*Yet another post in my Mahler series!*

To follow Mahler 3 with Michael Tilson Thomas and the LSO earlier this year, I just heard them giving the first of two performances of the 2nd symphony (main post here) at the Barbican.

While Mahler 2 in concert cannot fail to be overwhelming, on Sunday its power was conveyed as much by the fervent communal devotion of performers and audience as by the elderly, frail conductor. As this review of the 3rd symphony in May commented, MTT “more or less held it all together… signalling a few entries and giving some directions. That, however, was the full extent of his input, a distant cry from his earlier years where he would have been athletically bouncing around and being criticised by some for his micro-management.”

The orchestra must have risen gladly to the challenge of having to negotiate so much of the detail. The singers were also fine—Alice Coote in a rapt Urlicht, joined for the monumental finale by Siobhan Stagg and the London Symphony Chorus. As others have noted, the standing ovation was not so much for this concert as a homage to MTT’s lifelong music-making.

* * *

Immersed as I am in another round of editing my new film on the New Year’s rituals in the poor village of Gaoluo, the symphony made an extreme contrast, even if both rituals are in service of the divine. *

For Bernstein and Mahler, see Maestro.

* Another entry in my Martian ethnography (see e.g. here):

As I suggested in Plucking the winds, whereas cymbal players in WAM feel impelled to milk the rare climactic moments when they are required, in Gaoluo the great percussion suite, with all its solemn and balletic complexity, demands stamina, skill, and memory.