Mahler Players, Bruckner 4

Inverness Cathedral, 8/9/24

The Mahler Players, Tomas Leakey, conductor

Let me say at the outset That this was another significant inflexion point in the quest of Tomas Leakey and the Mahler Players to bring high quality performances of the late Romantic/ early modern repertoire to the Highlands.

The double occasion for this one-off performance, with full orchestral rather than chamber forces, was the 200th anniversary of composer Anton Bruckner’s birthday and a celebration of 150 years of the consecration of the most impressive and suitable venue for Bruckner's monumental work – Inverness Cathedral. The normal healthy audience for a Mahler Payers performance was surely swelled somewhat by regular cathedral goers celebrating that anniversary.

The evening kicked off with a pitch-perfect and energetic rendition of Mozart’s Overture to ‘The Magic Flute’, stately when it had to be, and sprightly, vigorous, and light when it had to be. A completely satisfying performance in its own right.

And so on to the Bruckner, which I awaited with not a little trepidation, having mixed feelings about the composer’s work. There are some magnificent passages in Bruckner, of course, but it has always seemed to me his symphonies lack the human element and strong narrative drive of Mahler, Wagner or even Elgar or Hansen.

Nevertheless, the Mahler Players under the confident baton of conductor, Tomas Leakey, delivered on the huge architecture and sonic range of the music.

It was a very good, not perfect performance. There were a few hesitant entries, and a moment in the second movement when the brass sounded a little sour. But it is a tribute to the professionalism and zest of a group of often ad hoc players with limited rehearsal time that such little slips were few and far between.

And it should be noted that the finales of movements one and four, the central call and reply in the scherzo, and the moody, insistent opening of the fourth movement were all exhilarating.

I am not at all religious, but I imagine that if I were, in that lofty cathedral setting, with its unique acoustic, and the MP-reaching lockstep crescendo, I might have felt the echo of the presence of Bruckner’s God.

Mahler Players aficionados will now look forward with both justification and anticipation to their concert performances of the 3rd Act of ‘Parsifal’ in November, and their rendition of Mahler’s brilliant hymn to humanity, his 3rd Symphony, next