Last night the Proms bade farewell to Sir Simon Rattle’s tenure as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO). Following an all too brief six years, blighted by the pandemic and Brexit upheavals, with the dream of a new concert hall scuppered, the greatest of today’s British conductors is leaving to become principal conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich, one of the best in the world. And after Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No 9, this great musician received a fervent ovation from the capacity crowd.
As curtain-raiser, the evening reasserted the BBC Singers’ treasurable presence. The UK’s only full-time professional choir, a century old, it has been fighting for its existence against its parent organisation’s ill-considered attempt to defund it.
Back in 1945, Francis Poulenc entrusted it with the UK premiere of his Figure Humaine, written in Paris two years earlier under the Nazi occupation. Now, elucidating this furious yet incandescently beautiful setting of the Resistance poet Paul Éluard’s poems about war and liberty, with Sir Simon directing, the 24-strong choir seemed to pull the audience closer: the music and its performers became not just relevant, but urgent.
Mahler has always been Rattle’s heartland, showcasing his ability to create faithful and personal interpretations on an epic scale. Nothing could do so better than the ninth symphony. It’s a valedictory work at the best of times. A ninth symphony had been the last for Beethoven, Schubert, Dvorák and Bruckner, and Mahler’s own, when it arrived, was perhaps the most personal music that he ever wrote. The composer was facing mortality head on: the death of his daughter, his wife Alma’s infidelity and a diagnosis of the heart condition that would kill him in 1911 aged only 50.
Through the first movement Rattle gathered the sound up into giant waves of eloquence that Mahler then deconstructs to unsettling effect, like a gold-leaf Klimt canvas transmogrifying into the bleak, anguished images of Schiele.
Rattle gave the second movement, instructed to be “rough” and “clumsy”, excellent characterisation, unleashing plenty of sardonic humour; and after the bitterness of the snarling Rondo-Burleske, the anguished finale’s narrative moved from its intense outpouring of melody slowly into another world – as if Mahler was looking back on it from a great distance, drawing an ineffable veil across the sound.
The LSO rose magnificently to the occasion. Its musicians must all have nerves of steel for this work, and afterwards cheers greeted such superb players as principal flute Gareth Davies, first horn Timothy Jones, first trumpet James Fountain and leader Roman Simovic, whose violin solos were suitably bittersweet.
The full ensemble, despite the hall’s tricky acoustic, pulled unquenchably together: punchy, malleable, heartrending.
Some of us suspected Rattle might make a speech. He didn’t. And he didn’t need to. The music said it all.
BBC Proms continues to 9 September