Works of farewell: Mälkki conducts Saariaho's HUSH and Das Lied von der Erde in Berlin

Starting a new season with a concert titled “Works of Farewell” is perhaps not the most obvious and expected choice. However, Susanna Mälkki's programme at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden for the opening of the new musical year could be interpreted auspiciously, with goodbyes paving the way for new beginnings. At the same time, the double-bill evening – featuring Kaija Saariaho’s Trumpet Concerto HUSH and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde – celebrated the lasting presence of those who are not with us anymore, a touching homage to the late Finnish composer. Mälkki and soloist Verneri Pohjola, who premiered the concerto in 2023, reunited for this German premiere.

Written during the final stages of her illness, HUSH is a testimony to Saariaho’s acoustic fascinations and fine musical sensibility as much as it is a reflection on death. It is not a coincidence that the piece revisits material from Saariaho’s first-ever concerto, named Graal théâtre – the end of a cycle, for sure, but also the acknowledgment that death cannot be conceived without the life that came before it. The title is also elusive, with its discrepancy between signifier (the ‘loud’ uppercase) and signified (silence, quiet). How should we read it, then? An invitation? An act of resistance? A mere matter of fact?

This wealth of meaning infuses the score, making it unique and fascinating. Mälkki’s interpretation captured the enchantment of the music, which begins and stays in a range of mezzopiani and piani for much of its duration. The bowed vibraphone, flute and strings that open the first movement set an atmosphere full of expectation, in which Pohjola’s trumpet entered seamlessly. What followed was a perilous orchestral journey led by the soloist. Aided by his jazz background, Pohjola navigated through the score’s frequent tone shifts and virtuoso passages. A variety of tremoli, glissandi, and other techniques – including flutter-tonguing and playing with extra pressure on the mouthpiece – alternated with brief melodic diversions. While challenging, these were tackled by Pohjola as the emotional, rather than technical core of the piece. Mälkki’s rich and nebulous orchestral texture became the environment within which Pohjola’s trumpet could breathe, hum, scream and sing, but also a companion to its free falls and rises.

Even though its vaguely orientalist texts don’t exactly stand the test of time – and of Chinese scholars – Das Lied von der Erde remains an imposing work whose best qualities are to be seen in the private meanings that it encloses. Mahler’s sense of mortality pervades the score in a merry-go-round of acceptance, despair, awe and mystery. Mälkki favoured this fluctuation by adopting malleable tempi: especially in the odd movements, sung by the tenor, the quick pace often opened up in bright moments of suspension. With its Heldentenor tinge, Eric Cutler’s well-projected singing was clearly at home in late-Romantic repertoire, soaring above the waves of sound and basking in the lush orchestration. On her part, Wiebke Lehmkuhl devoted her full-bodied contralto to the more intimate sections of the score, dialoguing with solo instruments such as Fabian Schäfer’s oboe and Claudia Stein’s flute. In Der Abschied, singer and conductor traced a course where the recurrence of the same musical material was at once mesmeric and always varied, cradling the audience into the silence of the end.