Presented with a once in a lifetime chance to witness one of Europe’s most renowned orchestras in all their pomp, Undertone had no choice but to grasp the opportunity with both hands. Still a relative newbie to the classical world, there is surely no better way to hear Mahler’s stupendous First for the first time.
It was mid-November and the stars seemed to be aligning. I had secured what was essentially a week off university (in my course, ‘reading week’ involved surprisingly little actual reading), and I secured myself a four day gap free from any obligations at all at the end of the week. One bored Saturday I was habitually clicking through Skyscanner when I noticed a convenient £30 return flight to Riga that slotted neatly into those four days and all of a sudden my stomach started to flutter with the excitement of borderline reckless spontaneity. A couple of hours later the parents had been called, Ryanair tickets snapped up and a well-reviewed hostel booked. To add to my giddiness, I checked online for any local concerts (just as I had done for similar adventures in London and Dublin) and found exactly what I was looking for: a proper orchestra in a proper traditional venue playing proper classical music (none of that trashy Four Seasons rubbish I had attended in London). I excitedly rushed through the booking process so quickly I misinterpreted the Latvian-language webpages and accidentally bought tickets for the following night of LNSO’s tour, which would have involved a eight-hour return train journey across rural Latvia; even I conceded that was probably an adventure too far. Still, the prospect of the Riga concert was so perfect I wasn’t as fussed by the unnecessary financial contribution as I perhaps should have been.
Even though the most well-known fixture in the evening’s programme, Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D Major, was unfamiliar to me, the feeling of trepidation as I joined the crowds approaching the ornate, immaculate cube of the Great Guild was electrifying. This was no Brudenell Social Club: I was given a funny look when I asked a suited attendant whether the cloakroom was free (it was, and the Latvian bourgeoisie had plenty of thick winter coats to be stored despite the unseasonably warm weather) and the small, glossy bar seemed to exclusively serve expensive wines, so I decided trying for some Coke was a non-starter this time. Feeling out of place by the unusually lavish surroundings and the older, far more sophisticated and well dressed concert attendees all around, I eventually worked out where my seat was, acquired a programme and took my place, smiling politely to the old lady who seemed to say something in Russian to me as she settled down into the next seat along.
I had picked a good seat given the relatively affordable ticket price, and had an aerial view of the huge orchestra from my balcony perch. Andris Dzenitis’ Preludium. Light, a warm up opener by a local Latvian composer who was in attendance, gave an intriguing introduction to the collective musical might of the scores of instruments in front of me. Strange and deeply atmospheric, the piece started and ended in a whisper, but built into successive waves of enormous tension. Trumpets and violins strained and squeezed themselves ever higher, the clashing semitones piercing through an accumulating, earthy rumble of timpani. The eventual, ear-splitting crash from the cymbals was a reminder to stop holding my breath with enthralled anticipation. The piece lacked a clear melodic direction, instead slowly ebbing and flowing like tides, transitioning from a subtly unsettling flute solo to hideous cacophony and back again, the higher instruments always within opposition with one another. The few moments a huge, decisive chord was agreed upon by the orchestra felt monumental. Above all, the prelude was an apt introduction to the sonic capabilities of a top class European symphonic orchestra; no other genre of music can even come close to the range of volume and emotion within the realms of the group in front of me. Most excitingly of all, the night had only begun.
Osokins was not the sort of pianist to miss an opportunity to pointedly flick back his coattails at the start of a more involved section.
I was fairly unfamiliar with his music, but it was somehow reassuring to hear fellow Brit Benjamin Britten making an impact so far from home with his 1938 BBC-commissioned Piano Concerto completing the first act. The musicians discreetly shrank in number for the less ambitiously orchestrated piece, allowing extra focus on Latvian pianist Andrejs Osokins, who gave an assured if somewhat ostentatious performance behind the keys. In fairness, flamboyance seemed to be exactly what Britten’s score called for, and Osokins’ fingers spent much of the thirty minutes blurrily fluttering up and down the keys, occasionally summoning pianistic thunder with a deft flick of the wrist when delving into the piano’s meaty lower register. There was a limited display of tenderness too, particularly in the intricate Impromptu, which was only appended by Britten seven years after the concerto’s original publication. Not the sort of pianist to miss an opportunity to pointedly flick back his coattails at the start of a more involved section, the attention was inevitably drawn to Osokins, although there was plenty to see and hear amongst his accompanists. Still a newcomer to the symphonic world, I was in awe of the comically large mute produced by the distant tuba section in the second movement, which returned in the finale to contribute to a regal march of horns. It was that final March that turned out to be the most orchestrally interesting too, with Osokins’ confidence finally finding its match in a muscular, pulsating final few minutes from the orchestra. A broad smile to the audience and the first of the night’s interminable applauses concluded an engaging first half. Despite the strong performances, it was clear the best was yet to come. Mingling amongst concertgoers during the break and wandering down the pristine corridors leading outside into the biting Baltic air, the sense of anticipation for the night’s main event was palpable. Leaving early was unthinkable.
Sitting on a bench in the picturesque Livu Square a few days prior, my pulse quickened as I read about the unfamiliar piece that would be the headline number on Friday night. As far as Tom Service was concerned, Mahler’s First Symphony was one of the greatest of all time, and a career high from a composer renowned for his groundbreakingly ambitious orchestral melodrama. I knew I was in for some “stunning symphonic shocks”, but Mahler’s First started, thrillingly, with a whisper. That spellbindingly quiet unison opening note – a seven-octave spread on A – provided the sort of magic that makes hairs stand on end when witnessed in the flesh. Exquisitely controlled, that initial drone provided a thin mist through which the symphony’s many memorable ideas gradually emerged. First came a slow, foreboding woodwind melody, then an incongruous brass fanfare that felt so atmospherically distant I briefly assumed the brass players were performing from a nearby practice room. An oboe gently mimicked a cuckoo above menacing low strings, its melody propogating out amongst the dozens of violins. Delicate pizzicato eventually established an image of cheery springtime forest in the early morning. It was of course entirely wordless, but the images conjured by this multifaceted first movement came to mind effortlessly. As the volume receded once more, a sublime, guttural long note from the tuba provided a seismic shift in mood towards the sinister before the movement built into its dazzlingly loud conclusion. Already, I was gripped.
The introduction of a mellifluous second theme in the oboes was so sublime a man beside me audibly gasped.
Part of the challenge with classical music is that, unlike pop, it requires a degree of effort from the listener to keep tabs on the various motifs as they are brought in and out of view in their many guises. However, sat in such a beautiful venue amongst other attentive listeners, getting familiar with the memorable, sprightly main theme of the second movement, for example, hardly felt like a challenge. It was at about this point that it became clear why Mahler had earnt a billing higher than that of Dzenitis and Britten; the intricacy of the exchanges between strings and brass in the opening felt more packed with detail than anything I’d heard all night, and the synchronicity of the strings in the bold, demanding scalic passages was spectacular, their bows rising and falling with the same breathtaking beauty of a densely-packed flock of starlings making a swift change in direction.
The third movement opened with one of the First Symphony’s most famous moments: a rare double bass solo outlining the tune of Frère Jacques in a haunting minor key. A chilling funeral march followed, made all the more grotesque by the repurposing of an innocent children’s nursery rhyme at its heart. The introduction of a mellifluous second theme in the oboes was so sublime a man beside me audibly gasped, prompting a furious shushing from a woman in the row in front. The skill in which Mahler twisted and manipulated that new melody, its sound echoing sonorously through the strings and deep brass before emerging high above in a shrill blast of flute and piccolo, was remarkable. Although technically the most straightforward movement and certainly the least outwardly theatrical, the third movement was one of the most compelling passages of the whole evening.
And so, the end was here. The fourth and final movement, it seemed, occupies a special status as one of the most spectacular finales in the history of music, and a monumental achievement from a composer renowned as a producer of classical at its loudest, stormiest, most earth-shattering. Fittingly, it began with a shocking crash of cymbals – a rude awakening immediately following the hushed finish of the third movement. The first three movements had been memorable in their own right, but if I was to leave the concert hall (and indeed, Latvia) with one lasting memory, it would be of the quite unbelievable 20 minutes that concluded the symphony. The three previously established main themes coalesced magnificently above the awesome din of 40-odd enraged violinists slaving away at their instruments, stray bow hairs flying wildly amidst the chaos. The monstrous passages were balanced by two delectable slow sections in which solemn low strings took the spotlight with a lugubrious melody. A final build into another apocalyptically loud section – evoking planets colliding or a battle between gods – was followed at last by fanfare and a rousing brass melody in a deeply triumphant major key. The sense of relief was so strong I still find myself welling up when I listen back to it.
The sense of relief was so strong I still find myself welling up when I listen back to it.
For a brief moment before that final chord the room was filled with nothing but percussion – timpani boiling over, a shimmering snare, the sparkle of a trilling triangle. The final note landed with a decisive thud, like the closing of an epic fantasy novel once and for all. A man behind gave an apparently involuntary shout of “bravo!” in the instant before we began clapping and cheering during a lengthy but deserved standing ovation. The LNSO had done it, and done it in style. A formidable masterpiece was over, and a precious memory had been made. Live music doesn’t get more magnificent than this.