A surround-sound theatrical masterpiece
On Saturday night at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall, the BBC Philharmonic presented Mahler’s 2nd Symphony, “Resurrection”, conducted by John Storgårds.
The hall was tightly packed as thousands gathered for Mahler’s most beloved symphony, first performed in 1895. Its sheer scale was clear before a note had sounded: more than 200 performers filled the stage, from the over 100-piece orchestra made up of more than 20 different instruments, to the offstage brass and the almost 100-strong choir, poised beside the organ like angels waiting in the wings.
From the first funereal movement, the performance held the audience in its grip. Sound became spectacle: the faintest sweep of bows across strings gave way to flung arms and the thunderous boom! of the drums. Woodwind and brass projected upwards, resonating defiantly through the hall. The staging heightened this sense of ascent: the feverish activity on the ground level of the stage, the illuminated angelic sopranos Siobhan Stagg and Stefanie Irányi, the choir hovering above and the offstage brass fanfares above the audience’s heads combined to suggest a passage towards heaven and the exultant promise of the afterlife.
The symphony had an unmistakably theatrical, even cinematic sweep. The performance lasted 90 minutes yet passed swiftly through surges, silences and towering climaxes. Its melodic force also pointed towards later popular culture, with echoes that seem to anticipate John Williams’s music for Star Wars. More than a century of film music seemed to combine and gather in its wake, lending the piece a timeless familiarity that reached every listener.
Every sonic detail felt carefully shaped for impact. The offstage brass created a striking surround-sound effect, drawing the ear away from a single focal point and widening the hall’s acoustic world, so that the audience was engulfed and absorbed by the drama rather than observing from the outside.
The power of the epic work was undeniable. In performance, the score gained fresh depth: each drum stroke darkened the rough-edged sonority of the cellos and double basses, while glockenspiels, harps and triangles supplied a bright, feathery counterpoint. Moments of delicacy were repeatedly interrupted by sudden eruptions, revealing the full emotional and sonic range of the piece in a vast, majestic arc.
Resurrection took six years to compose, was first performed over 130 years ago, and it still draws an enthusiastic modern audience. Upon its finale in the 90-minute mark, a standing ovation captured the hall for several minutes, in echo of the piece’s ecstatic rhapsody.
Hear this symphony live, and you may leave the hall with the last echoes still rising in you, not merely moved, but resurrected.