Given Mahler’s reputation as a purveyor of gargantuanism, it can be a bit of a shock to the system to be faced with a mere 19 musicians gathered on stage to perform his song-symphony Das Lied von der Erde. Not so much a ‘Symphony of a Thousand’ as a ‘Symphony of a Handful’. Back in the 19th century and early decades of the last century, before recordings and radio made musical dissemination widespread, often the only way to get familiar with larger-scale works was in arrangement – piano duets for home consumption, or chamber versions for less costly ways of giving them in concert. Schoenberg set up a Society for the Private Performance of Music in 1918 partly for this very purpose – to give voice to the music of the day, by him and others, in an unthreatening environment, and if the original was too big to afford it was cut down to size. The music of Mahler, who had been dead a mere nine years when the society launched, played a prominent part and Schoenberg himself began a chamber reduction of Das Lied von der Erde in 1921 just as the society folded. It was completed by another hand in the 1980s and has been performed and recorded widely.
Into that tradition has come the Aurora Orchestra’s ‘arranger in residence’ Iain Farrington, who has made his own highly successful version for five solo strings, four woodwind, three brass, two percussionists, celesta and harp, which was first performed a few years ago. It helps that this is perhaps Mahler’s most chamber-like score to start with: the writing is full of instrumental solos and prolonged tuttis are rare. Such is the success of Farrington’s reduction that such solos still largely fall to the right instruments and, the lack of a full string section apart, the ear and brain are easily tricked into imagining one is hearing none other than the original, especially as here in the full-on glare of Kings Place’s acoustic.
The Aurora had been able to secure two of the finest singers it is possible to hear in this music, tenor Andrew Staples and mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly. Although relatively brief, the tenor role is one of the toughest in the repertoire and usually the preserve of Wagnerian Heldentenors. Staples, whose career hasn’t so far seen him venturing in that heroic direction, proved that stentorianism is not a prerequisite for Mahler’s demanding writing when competing with 16 players as opposed to an orchestra of a hundred. How often can one say one heard every word in the opening song, Das Trinklied von Jammer der Erde? Staples’ tone was resilient and lusty, but with plenty of subtlety and expressiveness in his conveyance of the text. There was wit too, in his banter-like interaction with the instrumental soloists in the drinking song of Der Trunkene im Frühling.