Attack of the bathtub: Vienna Philharmonic and Mahler 6 at the BBC Proms
Mahler 6
Vienna Philharmonic and Daniel Harding
Royal Albert Hall
Arena, £7.12
7 September 2017
BBC page
I know there is no point in moaning about the acoustics of the Royal Albert Hall. I know that moaning cannot change the fact that the Hall's capacity means that it will most likely always be the home of 'the world's greatest classical music festival'. I know also that moaning won't make me feel any better. Nevertheless, moan I will.
There are two components of Mahler 6 that I think work well in the Royal Albert Hall, as performed by the Vienna Phil. One is the cowbells, which, played from the gallery, seemed spookily to come from everywhere, a ghostly omnipresent herd that may not have been what Mahler had in mind but which was pretty cool on its own account. The effect was aided also by entirely un-sheepish playing by the VP percussionist. The second component is the gong, which is exciting to hear from both in front and behind and where the half-second delay between the two doesn't really matter.
That delay does matter with the other percussion instruments and with the trombones, tuba, trumpets and even sometimes the horns and other wind instruments. The healthy aural shadows left by these instruments clamour over their predecessors such that passages of counterpoint in, say, all of the third movement are unintelligible. And while the loud instruments are oppressed by these noisy children, the quiet instruments suffer from an excess of timidity, their sweet sounds rising up to the gods to tickle the ears of the mushrooms growing there rather than my own. It is a disaster.
Moan, moan, moan. It's still a fantastic piece and it was still exciting to know that the orchestra in front of me was the Vienna Phil, even if the aural consequences of that were fuzzled by the Hall (moooan). All the sections I could hear were excellent, with the exception of the trumpets who seemed not to be having a good night. The timpanist seemed sometimes ahead of the beat but that might have been a tactical decision. Otherwise in all ways this was a no-nonsense, authoritative, superb performance with some particularly excitingly squishy rubato precisely handled by Harding. And the BBC's recording of course offers a version that improves upon the reality.
No comments yet.