After Adès and Bruckner, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle returned to the Proms for just one work, Mahler’s Sixth Symphony. The “Tragic” contains some of Mahler’s darkest symphonic outpourings, yet Rattle, after over forty years of conducting it, argues that it also contains hope, giving a clue to his approach. Yes, there was phenomenal power, even rage, yet despite the dramatics of hammer blows and a shattering 17-strong brass section, he avoided beating us over the head for the full hour and a half. With short phrases thrown around the orchestra, detail can easily get lost, or lack connection. Yet Rattle (without score) led from one to the other, and just watching him alone delivered complete coherency.
Let’s talk hammers! There are two fateful blows in the finale (the third removed in Mahler’s revision). Varied solutions exist for the “strong but dull blow” that Mahler wanted. Tonight, alone at the top of the staging was a large, beehive-like wooden box on legs. At the appointed moment, the percussionist rose from his seat below, solemnly walked up the steps, picked up the huge mallet, and then scared the living daylights out of the audience in the choir stalls behind, hitting the box with such force it jumped around on the stage. Thankfully it didn’t fall to bits, and no swarm of bees emerged. Of course, for the second hammer blow, we were forewarned, but the percussionist kept a straight face, repeated his journey, delivered the blow, then solemnly returned to his seat as if nothing had happened. What with four mighty cymbal crashes, offstage and onstage cowbells and woodwinds with bells raised, there was plenty of theatre, yet the BRSO’s captivating playing throughout made sure this never undermined the serious business in hand.
The opening movement was emphatically driven, right from the opening double bass march onwards. Offstage cowbells with the celesta, along with glassy second violins created a suitable ethereal atmosphere in places, but Rattle was also at his most angry later in the movement, leading to the relentless return of the double bass march. As with his coherent approach to the fragmentary material, Rattle also made sense of the constant tempo changes, never allowing the joins to show. And the BRSO’s ensemble was near perfect throughout, with only one noted lapse from the rich cellos at the end of early melody, corrected in the exposition repeat.
On the vexed subject of the ordering of the middle movements, suffice to say that the warmer (it’s all relative) Andante came second, followed by the unsettling Scherzo. The former had suppressed expression from the woodwinds, with a sultry horn solo, and sunlit alpine moments, again from the horn, joined by evocative cowbells. Yet as the plaintive oboe solo built to an anguished cry, the cowbells now rattled in distress. In the Scherzo, Rattle contrasted the violent, twisted march with the pecking, petulant woodwind, but also brought out the laughing violas alongside the shrill E flat clarinet at the movement’s end.
In the finale, Rattle and the BRSO excelled. From the dreamlike opening with weirdly twanging, muted harp effects and more offstage cowbells, to the galloping brass and trilling birdlike woodwinds, the BRSO demonstrated their unquestionable prowess and ability to produce stunning orchestral colour. But after all the highs and lows (mostly lows), does the inevitable, exhausted ending really offer that hope that Rattle promises? I’m not sure, but he almost convinced me...
