Source: review.

Just days after the Zemlinsky and Schoenberg Prom, I went back to the Albert Hall for another course of late Romanticism, with the talented Ryan Wigglesworth conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (listen on BBC Sounds).

I don’t think I ever played Brahms 3 (make what you will of that uncertainty…). Well-received at the time, but now perhaps the least popular of his symphonies (I can’t miss any opportunity to remind you of Kleiber‘s Brahms 2!), it always deserves a re-hearing. l’ve been getting to know it better by listening to some classic recordings—

Bruno Walter and the Vienna Phil, 1936:

Furtwängler with the Berlin Phil, 1949:

Abbado fifty years later, again with the Berlin Phil (still largely a woman-free zone):

Then we heard Schoenberg’s tone-poem Verklaerte Nacht (1899) (wiki, and here), in the string orchestra version that he later arranged from his string sextet. The latter was premiered by the augmented Rosé quartet—here are members of the Ensemble Intercontemporain with Boulez, c1985:

And this is Mitropoulos with the strings of the Vienna Phil in 1958:

The Prom ended with Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder (1904, to texts by Rückert), movingly sung by Alice Coote. Here’s her recording from 2017 (along with the Rückert Lieder):

And here’s Janet Baker’s classic recording with Barbirolli, 1969 (cf. their Nuits d’été):

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Back at the Prom, a more conventional sequence might have opened with Verklaerte nacht followed by the Mahler songs, with the Brahms symphony as a traditional second half; but the chronological order made a lot of sense, intensifying Mahler’s prophetic, tragic vision. All three pieces end quietly. I still don’t quite get a sense of coherence from Brahms 3, but it’s growing on me—Wigglesworth conducted it without the score, bringing out its chamber music elements. Despite its portentous opening, and hints that the finale might become grandiose, it’s largely elegiac, its middle movements unassuming yet affecting.

The second half was full-on in its intensity. Verklaerte nacht is a major work, long predating Strauss’s Metamorphosen; “filled with crepuscular angst” (as the BBC website has it), the writing especially favours the violas (always good to hear). BTW, and FWIW, the ever-stimulating Richard Taruskin (The danger of music, pp.325–6) doesn’t buy Schoenberg’s resort to extolling “pure” music in his attempt to deflect the misogyny of Richard Dehmel’s poem (“an immanently sinful modern Eve forgiven and redeemed by a godlike magnanimous man”). Finally, Alice Coote’s dramatised grief was perfect for the Kindertotenlieder (for her Mahler 3 with Michael Tilson Thomas earlier this year, click here). For me, the brief coda to the final song doesn’t suddenly sweep aside the anguish of the cycle—it seems more spooky than serene.

Ryan Wigglesworth’s serious, sincere musicking seems to convey a feeling of trust, free of the dubious trend for the flashy wizzkids who have replaced the dour, autocratic maestros of Yore. The composer-conductor combo doesn’t always yield results, but when it does it’s deeply satisfying, as with Salonen, Boulez—and clearly Mahler. But now that I observe the WAM scene as a mere outsider, I’m no longer privy to the more salient assessments of the musicians themselves.

For all my immersion in “world music” and its diverse social contexts, having been Promming since the 1960s, I always find it a blessing that concerts like this generate such attention and enthusiasm—nightly over nearly two months.