole movement retained momentum and drama that meant its near 40-minute duration was complete, it seemed, in far less.

“Lange Pause!”, says Mahler’s manuscript after that, and well he might, as the little minuet movement that comes next starts full of pure innocence. It was played with remarkable delicacy, with pointing of the phrasing and flexibility in the tempo. The trios, though as unsettling and weird as anything in the first movement, could not finally disturb the sense of a lovely time in the fresh air (Mahler’s thought, it seems, was of “the flowers of the field” at this point), and the decrescendo at the end was delightfully done.

The third movement functions as a scherzo, was full of nervous energy and unease despite the music’s superficial folksiness, with incisive decorations and interpolations from the woodwind and muted trumpet before the strange, melodic interference of the “posthorn”, off-stage (in this case, up in the side choir seats), subsequently repeated. Storgårds worked up considerable fury in the central section. This is a wordless movement yet one that raises suspicions of what is “frightful” in nature (Mahler’s original programmatic movement label refers to the animals of the forest).

Words come with Nietzsche’s warning – and the final three movements segue into each other to form a single, suite-like unit. Mahler referred to “Night” and “mankind”, and the Nietzsche poem speaks of pain as well as joy: the orchestral sound caught its dreamy, bewitching quality, and Jess Dandy (pictured above) delivered the verdict that points to “deep eternity” as the destiny of all, with unarguable certainty. The fifth movement is a dive into the world of song and reminiscent of other Mahler settings of lyrics from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the anthology of ostensible German folk rhymes published by Arnim and Brentano at the beginning of the 19^th century. This one has the women’s and children’s choruses singing about St Peter finding heavenly joy through his love for God, despite his falls from grace: they’re supposed to represent the angels, and they did, gaining in confidence as the movement progressed.

Finally there was the extraordinary final slow movement, which, with help from the Philharmonic’s expressive cellos from the outset and the upper strings later, glowed with beatific serenity, growing more intense despite the horns’ rude interruption, and leading to the solo flute (Victoria Daniel) twice floating over everything like a good deed in a naughty world. Mahler turns up the volume towards the end as if covering the credits at the close of an epic film, and the playing concluded with untiring fervency.

Just one tiny issue: he says at the close of the opening movement “scharf abreissen” (tear it off sharply), but at the close of the whole symphony the final chord is marked “nicht abreissen” as well as “ohne diminuendo”, which is actually much harder to do – how do you avoid abruptness if there’s no fading? That didn’t quite come off, but it was a minor flaw at the close of a great achievement. 

• To be broadcast on Radio 3 on July 2  
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