Preview

To write a programme note about any Mahler symphony is, if you don’t delve into the detail, to not only overlook the composer’s mastery of the form, but also to invite ridicule from fans and scholars.

No matter. Mahler’s Seventh Symphony is, for those who haven’t heard it before, music as story. Not just any story — but yours. Music that plays out in the imagination, shaped by what you bring to it. That may not be how Mahler intended it, of course. Regardless, the Seventh is a lavish score that wraps itself around the listener and, if you’re willing to surrender to its beguiling nature, transports you somewhere no cinematographer — or their entire team of craftspeople — could realise in real life. Put far more simply, it is your own incidental music, with no need for visuals.

In the first movement, drama shifts swiftly and punctually from one scene to another — at one point leaving us on the edge of ecstasy, before snapping back to the dark menace first heard in the opening bars.

People of a certain age may find themselves transported to a time before streaming, when fast-forwarding through ad breaks wasn’t an option — and Castrol GTX promised more mileage with every glug. The second movement’s opening may conjure that memory. Listen past the nostalgic cue, and something far more profound emerges, restorative in its way.

Something dark and vaguely menacing follows in the third, and even more darkness in the fourth. The concluding movement (if you’ve stuck with this way of listening and imagining so far you’re a Mahler convert if you weren’t already), then there’s a sense of triumph, redemption and hope rooted in a pastoral setting. There are certainly blue skies and lush green lands in places. Sometimes, that’s all that’s required.

Composer Tom Coult has written the second of this year’s BBC commissions. Though Monologues for the Curious — inspired by the ghost stories of M.R. James — is a world premiere, Coult’s pedigree makes him a good bet for something thought-provoking and rewarding. He’s represented by Faber Music, the same house that stewarded Britten’s later works, and his opera Violet, which premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival in 2022, marked the beginning of a more prominent presence in the new music scene. And like any good composer or performer, he’s also featured on the Thoroughly Good Podcast.

Gallery

📷 Mark Allan / BBC

Review

If writing a programme note about a 70-minute work in a way that encourages the listener to surrender is difficult, then reviewing it is a Herculean task. You are, after all, trying to put into words a piece that seems determined to evade them.

The first movement opens expansively, sedately — perhaps even cautiously. The trombone vibrato is unsettling. If it’s a sunrise that emerges shortly after — complete with what feel like multiple Star Trek cues — then it stretches into a vast, somewhat ambiguous embrace before the original material returns. The trombones reappear darker, with vibrato more judiciously applied.

There is joy in Mahler’s instrumentation here — in the way material is passed between sections like theatrical cues, each one shifting attention from one scene to the next. Vignettes emerge and dissolve. The opening rhythmic idea returns in various guises, acting as a thread. Toward the end: a burst of energy and resolve, snare drum rumbling, trumpet arcing upwards, and a final descent into something close to chaos.

The second movement reveals more articulation and dynamic detail than many studio recordings allow, particularly in the solo horn and lower strings. That, combined with the ambient balance (some of it likely added, but also a reminder of the Royal Albert Hall’s scale), gives the whole sound an eerie depth, a kind of forgotten world. The reprise of the opening material lands with more weight, as though revisited from a distance. (Tom Service’s achingly knowing reference to Castrol GTX might have finally worn off when the solo repeats part way through the movement.) In this movement there’s space to breathe and reflect in contrast to the first, which projects itself more directly.

The third movement brings a quiet menace. Ravishing, wispy upper strings, subtle timpani skips, growling basses. It’s perhaps here more than anywhere that Mahler’s orchestration bewilders, not just in its effect, but in its very conception. How did he hear all of this? How did he know it would work?

The BBC Philharmonic’s mix is distinctive. The strings feel grounded like they’re at the base of the sound-stage, offering a sense of scale and depth. In the fourth movement, the string articulation is especially clean, and the brass tidy and contained, making the brief idyll feel unusually lucid.

By the fifth movement, listening has become a kind of marathon. Not because of any lapse in concentration, but because of the sheer number of gear shifts: mood, colour, temperature, pace. That the players sustain such clarity after 60 minutes is a feat in itself. But this is also a movement that tests the listener. A series of endings that never quite land. A defiant brightness that might be triumph or parody or both.

This was a triumphant performance. The final bars of the final movement tear a whole in the clouds and let the sunlight bathe the world underneath. It’s also a performance that prompted questions, rewards return visits, and leaves you slightly off balance — just as it should.

An updated review reflecting the whole of this concert will be published in due course.

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