Mahler’s Fourth Symphony – Dewsbury Town Hall

Conductor: Oliver Rundell

Soloist: Claire Lees (soprano)

This was a bold choice for the Dewsbury lunch-time series – and one vindicated by the audience response. Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, premiered in 1901, is unusually genial and tuneful for a Mahler symphony, but that doesn’t stop it being a mighty and challenging work, with a running time of over 50 minutes. Iain Farrington made this reduction (in musical forces, not in length) for 15 musicians, oddly including trombone which Mahler omitted from his original score, basically one musician per instrument (two violins), with a not much depleted percussion section, timpanist and two regular percussionists. The sleigh bells are there from the start, a recurrent motif picked up by other instruments.

The opening movement instantly creates a sense of clarity, the first violin (Winona Fifield), with an attractive melody that surfaces gently above the percussion and reappears again and again through the long (20 minute) first movement. The reduction means that all the musicians become soloists which all did magnificently: a special word for Andrew Mason, raising his clarinet to cut through the ensemble, and Nick Wolmark, dextrously negotiating a more than complicated horn part.

After the somewhat eerie second movement the third began by establishing a serene mood on strings, a mood only broken by Stacey Watton’s double bass introducing a springy rhythm, followed by a glorious climactic tutti. It’s worth noting the dramatic effect of David Hooper’s trumpet and Blair Sinclair’s trombone in the lesser climaxes. Isolated, unlike in the original orchestration, their intrusions had an edgy, exposed quality that stood out from the ensemble.

Finally we came to Das himmlische Leben, a child’s view of Heaven, innocent, charming, a touch humorous, from Das Knaben Wunderhorn. The melody is sweet and instantly appealing, sung with just the right mix of brightness and innocence by Claire Lees with the bells of the brass section punctuating the verses and a hum of strings and woodwinds behind the singer. Oliver Rundell’s conducting, here as throughout, was understated and assured and the Orchestra of Opera North Chamber Ensemble played splendidly for him, registering perfectly in the superb Dewsbury acoustic.

An audience that included local mayors (rumours that Calderdale is thinking of following Kirklees’ example) and a party of primary school children had another little treat to start the performance: Carol J. Jones’a true blue sky, a world premiere of an Orchestra of Opera North commission. The alternation of fragmented phrases, for different individual instruments, with near silences, was attractive, though the connection with Rio de Janiero having the bluest skies in the world was somewhat tenuous.

Reviewed on 22nd November 2023