The Sydney Symphony Orchestra celebrated the opening of its 2024 season with a programme well suited to the mastery of its Chief Conductor, Simone Young, prominently featuring Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Replacing the by now regular verbal acknowledgement of the traditional custodians (commonly known as the Aboriginals) of the land, the concert began with a musical tribute, curated by Adam Manning, incorporating ancient pulsing patterns on various percussion instruments, then gradually buoyed by a long unison sound of the strings in ever increasing volume, culminating in all the musicians playing clapsticks together.
French composer, Camille Pépin’s Violin Concerto, Le Sommeil a pris ton empreinte was written for, and dedicated to, Renaud Capuçon. He also premiered it less than a year ago in Paris, under Simone Young’s direction. Wednesday night saw its first Australian performance, in another robust collaboration between the same violinist and conductor, in the presence of the composer. The work, inspired by three poems of Paul Éluard, is appealingly lyrical in its harmonic world, tonal character and instrumentation. Its many celestial sounds incorporate an abundance of harmonics on strings (both solo and orchestral), bell-like percussion effects, often muted brass instruments, a prominent part for harp and yes, celesta. A sense of tonality is never far away, underlined with regular use of fifths and harmonies resembling a minor key.
Capuçon presented the solo part, including two extensive cadenzas, with reassuring confidence and with such artistry that occasional imperfections of pitch did not even matter. His dreamy playing thoroughly explored the pastoral character of the work, as if pensively searching for some lost time – bringing an altogether different French author to mind.
Mahler’s Symphony no. 5 in C sharp minor always presents gargantuan challenges, well faced by conductor and orchestra on this occasion. With close to a hundred musicians on stage, the composer’s bold experimentations with form and tonality, orchestration and sound came to life under Young’s expert leadership. Her control of the myriad tempo changes and large sonic scapes was ably supported by her customary excellent beating technique and there was never any doubt as to how she wanted to shape the five massive movements.
Her sweeping gestures kept the orchestra outstandingly together in the larger movements but seemed to be too large to serve the delicate flow of the music well in the famous Adagietto, a love letter to Alma Mahler, according to Willem Mengelberg. Perhaps its pace could have used (even) more serenity and expanse. At any rate, the utter tenderness of this music, the constant hesitation of the pulse, the intimacy of the reduced orchestra of strings and harp with their unspeakably beautiful confessions of love, did not quite evoke the teary emotions anticipated.
The novelties regarding form are obvious considering how this work begins, with a solemn funeral march in C minor and finishes, per aspera ad astra, at the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, in a completely unrelated key (D major) with boisterous energy. In between, its cosmic journey almost explodes in the central Scherzo, unusually, and by a considerable margin the longest movement of the symphony. An astonishing number of interpolating sections generate abrupt changes in tempo and character here and, despite the orchestra’s best efforts, structural clarity was not always upheld.
This movement became memorable by the regularly recurring solo horn entries, while the death march was adorned by its opening fanfare played with haunting nostalgia by the solo trumpet. The strings excelled, particularly the first violins and the cellos with their threnodial dialogues in velvety, beautifully shaped tones.
