Master Series 9: Magnificent Mahler
Pei-Jee and Pei-Sian Ng
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra / Arvo Volmer
Adelaide Town Hall
Sat 5 Aug



It's hard to fathom that Gustav Mahler's symphonies were primarily a discovery of the 1960s - one that was pushed along by Leonard Bernstein's first complete recorded cycle, his cause furthered by film scores and the advent of suitably hi-fi playback equipment in the modern home. From this time his works have entered the mainstream repertoire and are probably seen as the apotheosis of postTristanesque melodicism before its fragmentation into atonalism. The nine completed symphonies are still more the stuff of festivals and the like here in Australia, and it is not that long ago that I would have possibly paid the ASO not to perform these long and complex works. However times have changed for the better. Adelaide can truly be proud of the orchestra's recent considerable musical achievements - from the 2004 'Ring Cycle' under Asher Fisch to the truly outstanding 'Leningrad' symphony that closed this year's Arts Festival. Chief conductor Arvo Volmer has already proved his worth in Russian repertoire and his undoubted ability to confidently maneuver a large orchestra through an equally large work (the Mahler 5th) is yet another indication that here is an orchestra at the top of its game.

From the opening four-note trumpet clarion call and chasm-like wallop of the initial orchestral tutti of the first movement, there was little doubt that both Volmer and his forces were able to fathom the complexities of this long and often complex score. Here is a Mahler who looks forward to the desolation of Shostakovich and other post World War II composers. By turns expansive and expressive, Volmer was content to let the music breathe whilst perhaps not wringing the passion out of every note in the Bernstein manner in this material. It was an interpretation that allowed this music to swell and bloom - suggesting the all too appropriate schisms that defined the fin de siecle Vienna that also shaped Freud. This popular musical tableau suggests mainly schisms that would inform 20th century thought and art - life and death, darkness and light, melody and atonality.

The vast sprawling inner landscapes suggested in the third movement often took on the intimacy of chamber work; whilst the final movement was almost concertante in approach. Similarly the famous adagietto (the 4th movement scored for strings and harp) with its suggestions of world-weariness and liebestod ebbed away in a manner that suggested the post-coital petite mort set up by Wagner's Tristan.

Most orchestras would have been content to present the Mahler symphony alone; however we were also treated to the recent concert for two cellos by the Finnish composer Kalevi Aho (2003). For those familiar with the work of his teacher Rautavaara - or indeed Arvo Part, here there was much to enjoy. Well known to Adelaide audiences, twin soloists Pei-Jee and Pei-Sian Ng have undoubtedly found their party piece. Particularly in the long contrapuntal cadenza towards the end of the work, their playing was brilliantly synchronized, going beyond the conscious to a symbiotic subliminal urge and sympathy to create an exciting and fabulously dexterous example of contemporary counterpoint at its finest with its seemingly psychotic series of syncopated dance-like rhythms that were always underscored with a sense of thrill, fun and complete identification.

Brett Allen-Bayes