Conducted by Mark Elder, the final concert of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s season opened with Franz Schreker’s Chamber Symphony, a work we don’t hear as often as we might, though it is a thing of often extraordinary beauty, sensual yet elusive, its sound world to some extent like no other. Dating from 1916 and written for 24 solo players, it is cast in the form of a ceaselessly evolving single movement, though its four sections echo and approximate conventional symphonic structure. Strauss and early Schoenberg lurk behind the scoring, which has an ornate, jewelled glamour, sometimes described as being like a Klimt painting in sound. Elder, clearly fond of it, lingered, sometimes a bit too much, over its sensuous textures, teasing them out with exquisite finesse and eliciting some gorgeous playing from the BBCSO in the process.
The same attention to textural detail characterised the performance of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde that followed after the interval, an interpretation of unsparing intensity, magnificently controlled. Speeds were carefully calibrated, and Elder’s slightly slower than usual tempo for Von der Jugend captured a poignant nostalgia behind the surface elegance, while the almost reckless momentum for the horsemen in Von der Schönheit immeasurably heightened the sense of yearning their appearance provokes. The sheer weight of orchestral sound was electrifying at the start and the ending immaculate in its reflective beauty. Elsewhere instrumental solos, played with exceptional refinement, seemed to call and echo across open spaces and voids, heartbreaking and desolate.
Alice Coote and David Butt Philip were the soloists. Coote’s voice has lost some of its opulence of late, and a hint of metal occasionally creeps into her upper registers. Her artistry remains intact, however, and she has always been superb in this work, slightly declamatory in her delivery, words and emotions deeply felt, yet etched with restraint and great dynamic subtlety. Butt Phillip, meanwhile, was simply revelatory, tackling some of the most demanding music ever written for tenor with astonishing ease, ringing fullness of tone and verbal clarity, even in the most implacable high-lying passages, all of it balanced with soft singing of immaculate warmth and sensitivity – a truly outstanding achievement in a very fine concert.
• Broadcast on Radio 3 on 27 May then available on BBC Sounds for 30 days.
