Gerhaher Glow: Das Lied von der Erde at the Barbican
Metamorphosen and Das Lied von der Erde
Simon O’Neill, Christian Gerhaher, Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra
Barbican
Balcony C50, £20
13 December 2017
Barbican page
The world without Christian Gerhaher would be a more dismal place. As a rule I am stubbornly resistant to the transfer of music between voice types. But it is a gift to hear Gerhaher perform, and this Das Lied von der Erde confirms again that great music upon which Gerhaher turns the focus of his musicianship is illuminated by it.
As in every performance of his I have seen, the combined effect of Gerhaher’s nuance, verbal engagement and variety and quality of tone was near overwhelmingly beautiful. Even from my seat, almost as far from the stage as I could be, I felt I could hear every consonant, sense every gliding shift of colour, take his hand and glimpse with Gerhaher what ‘Ewig’ could fully mean in Mahler’s setting.
Gerhaher’s performance was one thread in an exquisite interpretation by the LSO with Simon Rattle. They achieved the ideal in balancing improvisatory freedom with a sense of unity, making palpable both the richness of the score’s inspiration and its mastery of orchestration. I heard this dearly loved work anew. Simon O’Neill was perhaps the only participant not radiating the same divine glow, but then that might also be just as true to what Mahler intended.
Every time I hear Metamorphosen I have the sense of not having done my homework. I find it persistently odd, in a way that is sometimes strange and exciting and sometimes makes me sure the performance has gone horribly wrong. Add to this that the string soloists are not Gerhaher, and some of their effort didn’t reach to my seat. It passed well enough – but it makes a lot more sense on the radio.
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