Thursday evening’s City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra concert was an inspired coupling. Beethoven’s Symphony no. 6 in F major "Pastoral" and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde inhabit very different natural worlds – one literal, one metaphorical – yet conductor Alpesh Chauhan managed to establish compelling connections between them.
However, other connections were also teased out along the way, the first being all that staccato writing at the start of the Pastoral. Without overdoing it, Chauhan brought to mind the obsessive use of motif in Beethoven’s Fifth, establishing a vivid sense of compositional continuity. Nonetheless, this was above all a performance rooted in a sense of people and place. The first movement, relaxed with a cheerful sense of momentum, demonstrated playfulness in the way its ideas were passed around and developed. An exquisite balance was struck in the Szene am Bach, between the simplicity of dancing outside and elegant evocations of the ballroom. Chauhan kept things clean and unfussy, though; underpinned by the plain, undulating arpeggios of the bassoons, it took on such rustic charm it was as if the CBSO were a literal bunch of players hanging out by a stream.
Here and elsewhere, the orchestra brought out numerous inner details, exposing melody, countermelody, accompaniment, bassline with complete transparency. They also challenged how overfamiliar the Pastoral has become, with the birdsong by the brook and the later Gewitter, Sturm sounding genuinely unexpected, the latter all the more so as the Lustiges Zusammensein der Landleute had imbued the rustic flavour with hints of grandeur. Most compelling was the final movement’s synthesis of earlier ideas, returning to the flowing chirp of the first (now sans staccatos), echoes of the dancing second, and the third’s splendour, with the fourth by now a happily forgotten aberration.
Turning to the Mahler was quite the gear change, and for a time it seemed as if the players’ relish in tackling its luscious complexity would drown out Brendan Gunnell completely. However, they soon got the measure of each other, leading to a trio of compelling performances from him. Electricity coursed through Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde, focused and radiated from Gunnell, while in Von der Jugend they all tapped into something of the same rustic tone heard in the first half, here given a mischievous twist. Its shift into introspection was superb, especially as Gunnell suddenly shrugged it off with authentically youthful abandon. He was at his best in his final song, as the drunkard in springtime, leaning into its boorish attitude. Here too, the shift when meeting the bird was beautifully handled, becoming a transfixed reverie, before Gunnell rudely shoved beyond it, producing a flask after his closing line to take a large swig.
Chauhan adopted a more graceful, measured tone alongside Karen Cargill. Her solemnity was made poignant in Der Einsame im Herbst by the players sounding as if they were struggling, even tired. Its memories of love were like a technicolour flashback from a place of sepia sadness. Von her Schönheit was deliriously mixed, tilting from elastic refinement – flexing around Cargill’s tactile shaping of the words – into a rip-roaring middle episode, evidently worked-up into a frenzy by the proximity of “the lads”.