Mahler Six

On Friday night, the RSNO began its season by receiving the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Ensemble Award, before Thomas Søndergård led Rachmaninov’s Fourth Piano Concerto, with Alexander Malofeev making his RSNO debut. The first movement was dissonant, busy and anxious, the piano fighting for its place as horn phrases echoed it. A prideful ascent in the strings changed the tone and grew in force, creating texture as it climbed; the second movement lifted the weight, breathing something of a march into the modern.

Mahler’s Sixth followed the interval and began with a thick march, dense enough to pull you out of your interval rest and invite you to march alongside. There was something strangely comforting in that weight, before the pastoral world opened: cowbells emerging from the far corners of the stage, then a lone clarinet and the patience of the harps. Mahler’s Alpine solitude was less a backdrop here than a space slowly opening inside the orchestral mass.

The Scherzo brought the whirlwind back with rhythmic horns organising the orchestra while the oboe hawks in the distance. At times it became difficult to keep abreast of the chaos, making the final slowing all the more relieving. Søndergård’s finale then gathered that force again, the falling horn and sweeping cadences leading to the hammer blows. Mahler’s evocation of the hero’s fall was unbeatable in size, yet left me wanting one more strike to complete it. The cowbells return, briefly, as the RSNO refuse altogether to let go of the mountain solitude they have created. And with that, the 26/27 season is off to a bang.

Mahler Six by Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Credit Chris Hart.