The Russian National Orchestra played Mahler’s First Symphony in Zaryadye

The Russian National Orchestra and conductor Alexander Rudin have closed their own season and, at the same time, the concert cycle All Mahler’s Symphonies, which has been successfully running in the Zaryadye Hall since the beginning of autumn. In its finale, the First Symphony was performed. Tells Yulia Bederova.

The Mahler cycle with the participation of Moscow and regional Russian orchestras in the 2022/23 season was built and performed about as convincingly as before it, a cycle of Zaryadye, similar in format, All Shostakovich Symphonies. Both served as a spectacular repertoire framework for the sprawling structure of the two seasons, distinguishing them and connecting them. Collected from the music of one composer in different performance interpretations, the cycles became something like a signature style in the programming of the season, gave his repertory face a special, recognizable expression and added a lot of new things to the understanding of the textbook heritage. There is no information about the new seasons of the symphonic series yet, although all paths are open and it would be possible to move in the direction of at least a popular, at least a rare repertoire, at least an immense, at least compact creativity, at least Tchaikovsky, even Myaskovsky.

In the meantime, several orchestras from Novosibirsk to Moscow presented their own view of Mahler’s ornate style and their own skills, the deficiency or excess of which is especially audible in Mahler, during the season. The Malerian journey was brought to an end by the Russian National Orchestra and its happily acquired new chief conductor and artistic director Alexander Rudin, with the First symphony being the last symphony in the cycle. Such a reverse perspective would have looked elegant in any case, but it became especially evident already in the first bars of the first movement. The RNO could boast of elegance and grace at the best of times, and the orchestra still flaunts them today, although the traditional risks of French horns also do not disappear. You can’t say that the problems are catastrophic, but it’s a shame that the recognizable beauty, softness and severity of the horn sound often seem to be on the verge of survival. But the transparent, almost youthful score is written in such a way that almost all instrumental parts sound like solos, right down to the timpani, whose, in fact, terrible in its simplicity replica (Alexander Suvorov did the almost impossible here) Mahler completes filled not only with charm, but also by the strange fears of the page of the first part.

The researcher and educator Roman Nasonov, who preceded the performance with a gambling story (lectures before concerts were a spectacular feature of the Shostakovich and Mahler cycles, it would be a pity if this fascinating tradition was interrupted), suggested looking at the fragility and caution of this strangely static section of the symphony through a psychoanalytic lens and interpreting it as a sign anxious, self-doubting youth. One way or another, the ghostly alertness of this music, as if frozen between hope and sadness, performed by RNO reminded of the introduction to Wagner’s Golden Rhine, only as if seen in a darkened mirror. And very accurately resonated with the surrounding time. Nightmarishly accurate resonance became even brighter in the famous, if not hit-and-miss, third movement of the symphony. At the lecture, Nasonov demonstrated to the public an engraving with funny animals burying a hunter, which was terribly popular at the time. The grotesque picture once adorned almost every Austrian house and, apparently, usually hung somewhere near the tapestry with hunters. Cheerful and frightening, as if in a negative, the black-and-white drawing of the “Funeral March in the manner of Callot”, written based on the engraving, somehow especially dazzled with its gloomy, dancing, metallic grace. And the explosion of the finale, performed by RNO, completely devoid of even a hint of hysteria, excellently collected in form, movement and dynamics, only confirmed: in the symphony “Titan”, supposedly referring to the famous novel by Jean Paul, supposedly telling about the heroism of growing up and also supposedly inspired by love suffering, Mahler seems to pass the symphonic images of romantics (mainly, of course, Schubert) through the shattered mirror of his time.

And in the present tense it is difficult not to hear this weakness and this parallel. Hence the bewildered songwriting, and, as it were, an inverted danceability, the fragmentation of the form, intelligible behind the seeming harmony, the simultaneous extortion and attractiveness of the lyrics and bitter irony, the severity with which bird cries and human complaints of wind instruments are written out and performed, and the wonderful, manifesting and disappearing in an instant the glow of the strings at the very heart of the symphony – this is where the RNO musicians sounded unsurpassed, just as before. In general, Mahler cannot be called a signature author of the RNO, even if the same First Symphony has already appeared on its posters, and Rudin can hardly be called a noted Malerian. But their unexpected ensemble with an Austrian symphonist turned out to be not only successful, but also useful. At least for this music, this time devoid of blurred literary pathos and becoming truly musical and sad.