Gustav made a great double with Camille
A SSO review by Fraser Beath McEwing
Simone Young
Once having decided upon Mahler’s Fifth Symphony for this concert, programmers must have been scratching their heads to find a curtain raiser. Mahler can gobble up even the worthiest companion works.
In this case, the choice of the Camille Pepin violin concerto did the trick admirably. It steered well clear of Mahler’s sweeping orbit, yet still remained mysterious, exciting and not obsessed with fashionably tangled harmonies and nasty surprises. Moreover, Simone Young has a soft spot for it since she and visiting violinist Renaud Capucon premiered the concerto in 2022 with the Orchestre National de France. This was its first Australian outing.
Born in France in 1990, Camille Pepin already has a glittering track record in musical academia and composition. She began her musical studies at the Regional Conservatory in Amiens, studied with Thibaut Perrine and then entered the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, where she was awarded first prizes in orchestration, analysis, harmony, counterpoint and fugue. Her trophy cabinet is already crammed with composition prizes, too numerous to list here – and all before the age of 34. She is definitely one to watch.
Renaud Capucon, the soloist, is also steeped in the French tradition. Like Pepin, Capucon has won many prizes thus far into his career spanning 47 years – although he made an early start by being admitted to the Chambery Conservatorium at the age of four. When you bundle the soloist, composer and conductor this was a perfect combination to bring off a convincing performance of a work that could easily wander off into the musical wilderness.
The violin solo seldom took charge of the narrative. Even in its solo passages it seemed on a journey of its own. Not that it is easy to play, (COMMENT) sitting above an added dimension at the low end of the sound spectrum where tympany and bull fiddles roam about looking for prey.
Camille Pépin
And surprise, surprise joining soloist, conductor and orchestra accepting the joyous applause at the end of the concert was the composer herself.
Gustav Mahler’s fifth symphony, was composed in 1901 and 1902 in his fairy-tale southern Austrian cottage which was part of a large estate that he’d purchased in Maiernigg.
Maybe the tranquillity of his musical man-shed had a bearing on change of style to a down-scaling of his symphonic instrumentation. Gone were the huge choirs and front-of-stage soloists – although they returned for the eighth and unfinished ninth symphonies. Nonetheless, the fifth was still conceived on a grand scale, lasting some 70 minutes over five movements.
Mahler borrowed the four-note opening statement of Beethoven’s
Fifth Symphony, presenting it as a funeral march then developing it for the whole movement. I’m sure Ludwig wouldn’t have objected, especially when it became juxtaposed with a demanding trumpet solo that meanders about in the role of commentator.
The Adagietto – the fourth movement in the symphony – is the shortest at about 10 minutes, and is usually scored for strings, harp and Kleenex tissue. Many music lovers believe this is the most beautiful piece of music ever written. Leonard Bernstein so loved it he was buried with a copy of the score laid across his heart.
The entire symphony becomes a hurling of the senses, one minute screaming with passion and the next pulling back to the tiniest tinkle that comes across almost as an afterthought.
In attempting to assess the performance of conductor and orchestra in this landmark work, one of the tests is whether the blocks of sound are given the space needed to let them become three dimensional before the next group arrives to claim its territory. In this, both Simone Young and the SSO carried the day, never rushing through the skyscrapers of sonic complexity. And yes, I did have to reach for my Kleenex during the fourth movement.
Like many composers of renown, Mahler couldn’t help tinkering with the score. It first appeared in print in1904, with changes in 1905. The final edition had to wait until 1911 before Mahler put the lid on the inkwell- but not before he gave notice that he loved counterpoint and went on to lavish it on the second, third and fifth movements of this symphony. It is worth noting that Mahler’s score calls for a whip in the percussion line-up in the third movement; an interesting tale for another time.
Not all of my readers like the way Simone Young interprets Mahler symphonies – but I do. It is strong and decisive, injecting just the right of drama.
