CityLife

The Hallé: Caine, Mahler

Halle Orchestra
Bridgewater Hall
March 4, 2010

Another full house for Mahler – this time the fifth symphony, played by the Hallé under Sir Mark Elder’s baton. 

But maybe some of those present came as much for Uri Caine as for Mahler. His Scenes From Childhood, written for the Hallé Youth Choir and Orchestra, had its world premiere, and was very good to listen to.

Caine is a true crossover artist, rooted in both classical and jazz traditions and able to make music of integrity in both (and both at once). The piece – settings of three poems, by Blake, Pavel Friedman and Dylan Thomas – is scored for large orchestra and solo piano, which he played himself, with a cadenza-like solo towards the end of its first section.

Joined by members of Ad Solem (the University of Manchester Chamber Choir), the Youth Choir were confident and strong in some very taxing music, though the words they were singing were only rarely audible because of the relatively big sound coming from the orchestra in front of them (re-balancing in a recorded mix may solve this problem).

The first song, Blake’s Infant Joy, was so exuberant and built to so effective a climax that it had its own spontaneous applause; the second, The Butterfly (the words written in the Terezín concentration camp in 1942) demonstrated a complex sound palette and a powerful musical language; the third, much longer, was an energetic, exultant and finally tender celebration of Thomas’s Fern Hill.

They’re all about innocence and childhood – lost innocence and lost childhood, too – a pre-occupation of Mahler’s, also. And amid the technical brilliance there’s a naivety – pace and style take their cues quite literally from the words in places – which is as endearing as his.

Sir Mark’s handling of the Mahler symphony was as refreshing. People discuss the ‘right’ speed for the famous ‘Death In Venice’ Adagietto in it, but never have I heard that so right in tone and meaning. It was a love song, a sincere and lovely one, from start to finish.

The first and second movements of this archetypical darkness-to-light symphony were skilfully controlled: not too much tragedy at first, but a growing sense of calamity in the first, and excitement on the border of hysteria, followed by nobility and passion, in the second. 

Sir Mark’s gift is very much to make sense of the work as a musical structure as well as a dramatic sequence, and its inner workings were beautifully illuminated. The scherzo became the most interesting movement – almost a deconstruction, with bitterness and menace as well as a gorgeously syrupy trio.

In the finale the Hallé played with all the power and fire we now associate with them, with a mighty peroration that was superbly handled and brought forth not one, but successive waves of the ‘Manchester roar’ from the audience at the end. It was quite a night.