A wonderful opening to another season

Saturday was another hectic day: office in the morning, talk in the afternoon and concert in the evening. The talk at the HKSHP on Husserl went on much longer than anticipated. I barely had time to stuff half a Maxim bun bought at the Tsimshatsui MTR station before rushing into the concert hall at the very last minute! I literally had to make a 300 metre romp ending in a dash to get in. I was so happy that years of dieting and my chi-kung exercises for the last two years had kept my body light, my feet nimble and my breath more even than would otherwise be the case. When with a sigh of relief, I finally deposited my bag and my umbrella at my feet in the narrow space behind the backs of the seats to the eyes wide open with surprise of Mr Chu, de Waart had not yet finished his welcome! But when the bass-baritone Shen Yang started on his excerpts of Das Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy's Magic Horn). I was still busily wiping off the beads of sweat streaming off in profusion from what little is left of my hair. I had to use two tissues!

Saturday night's programme was "An all-Mahler programme". I never heard Shen Yang before. According to the programme notes, the bass-baritone was the winner of the 2007 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, debuted at the Metropolitan in NY City as Masetto in Don Giovanni in April 2009 and then as Colline in La Bohème in February this year. He had a CD by Fenglin Records singing Schubert's Winterreise and is currently teaching at the Shanghai Music Conservatory.

Everyone knows that Mahler loves songs and opera. Das Knaben Wunderhorn was a two-volume anthology of German folk-poetry published in 1805 and 1808 by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano. In these poems, dead soldiers answer a  roll-call, girls try to lure sentries from their duty, St. Anthony preaches to the fishes, drummer-boys go to the gallows, the cuckoo and the nightingale have a song contest with a donkey as the judge such tales being related to him by his child friend Theodor Fisher's house maid Nanni in rainy afternoons when they could not go out. When Mahler was a boy, he lived in a town called Iglau where there was a garrsion permanently stationed there and he simply loved to see the army marching in and out with fife and drum and played light marches or funeral music and Mahler loved to imitate them. So he was very much affected by these elements from a young age. In fact, Mahler's 2nd, 3rd and 4th Symphonies have been called the Wunderhorn symphonies and according to Michael Kennedy's Mahler, even the words of Das Klagende Lied and the Gesellen cycle are Mahler's pastiche of the Wunderhorn poems and "the cornerstone of Mahler's style were cross reference, variation and development and ..even in such an overtly simple and innocent song as the Rheinlegendchen, the range of tonality beyond the nominal home key of A major is remarkable..the finest and most significant of the songs are the ...'military nocturnes' where trumpet calls, march rhythms and hollow drums are transformed into symphonic microcosms, like Nicht Widersehen, Revelge, Der Tamboursg'sell". According to his friend Bruno Walter, in the Wunderhorn poems "Mahler found everything that stirred his imagination; Nature, piety, longing, love, parting, death, the spirit world, soldiering, youthful high spirits, children's games, whimsy--all this lived in him as it did in those poems, and so his songs pour forth." . According to the programme notes, he first set some of them to music in the late 1880s calling them Lieder un Gesänge aus der Jungendzeit (Song from a Time of Youth) and 12 of them remained as part of his song cycle, the rest being incorporated into some of his other symphonies. The evening's songs included four excerpts from Mahler's musical adaptation of the Das Knaben Wunderhorn viz. Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt ( St. Anthony of Padua preaching to the Fishes), Der Tamboursg'ell (the Drummer Boy) Rheinlegendchen (Rhine Legend), Trost im Unglück (Comfort in Misfortune).  

In St. Anthony etc, there is a wonderful mix of humor and darker mood and according to Mahler himself, ¨a somewhat sweet andsour humor prevails. St. Anthony seems to be drunk. His speech is slurred (in the clarinet) and confused. And what a glittering congregation! The eels and carp and the sharp nosed pikes, with their stupid expressions as they look at him, stretching their stiff necks out of the water. I practically saw them in the music and burst out laughing. then the sermon over, the congregation swims away in all directions." This is what he sings: " St. Anthony arrives for his Sermon/and finds the church empty./He goes to the rivers/to preach to the fishes;/ they flick their tails,/which glisten in the sunshine./ The carp with roe,/have all come here,/their mouths, wide open,/listening attentively. No sermon ever/ pleased the fish so./ Sharp-mouthed pike,/that are always fighting,/ have come here, swimming hurriedly/to hear this pious one;/ Also, those fantastic creatures/that are always fasting:/ the stockfish, I mean, /they also appeared for the sermon;/ no sermon ever/pleased the stockfish so./ Good eels and sturgeons,/ that banquet so elegantly,/ even they took the trouble/ to hear the sermon."

The Drummer Boy was a sad story. He was being led to the gallows from his dungeon, said farewell to the mountains, the hills and his fellow soldiers. It took the form of a funeral march, without trumpets, violins, violas, the farewell being sung by the cor anglais. The singer sings: "I am a poor drummer boy,/they're leading me from my cell./If I had stayed a drummer,/I would not be imprisoned now./ O gallows, you lofty house,/you look so fearsom./I won't look at you any longer, /because I know I am yours./ When soliders march by,/who were not quartered with me, they asked who I was:/I was a drummer from the first company./ Good night, marble rocks,/ mountains and hills. Good night, officers,/corporals and musketeers./ Good night, officers,/corporals and grenadiers! /I cry out loudly,/and take my leave of you! Good night! Good night!"

The Rhine Legend is more cheerful. In the story, the singer dreams of the ring previously given by his lost sweetheart and later thrown into the river, being served up on a plate to a king such that when she learns about this, his sweetheart will hurry back to return the ring again! " Now I reap by the Neckar,/now I reap by the Rhine,/now I have a sweetheart,/Now I am alone./What use is my reaping,/if the sickle doesn't cut?/What use is a sweetheart,/if she won't stay./So if I am to reap by the Neckar/and by the Rhine,/then I'll throw my golden ring/into the water./It will flow with the Neckar/and the Rhine/and float right down/into the deep sea./And as it floats, the little ring,/a fish will eat it!/The fish will eventually come/to the King's table!/The King will ask,/Whose ring it is?/And my sweetheart will say:/The ring belongs to me./My sweetheart will hurry/up hill and down hill/And bring me/back my ring!/You can reap by the Neckar,/and reap by the Rhine,/if you will always throw/your ring in for me!"

Finally, the last of the four songs Comfort in Misfortune, depicts the story between a soldier about to ride off for duty and a young lady who teases him that he is not as good looking as he thinks he is and that she first fell for him out of foolishness!  She sings, "You bleive you are the fairest man/in the whole wide world,/ and also the nicest/ but you are far off the mark!/ In my father's garden/grows a flower,/ I will wait only,/until it grows bigger./And off you go! /I have my part, I love you only out of foolishness;/ Without you, I can happily live,/without you I can happily exist" Then both of them sing together: "You think I'll take you,/ I will not think of that for a long time,/ I must be ashamed of you, when I am in society!".

Shen has a wonderfully mellow voice, steady, and charged with the fluctuating moods of the different songs. I have no idea whether the proununciation of his German is perfect, I having only studied German for about a year but insofar as I can make it out from the lyrics in the printed Program Notes, he seemed fine. The songs were a wonderful preparation for what was to come, the Seventh Symphony.

Mahler took about three years to complete this symphony during which many things have happened: he was forced to resign from the Opera and his daughter died of scarlet fever and he learned that he had a heart condition from which he died 4 years later. Although when he started composing this symphony, he was in a jubilant mood, he having done the first, third and fifth movements three years previously in or around 1904, he later added the two "night music" movements, the second and the fourth which introduced very different moods into the music, separated by a very rasping, dissonant and even in places eerie Scherzo although there were no lack of lyric passages within them. He also introduced various darker elements into the fifth. In this symphony, between the melancholic 6th and the jubilant 8th, Mahler's moods were torn between the two, there are moments of jubilation but also darker moments and he reverted to the rather rambling structures of the 2nd and 3rd. The sprawling first movement lasted almost half an hour! But whatever the personal elements affecting its composition, we can see Mahler trying very hard to push his orchestration technique forward. As usual he uses the brass to start the various themes, which were later taken up by the clarinets, the flutes, the oboes, the horns and the strings. And in this symphony, he used two lyres, one guitar, one triangle, bells, tubular bells, gongs, cymbals to create an extremely rich texture of sound.  Mahler has once boasted, " With me, all the instruments sing, even the brass and the kettle-drums". But despite the twists and turns of the mood of the music and despite the recall of the darker elements even in parts of the final movement, the brighter side won out and brought the sympony to a glorious finale.  So I can see why when I met one of my primary school classmates at the end of the concert and he told me, the 7th has never been his favourite, I can well understand why. In this symphony, Mahler was trying to work out some conflicting elements in his life during its compposition and there are certainly in this symphony shadows of the 2nd and 3rd as well as elements looking ahead to the 8th. The lyric and  marching rhythms are juxaposed against each other as are the winds and the strings, reinforced of course by the timpani, drums and percussions.  He was still experimenting with new harmonies and disharmonies and various sonic effects. It was in a sense a transitional symphony. For this reason, it is a far more complex symphony than the later symphonies. I don't like things which are too cut and dry. To me, it is precisely the very ambiguity of music which gives the composer and possibly the conductors and performers room for experimentation and for the exercise of the audience's imagination. Music should never be mechanical. There should always be space for adding different nuances to the score according to the musician's own peculiar sensitivity to various parts of the score, which should serve only as the basis for the guided soar of  imagination, and should never impose a kind of stranglehold upon innovative  interpretation of the piece.  

For hi fi lovers, like some of those who attended the concert with me,  Mahler's No. 7  was certainly a delight because of the abundance and wealth of sheer sonic effects in the first and fifth movements but they too confessed to not really understanding what was going on. I don't blame them. I don't think Mahler himself had any very clear ideas either! He too was trying to experiment what he could do with the symphonic form within romanticism. As usual, de Warrt did not disappoint. His control of the volume, pace, and moods, contrasts etc was excellent. The winds and the percussionists certainly deserve special applause. This does not means that the strings were not excellent too. The final applauses lasted I think more than 5 minutes. I did not stint in my own applause either. de Waart and the HKPO fully deserved them for bringing us this wonderful concert.